Emma had been only a few spare feet away from the outside of her parents' place when she'd realized that she didn't have the strength to go in. It hadn't taken her long, after parting sour ways with Regina despite their teamwork, for her to realize that...she doesn't feel as though she belongs anywhere. No woman in her thirties should be staying with her parents, curse or no curse--and she doesn't belong at Regina's mansion--except only a couple days ago she would have said the exact opposite. And, she certainly doesn't belong in New York; though it had been her home for six years, and has a completely new set of memories of having stayed there for nearly two decades.

That's why, after staring at her parents' building for a solid ten minutes, she'd turned on her heel, wiped a tear off of her cheek, and set off into the night. There'd been no real destination in her mind, she just couldn't think of a single other thing to do. She'd considered briefly spending the night in her car, but the Bug isn't where she thought she'd left it, and she doesn't have the determination to find it at the moment.

She shoves her fingers into the infuriatingly shallow pockets of her skin-tight jeans, inhaling the saltwater-tinged air and welcoming the biting wind tangling her curls and snaking its way underneath her thin layers of clothing. She's always liked the cold. No matter how numb she feels on the inside, the cold has a way of reminding her, almost comfortingly, that she can feel.

She swears she can feel warm fingertips with long, manicured nails pressing at her skin, the sound of whispered promises and the smell of expensive wine on sweet breath. And for one, indulging moment, she closes her eyes and leans into the imagined touch that's much more like a memory, a smile curling at her lips. It lasts only a fleeting moment, before her eyes snap open and she realizes where her mind has gone. She curses under her breath and sniffs harshly. She flexes her numbing fingers, trying to ignore the pricking under her eyelids.

She's ready to screw it all, including her melancholy walk, and turn back to her parents' and crash on the couch until she figures what to do in the morning, when she's stopped by noticing someone crossing the street. Who the hell else would be out this time of night? She squints against the dark, indecisive whether to see if she knows them or to follow her instincts to just go back to where she knows she'll be safe and unbothered.

However, something tells her to stay where she is, until the figure falls into the light of a street lamp. And then,

"Neal?"

His head snaps up, looks straight at her, and freezes like a deer in headlights. It takes her a couple seconds to realize that he still thinks she's amnesiac and has a death wish placed on him. She places her palms out, a slight smile on her lips. "Uh--you don't have to--I got my memories back, I mean."

"Oh, Emma."

His face breaks out into a smile she hasn't seen on him in years, and they cross the distance to each other before wrapping each other in their arms. Emma steps back first, hands on his broad shoulders, telling him, "It's good to see you, Neal; I mean like, for real this time." She tacks on with a smirk. He smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes, and he looks decidedly distracted. She frowns. "What's going on?"

"Ah...nothing. It's just, if you got your memories back, does that mean Henry has too? I mean, between now and earlier today."

"No, not yet. I actually got mine a day ago--Henry's potion isn't totally ready yet." She notes the way his face falls, and she steps back again, eyeing him carefully. "What's wrong? I know, you probably miss him, but--"

"--it's not that. It's...well, this afternoon we kind of ran into each other again, and..." he breaks off, digging the heel of his shoe into the pavement. "And he sort of worked out that I'm his dad and he was really mad at me and--" he runs a hand roughly across the side of his face. "---I don't know, Em. I'm worried about him. Have you seen him recently?"

Emma's mouth opens, ready to comfort him, but the words die out before they cross her lips. She closes her mouth entirely, realizing that she hasn't seen her son since that morning. "No I--I haven't seen him all day." She speaks through a deep frown, almost more to herself than to Neal.

She trains her eyes back up to Neal, who looks far more worried than she expected him to. In turn, her stomach begins to churn. "I...I'm sure he's with Regina," she says impulsively.

Neal eyes her, shaking his head ever so slightly. "No. Why would he be there if he thinks you're his only mom?" He reminds her, and her stomach plummets down something like ten flights of stairs.

"Shit," she breathes out, blood turning to ice. She takes out her phone with a shaking hand, pressing the dial tone against her ear. Pick up. Henry, pick up.

He doesn't.

She calls him again, listening to the agonizingly drawn-out ringing before a dorky message previously recorded by her son a couple years ago. "Hey, obviously I'm doing something way more important right now, so if you need something equally as important, which I doubt, frankly, leave a message!" Her fingers tighten around her phone.

"His phone probably died," she explains for no reason to Neal, pretending not to notice the deepening concerned lines his face, her voice much too high and loud while trying to sound casual. "You know. Irresponsible teenagers." She tries to crack a joke, but the laugh doesn't quite come out, and her forced smile is much more like a grimace.

"Emma..." Neal begins, but Emma puts her shaking out, dipping her head, wordlessly telling him she does not want to hear what she knows he'll say.

"You know...just in case, why you don't check Granny's, and I'll check down there. He might be taking a stupid walk like us," she says, pointing down the dark looming street leading to the forest. She watches Neal nod and start down the road the opposite way, waits until he's nearly out of sight before she breaks out at a run.

She calls him again, sprinting down the sidewalk, the nightmarish dial tone screaming in her ear. "Henry!" She calls down the road, and then the sidewalk runs out and she switches to running in the middle of the slick street. "Henry!!!!"

She continues down the road, eventually taking it to lead out of town. She's probably left ten different messages by now, and all she can hear is ringing, her heavy breathing, and her heart pounding in her ears. God, Henry, just pick up. Just pick up.

She's nearing the Storybrooke sign when she begins to smell something that reminds her of exhaust fumes. Brow furrowing, mind screaming at her to stop thinking and nothing is wrong and you're being stupid, and you're being paranoid. Still, she breaks back into her previous run before she turns a slight bend in the road that will lead her to the town line.

That's when she sees her missing Bug.

She races closer to it, seeing the front half of it smashed completely against the thick trunk of a tree, broken shards of glass mostly covered in blood coating the forest floor, thin grey trails of smoke rising from the partly popped hood with the engine. The gas smell is overpowering now, along with the sickening stench of blood that she doesn't even want to think of who it belongs to.

That's when she looks in the driver's seat from a slight distance and wishes so much that she hadn't.

She screams. A blood-curdling, terrified, agonizing scream that startles even herself that the darkness and the trees seem to swallow shortly after it exits her body. She takes out her phone again, hands shaking so violently she drops it on the ground a few times before she squints at the too-bright screen through a thick shield of blurred vision.

She screams for an ambulance into the device with a now-badly cracked screen.

And calls the first person she can think of.

---

Regina's almost surprised that with her past concerning fire--burning villages to the ground, fireballs to the chest, nightmares that still plague her after tireless years working towards redemption--that watching the licking flames in her stone fireplace can bring her to a place of peace. Yes, it's comforting, studying the bright, slow gradients of color that flick around almost too fast to track. It slows her thoughts, making it easier to comb through them, working them out individually.

It's a cold night, hence the fire and the liquor sitting in a wide glass in her hand. She wonders where Emma is. Where Henry is. She wants to curse herself for the first thought--but continues reflecting on it. Surely she's at her parents' place. But, what of Henry? Is he with her, cramped up in that godforsaken loft with far too many people for its structure? She shudders at the thought.

And thinks that her mansion has never felt quite so empty as it does now.

She's so deep in her thoughts, so far into her mind and all her senses fixed upon the fire, that the sound of her phone ringing causes her to jump so violently some bourbon leaps out of her glass, soiling her hand and couch. With a steadying hand over her heart, she reaches across a cushion or two for it, squinting at the name on the screen, eyes seeing spots after studying the fire for so long.

Emma?

Her heart leaps into her threat, and she feels as though a bucket of cold water has been carelessly tossed upon her. Her muscles that she had spent so long relaxes recoil and tense up worse than before, and her mind clouds with just one word: please.

Please let this be the call that they make up, please let them fall into each other's arms one more time. Regina thinks that if she doesn't soon feel Emma's biceps pressing gently against her own, giving her a source of comfort she'd never known, she'll go mad with the desire. God, she loves that woman; that same woman who'd barged her way into her life, taking a chainsaw to her best apple tree, and was never afraid to call her out on all her bullshit. God, she misses that Emma. The true Emma she hasn't known for nearly seven years; and oh, how she almost feels that she needs her.

And so Regina swallows harshly and puts the phone to her ear, hand shaking slightly. "Emma, I was hoping we could---"

She's cut off by loud, unsettling gasps and something that sounds far too much like racking sobs. Her eyes narrow in confusion, fingers gripping her phone tighter now. "Emma?"

"Regina--oh, god, Regina it's bad---" Emma begins in a tone close to a scream, and Regina nearly drops her phone, startled and thoroughly scared. She can feel the color being drained from her skin, and she stands shakily from the couch, putting her bourbon down.

"Emma, talk to me. What's going on?" Regina asks, trying her hardest to sound level so as to calm the hysterical blonde, but she doesn't quite succeed in either task.

"--the town line, it's Henry, oh, GOD---!" Emma's broken speech stops Regina's heart for a few solid beats and her phone slips from her fingers.

She doesn't allow herself to think, to breathe, before she raises her hand over her head and disappears in a cloud of deep purple smoke.

---

Regina reappears at the town line in less than a second, squinting against the evaporating smoke at her surroundings, disoriented. She spins in a slow semicircle before she lays her eyes on Emma, standing in the middle of the street, looking hopelessly lost. She begins to walk to her, arm outstretched, spiked heels scratching against the pavement, and then she looks to her left. And then---

"NO!!!" Regina screams, and it seems like it takes an eternity for it to reach her ears. She runs in what feels like infuriating slow-motion to the crushed Bug, hands closing over the driver door's handle, trying in pathetic vain to force the jammed door open. "HENRY!!"

She hears more shrieking and screaming sobs and she's not sure if it's herself or Emma, but then she feels someone grabbing her arm and gently pulling her backwards. Through the deafening pulsing in her eardrums, she hears something about an ambulance coming any second, and something about they'll be okay, but she barely comprehends it. She fights almost wildly against the arms restraining her, struggling to see through the thick wall of tears obscuring her vision.

"I need--Henry--I need to save him," she yells, and then she collapses to her knees on the road, great hiccuping sobs racking her body.

Because there's her son a foot away from her, but he's trapped in a crushed metal prison, and he's thrown halfway over the driving console, and there's blood dyeing his hair and skin a sickening red, and there's glass carpeting the ground. His eyes are closed--oh god, they're closed--and she doesn't even want to think about the what-ifs. She can't bring herself to look on her baby boy, to check for any sign of breathing. She can't continue to smell the metallic stench of her little prince's blood, and she thinks she's gagging, and then there's a pool of vomit on the road underneath her, and her lips are dripping with sick.

She feels an almost comforting weight on her back, and it takes her what feels like an hour of kneeling on the road to realize that it's Emma with her strong arms around her, jolting Regina occasionally with her sobs. Regina reflects briefly how much she'd wanted Emma's arms around her a few minutes ago in her mansion, and it feels like lifetimes ago. She'd wanted it, longed for it, but not like this. God, not like this.

The dark feels as though it will encompass her in a moment, and she can hardly breathe, and the world is the most terrible as it's ever been for a few solid minutes, but then there's blaring sirens and blinding red lights. For a disorienting moment, Regina's terrified, and then she realizes what this means. Emma gets up first, and Regina rises to her shaking legs, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Emma begins to jump up and down, needlessly flagging them down, and for some reason Regina finds herself waving her hand over her head along side of her. She feels the most physically and emotionally drained she's ever been in her long, long life, and she cries. The great former evil queen just cries in front of ten spotlighting siren lights and watches paramedics exit the back of the vehicle and make their way to Henry trapped in the Bug. And then,

Then, "Ma'am. Ma'am, you shouldn't be here." There's a shock blanket being placed around her shoulders then, and on Emma's too, but she draws herself up to her full height, eyes and nose dripping and glares straight into the paramedic's face and musters up every strength she has.

"I am staying with my son. I am staying with Henry, and you cannot take him away from me." She rumbles in a low voice that she can barely hear herself, but then again, the pulsing in her ears thins out any noise.

Emma's beside her, backing up her statement with one of her own, and there's the two of them, utterly pathetic draped in blankets and cheeks damp with tears, but there's something beautiful and so, so strong inside of them that far outweighs any hint of otherwise. The paramedic backs away, and leaves them, saying something about allowing them to stay in the back with their son.

Then there's sound of shattering glass and a busted horn blaring, and there's four people dragging Henry out of the newly broken window and onto a stretcher.

There's wires and IV's and someone is breathing for Henry, because he is unable to even stay alive.

And then they're gone in the ambulance, and all that's left is a bloodied road and a splintered tree and a mangled yellow Bug.

AN: So, he's alive, guys, maybe hate me a little less? LOL! I would apologize for the dramatic chapter but....I love it too much.

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