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Emma doesn’t think she’s ever heard Regina’s voice shake.
No, she knows she hasn’t. Not even the day of the fire. But now, on the phone, her voice is trembling like San Francisco.
“What’s going on?” Emma asks with a frown. She hasn’t been in town long but she knows a little bit about the mayor – she’s silent and stoic and doesn’t show weakness to anyone. Especially not the people she wants to destroy.
“I-It’s Henry.” There’s a long pause, during which Emma can hear faint sobs from the other line, until she pulls herself together again. “Come over.”
The line goes dead and Emma frowns at the phone in her hand. What the hell is going on? A cold sense of dread settles in the pit of her stomach. Quickly, she snatches her red jacket from the hook by the door and her keys from the counter.
“Emma?” Mary Margaret calls as she comes downstairs. “Where are you going?”
“Regina called. It’s something with Henry. She… she was really upset.”
The look of astonishment on Mary Margaret’s face is replaced with one of worry. “Keep me updated.”
With a nod, Emma leaves the apartment and takes the stairs two at a time all the way down to her car. It’s so early in the morning that virtually no one’s out yet so she drives 30 over and runs every red light in her way (the benefit to being the sheriff of a small town is that obeying traffic laws is something of an option) until finally, finally she pulls up in front of 108 Mifflin Street.
She thinks she puts the car in park – but who can be sure, really? No, she’s much more focused on running up the walk to the front door and throwing it open without so much as a knock.
Regina’s hunched over herself in the kitchen with her phone still in her hand. Her whole frame is shaking and she’s… she’s crying.
“Regina?” Emma says tentatively.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice is quiet and hollow, almost as though she’s missing herself.
Gently, Emma lays a hand on her shoulder. “You called me, remember? What’s going on?”
“Oh, yes.” She slowly straightens and flips her hair out of her face as though there aren’t mascara tracks down her face and her entire frame isn’t still being racked with silent sobs. “Follow me.”
From behind, Regina looks totally composed. She looks just as she always does, regal and completely in charge. For a minute Emma almost forgets that anything’s wrong.
Regina’s steps slow as they approach Henry’s bedroom, and she stops outside the door with her fists clenched. “I can’t go in there again,” she whispers, turning to face Emma. “Just… just go.”
Emma furrows her brow and resists a strange urge to pull Regina into a hug, slowly stepping forward and taking the doorknob gingerly in her hand. Images and thoughts race through her head but nothing, absolutely nothing could ever prepare her for what she sees when she opens the door. It’s him. It’s the one person she’s not afraid to love, it’s the son she thought she’d lost forever, it’s Henry, with his eyes closed and mouth slightly open.
Hanging from the ceiling.
Or, more accurately, the bar holding up the curtains of his window. Strung up by one of his mother’s scarves, swaying gently in the morning breeze, and for just a split second Emma’s glad his eyes are closed because she doesn’t think she could handle seeing the glassy, lifeless stare.
And suddenly, all of the oxygen in the room is gone, almost like it’s being sucked into lungs that don’t work anymore. She can’t breathe and her heart and lungs and kidneys and everything are collapsing in on themselves and she needs to get out but she can’t get her hands around the doorknob. They’re too slippery with sweat and with tears she doesn’t remember shedding and not for the first time she hates herself for getting attached.
She hates herself for allowing him to get attached.
Maybe if she’d never come to Storybrooke he wouldn’t be up there. She let him go, gave him his best chance, and then ten years later come back and squished that chance under the toe of her boot.
Finally, finally, the doorknob turns and she escapes the room without air, stumbles into Regina’s hallway coughing and gasping.
“Emma? Are you all right?” Regina’s voice sounds distant, almost like she’s under water, but she’s not. She’s buried under years of regret and guilt and wishing she could have been just a little bit better. Just a little bit smarter. Just a little bit stronger.
“Bathroom,” she manages to croak around the lump in her throat before heaving herself into Regina’s bathroom. She bends over the toilet, hair in her face, and she coughs and retches out everything she wishes she could have been for Henry. Once everything in her stomach has been purged she slowly stands up, and her hair falls out of gentle hands she didn’t notice before. “Thanks,” she mutters as one of those same hands, still trembling ever so slightly, comes up to wipe the corners of her mouth with a damp towel.
Emma holds still and lets Regina mother her; if she can’t be that to Henry any more, this is the least Emma can give her.
Her phone begins to ring, the sound indicating Mary Margaret, but Emma ignores it. She loves her friend too much to shatter her world just yet. Better to keep her in the dark at least for a few more hours.
“You got any whiskey?” Emma asks once Regina finishes wiping her face.
“It’s eight in the morning. And you just threw up.”
“I think we can excuse it this one time, don’t you?”
After a long pause, Regina sighs. “Just to take the edge off, yes? One glass.”
They make their way downstairs and Regina pours them each a glass of amber liquid. Then Emma’s one glass turns into two, then three then five and soon the bottle is empty and still it’s not enough.
“I want to black out,” Emma slurs. “The world is shitty without Henry in it.”
“Agreed. But Henry would want us to be strong.” Regina sighs, setting down the glass she stopped refilling long ago. At least one of them has to be sentient.
Emma reaches for the empty bottle, trying desperately to get a few more drops out. “Fuck that. If he doesn’t have to be strong then I don’t either.”
“Emma, stop.” Regina snatches the bottle from Emma’s greedy fingers and shoves it under her chair. “There’s no way either of us are gonna get through this if you’re intoxicated the entire time.”
Lines appear in Emma’s forehead as she slowly processes Regina’s words. “Are you saying you need me?” she asks finally.
Regina sighs. “I’m saying we need each other. As much as I loathe to admit it… we were both his mother. We’re the only ones who can understand each other. So yes, we need each other.”
“You’re calling me by my first name.” The realization is delayed, pushed aside in lieu of focusing on the lack of two things in her life: her son and more alcohol.
“I figure it’s time to set aside our war.”
“It’s long overdue.”
With another sigh, Regina picks up both their empty glasses and brings them into the kitchen to wash later. “I should get you back to your apartment to sleep off the whiskey. Miss Blanchard – Mary Margaret will be worried about you.”
“I don’t want to tell her yet.”
“She’ll have to find out sometime. Let it be from you and not someone else.”
Emma frowns. “Who else would know?”
Regina’s face contorts into a mixture of nausea and grief, and she wraps her arms around herself. “I’m going to have to call someone today to… to remove him.”
“Oh,” Emma says softly, more of a breath than a word.
“Come on, I’ll take you home. You can get your car when you’re safe to drive.”
Regina manages to guide a stumbling Emma to her Benz. “If you throw up in my car I’ll kill you,” she mutters as she closes her door and buckles her seatbelt.
Emma returns with a ghost of a smirk; an empty smile resembling the ones she used to have. “Better get me home fast then.”
They spend the rest of the drive in silence, Emma staring out the window and Regina gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. When finally they pull up outside the apartment complex, Mary Margaret is standing outside with worry written clearly across her face. “Emma!” she calls as the car stops, running over to meet them.
“She’s drunk,” Regina explains as she gets out.
“What happened?”
“Henry…” she shakes her head. “Emma will tell you everything. I can’t.” Shaking her head again, she moves to the other side of the car to help Emma out and into Mary Margaret’s supporting arms. “You can’t get this drunk again,” she whispers in the blonde’s ear.
Emma turns to face her with glazed eyes. “I’ll call you later. We’ll get through this, okay?” Reaching out, she takes Regina’s hand and laces their fingers together in a way she never would sober. “Together.”
Regina nods once. “Together.” And just like that, she drives away, back to her empty mansion much too large for one lonely person. She glances at the door to the wine cellar when she walks in, but stops herself. She needs to be strong for the little boy upstairs once so full of… everything.
Her phone rings, Emma’s photo flashing on the screen. “Hello?” Regina answers it, preparing herself for some sort of drunken slurring.
“I’m about to go take a nap.”
“Good. Sleep it off.”
There’s a long pause. “Stay on the line?” Emma’s voice sounds meek and small, as though she’s a child asking for something she thinks she’ll be denied. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
Regina softens, even allowing herself to smile just the smallest bit. “I think I’m going to try to sleep as well.” She moves to the guest room off of the living room, knowing already she can’t face going upstairs. “We’ll get through this. Together,” she repeats Emma’s words.
She lies awake for a long time, listening to the near-silence on the other end of the phone. Eventually the thoughts and images haunting her mind slow enough to let her fall asleep, and she smiles slightly to herself as she hears the soft, even breathing on Emma’s line. And the two of them fall asleep in different beds in houses across town from each other, separately but together.
Always together.