"Regina? Ms. Mills?" Dr. Whale. He was still talking. "Have you understood everything I've told you?"

"Yes." Regina had asked for a glass of water while he explained it to her. Twenty grueling minutes. Now, she ran her finger over the rim of the glass. "Car accident. Brain damage. Amnesia. We've had this conversation five times already, over the course of the last year. I'm no longer mayor, and my treatment requires me to stay inside my own house. Otherwise, I could become confused and wander off. Like a stray dog." She smiled, almost unwillingly. "Henry's been taken away from me and sent to boarding school, seeing as it's distressing for him to see me like this. And I'm supposed to be getting better, though the fact that I can't remember growing my hair out would argue against that."

"It is a good sign," Whale argued. "Three months since a relapse. That bodes very well indeed."

Regina nodded. It was a forced gesture. Like someone was turning a crank and making her do it.

"Would you like to be alone?" he asked.

"Yes," she said instantly. "I would. It seems like something I should get used to."

Emma was waiting outside. All the cold cream and wet towels Mary-Margaret could muster couldn't diminish the damage. Her face was so bruised it looked like she was wearing facepaint, a cast around one arm, a limp when she stood, as she did now, too eager for news of Regina.

"She bought it?" Emma said, all her injuries somehow just making her more imposing.

"Judging by the stunned silence, I'd say so."

"Thanks. I owe you one."

"If you'd like, we could settle it this evening—"

"Whatever you're about to suggest, think hard about it. I've just managed to forget you had a one-nighter with my mom."

"Duly noted."

Emma came over during the weekend. Several reasons. She had nothing to do; she couldn't look at Henry without feeling guilty. The bruises had had time to fade. And she just needed to see Regina. Needed to; a funny choice of words, but accurate.

Regina answered the door with a sunny enough smile. It died a little upon finding it was directed at Emma, but only a little. The woman they had posing as Regina's nurse was gone; it wasn't good to give anyone too much access to Regina, knowing what she'd done. Regina still had the scar from someone who had gotten close and carried a knife. Emma wondered if she'd found it yet.

"Sheriff Swan," Regina said, having been waiting for Emma to speak. Emma had been waiting too; it'd never occurred to her that she'd be speechless. "I wasn't expecting you to show up here. Or to have been so damaged in shipping."

Regina's voice made it less of a jibe than it could've been. "Drunk and disorderly. Got very disorderly. Mind if I come in?"

Regina didn't move from blocking the door. "If you're going to ask about my whereabouts on some such night, I'm afraid I won't be very forthcoming."

"Regina…" Emma smiled. The lie climbed up her throat. It had such an easy passage; she wanted to make things right with Regina so badly. She wanted to beg for forgiveness from a woman who had separated her from her family for twenty-eight years. "It's Thursday. I always come visit on Thursday."

Regina blinked. "Why?"

"To talk about Henry, at first. Then, just to talk."

Henry's name was like Pavlov's bell. Regina fought it, but surrendered quickly. She stepped out of the way. "Inside."

The manor seemed chillier than before. Maybe with Henry got, Regina changed the thermostat to something she liked. Or maybe the nurse messed with it.

"How is Henry?"

"He's good," Emma said, trying to be honest. She knew instinctively she wouldn't have many chances for that. "He asks about you. When we talk."

"Skype?"

"Telephone."

"You should try for visual contact," Regina said. "I read it in a magazine, Contemporary Family Life. It's reduced divorce in military families with overseas deployments by thirteen percent."

"Oh. Okay. I'll keep that in mind."

"Coffee? Tea? Hot cocoa?" Without the front she put up, Regina was almost desperate to please. Emma knew that feeling. Being visited in prison.

When someone came into your dark little world, even though they saw you at your worst, it was perversely pleasurable. You couldn't get enough of it. Because it was proof that there was an outside, that you were being drawn there by an unbreakable safety line.

Regina didn't have a release date, of course. She just had Emma.

"Water's fine."

Regina nodded and went to get it. She came back with bottled water. Of course.

"He doesn't believe in fairy tales anymore," Emma said.

Regina didn't hesitate an instant. Her face didn't change a bit, except with relief. "Good. I was beginning to worry."

That was it then. Regina really couldn't remember.

Goddamnit.