The house was quiet. Really, really fucking quiet. The only noises keeping her company were the obnoxiously echoing footfalls and the creaking floorboards beneath them as she paced back and forth in her as yet hardly lived in living room. Nothing about this place felt warm or homey, instead it was like a model home meant to be shown and not used (in fact, now that she thought about it, the whole place looked remarkably like one she'd seen in some home design magazine in her social worker's waiting room as a child. It had always seemed rather cruel to her that that office was jam packed with magazines about dream homes when it's business was in children without any home at all). The clock on the mantel chimed, causing her to very nearly jump out of her skin, and reminding her that it was now half past 2 in the morning and Hook was still gone. She knew he wasn't coming back, the rucksack missing from the hall closet, along with his favorite short sword, his long leather jacket that he'd hardly worn since arriving in Storybrooke and adjusting his fashion sense, and her engagement ring all told her that he was gone, likely for good. Hook had run, vanished, and though her heart felt like it might actually be splitting in half, a very small voice in the back of her mind whispered "finally", not that she was even slightly prepared to deal with what that meant at the moment.

Taking one last look at the clock, now reading 2:45am, she sighed, stomping her feet rather like a petulant child as she trudged over to the closet, shucked the damn woolen coat she'd been wearing for who knows what reason, and reached into the far back to pull out the familiar, warm red leather that felt more like home than this house ever could. Once wrapped in its protective warmth, she flung open the door and headed out into the crisp evening, not bothering to shut it behind her and she stormed down the walkway.

20 minutes later and she found herself at the only place that felt like a real home to her, the place she knew was filled with warmth and meals cooked from scratch and so much love it was nearly bursting through the walls. A shake of her head and a crooked, semi-downturned smile accompanied the memory of when she had once thought of this place as cold and sterile, how very wrong she had been. She made it to the large white door before pausing, hand poised to knock when she was struck with the feeling that she didn't have to. And rightly so, within seconds the entryway was illuminated and the door was swinging open.

"Savior." One arm held the door open while the other remained on the doorframe, hips confidently tilted to one side and eyebrow cocked in a silent question.

"Regina..." she started before being cut off abruptly, a hand held up to silence her.

"Not quite," the woman in the doorway looked back over her shoulder before calling deeper into the house, "Regina, dear, it seems you have a visitor."

She felt a jolt run up her spine, her shoulders tensing as she recognized the person before her for who she was, the Evil Queen. But almost as suddenly as the tension arrived, she felt it ebb slightly as Regina herself appeared behind the Queen, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder and moving her out of the way, concern etched across her features.

"Emma? What is it?"

Before she could manage a word, and with two sets of deep brown eyes staring at her with nearly equal amounts of concern (to see that look from both women was something she really didn't have the energy to try to figure out right now), she burst into tears, the sobs tearing from her throat with an intensity that robbed her of her breath and left her staggering forward, hands on her knees in a desperate attempt to stay on her feet. When she felt hands on both of her elbows she was powerless to resist them. In fact, she was grateful to surrender to them and allow herself to be led. They guided her gently over the threshold and towards the study, settling her on the couch, rubbing circles on her back and pulling her hair free from its ever-present ponytail so that tender fingers could thread through it, massaging her scalp while quiet words of reassurance were murmured surprisingly close to her ears. The last thing she remembered, how long after she had arrived she couldn't say, was her eyes drifting shut, her head held reverently in a warm lap while one of the two women who's mercy she had found herself at draped a blanket over her, tucking it in around her feet and gently patting them before leaving her alone with the one whose thigh she had turned into a pillow and wandering off somewhere else in the mansion.

"R'gina?" she muttered, her face turned towards the body of the other woman and her words muffled by equal parts exhaustion and soft cashmere against her lips.

"It's me, Emma. Just sleep. We'll talk in the morning". A hand returned to her hair, stroking her head ever-so-softly, and for once Emma Swan simply followed direction and did as she was told, allowing her mind and body to slip into a deep, and desperately needed, sleep.