Author's note and summary: There were still images from a scene during first season that was apparently discarded. They pictured Emma (Jen Morrison) crossing a rain- and/or snow-slick street and she slips and falls. Snow (Ginny Goodwin) and Charming (Josh Dallas) come running to help her up. Emma pushes through them, defenses clearly up and the other two look clearly baffled as she leaves. Personally, I think the moment was supposed to be a Charming family reunion and intended to showcase Emma's emotional freakout in the face of the curse breaking. However, TPTB apparently have decided to save the reunion for season two, probably to more fully explore the emotional repercussion and I applaud that. Anyway, that's where the idea to write this scene came from... I jumped from the images to this sequence of events in my head, which are set right after the second cloud covers Storybrooke.

written: June 15, 2012
first posted: June 15, 2012

Thanks to Cheyenne for the beta read!

I Just Need A Moment (to Figure It All Out)

by LZClotho

The magic cloud had brought with it a strange storm. Emma left Henry with a kiss in the care of the hospital staff - apparently the nun was the Blue Fairy? Emma had fought a dragon, negotiated with Rumplestiltskin, watched a man turn to wood. In the buffeting wind and rain outside, she let the dampness lash her face, just to feel normal again. Her footing faltered on the rain-swept asphalt and she fell to the street in the middle of the intersection.

"Emma!"

Dazed and rubbing her sore palms, Emma glanced up to see Mary Margaret running toward her. "Are you all right?"

David Nolan was right behind her. "Emma!" Both of them bent down toward her. Mary Margaret's hands clasped her arm first and the brunette was babbling. Emma felt closed in, trapped, and the look in Mary Margaret's eyes alarmed her. Shit. They knew. The moisture on Emma's face became tears. God, I can't deal with this now!

David tried to wrap his arms around Emma as she got to her feet like an ungainly filly. She pushed him away preserving her personal space and her sanity. "I'm fine. Fine. No." She cut off anything and everything they might have said. She just couldn't deal with this right now. "I - I gotta go." Go where she didn't know, but anywhere, away from here.

"But. Emma, baby-" Mary Marg - Snow fucking White, Emma's mind screamed - tried to grab for Emma's arm and she shook it off furiously.

"No! I. I can't. I can't do this right now!" The thick heaviness in her chest, that felt like she was suffocating from the inside out, terrified Emma. She pushed away from David and Mary Margaret, stumbling away. She continued across the street, destination unknown.

She looked up to find she was in front of Gold's Pawn Shop. It was dark and appeared to be locked up. She had felt a brief flare that he might have answers for her. Now she had no idea where to turn. She spun away and saw the sheriff's office and city hall down the block. Wait! "Regina! Regina! Fuck you! Where are you?"

Regina had run from the hospital after whatever had happened with Henry. Emma vaguely recalled hearing the nun warn her to hide. So where would the Evil Queen go to hide? Her castle, some connected, yet still seemingly comfortable with the absurd, part of her brain supplied. But there are no castles in Storybrooke. Wait, the mansion!

Would Regina go there? It wasn't exactly impregnable, but maybe it was simply the most familiar place Regina would think of. Emma still had a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea that Regina was The Evil Queen of Henry's book, even though she'd seen it through her own mind's eye. But Evil Queen's didn't cry. They didn't beg their sons to remember they love them. Oh, Regina resented Emma. She really had made a turnover to put Emma to sleep to get her out of Henry's life. But then she had put her own safety on the line to help Emma retrieve the potion. Regina had believed Rumplestiltskin because she was desperate, too. Desperate to save Henry. Maybe this - all this - was screwed up because Regina was screwed up.

That, Emma reasoned, suddenly made a lot of sense. So, yes, she decided, Regina would be at her home. Rushing to her comforting, rundown yellow bug, Emma roared toward the mansion on Mifflin Street.

Emma reached the entrance to the neighborhood only to see much of it blocked by a small crowd egging each other onward. Small being the operative word, she realized. She recognized Leroy out front. All the men were stocky. She heard one call Leroy, "Grumpy" and Leroy retorted something no doubt rude under his breath to "Doc."

Emma glanced skyward. Really? Dwarves? She eased the vehicle through and stopped, calling attention to herself and getting them to stop moving. "Hey, guys!" She caught all their gazes one at a time, watching bewilderment then recognition flare in each pair of eyes. "What's going on?"

"We're going to capture the Evil Queen," said one simply.

"She's not here," Emma lied. "I left her at the hospital." Let Mary Margaret and David, and the hospital staff deal with them. She wanted time alone with Regina.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I just came from there. Henry woke up."

"That's good news," said another.

"It is." She smiled, easily remembering the combination of relief and disbelief, and the pure crashing wave of love that had swept through her as she met her son's opening eyes.

The crowd turned away, beginning a march back toward the center of town; Leroy gave her a lingering suspicious look. "Go on. I got a 911 call to check on," she said.

He shouldered what she realized was a traffic post and others had on them similar makeshift weapons. Emma heaved a sigh of relief and got back in her Beetle. "That was close," she murmured, put the car in gear and continued on to the mayor's property. Now to find Regina.

She rang the doorbell. It seemed absurd when she thought about it, but she was living the definition of absurd right now and damn it, she didn't know any other way to approach the Storybrooke mayor. She tapped her foot anxiously. "Regina! Regina! Open up! It's Emma!"

The door opened. Regina Mills held the edge with her left hand and obviously the inside knob with her right. It curled her around the door and Emma's gaze was drawn to the knuckles, almost white. "Miss Swan," the mayor said. Her voice was dark, low, suspicious. Her gaze swept Emma head to toe, which made Emma look down at herself and realize she looked like a drowned rat, wet hair, pants soaked from her fall in the street. She'd been so dazed by everything she was dealing with she only now realized the chill that had grown along with being soaked. But she didn't have time for that now.

"I'm alone," Emma offered, sure that was part of Regina's reticence. "I have to talk to you."

Sternly Regina rejected that. "I have nothing to say to you." She started to close the door.

Emma swept forward, sticking her booted foot between the door and the jamb and bringing her own hand up to the door's edge. "Well then just listen, because I have a lot to say to you." She barely missed slamming into Regina when the woman hesitated in taking a step back out of the way. She heard the exasperated and resigned sigh and turned on Regina as soon as she was inside the foyer. "First, I thought you should know, people have their memories back."

"Yes, I know." Regina sounded stilted, but calm.

"But then there was this second cloud."

Regina exhaled still holding open the door. "Yes, I am aware of that as well. Miss Swan, I do not have the patience right now. Get to the point."

Emma looked around and noticed the house was quiet, unchanged. She didn't know if she had expected that, or expected to see some signs of the Evil Queen's return, a boiling cauldron or something. "What are you going to do?"

Regina's gaze blazed with anger. "What would you care? You broke the curse. Emma Swan." Emma's name fell with regret from Regina's lips. Then Regina's shoulders dropped and her voice grew frustrated, with an edge of the familiar derison. "The daughter of Snow White and Charming has vanquished the Evil Queen and restored everyone's happy ending. Henry must be ecstatic." The last was said with an unmistakable edge of sadness.

"Actually, we're both a little confused. If the curse broke, why didn't everyone go back?"

Regina turned away from Emma without answering and carefully closed her front door, taking the extra step of turning the deadbolt and stroking down the line where the edge met the frame before turning around. Emma continued to wait for a response, watching the brunette whose body language screamed temporizing. Either Regina was about to tell Emma a hastily constructed lie, or she was about unburden herself with the full and complete truth. The muscles in Emma's back tightened as she struggled between her curiosity and her fear. Which would it be?