A/N: Ummm... the result of 30 minutes before bed and vodka. This is a lead in to a scene an anon suggested I try and tackle a while back. I've never written a chapter in about 20 minutes before, so not sure how this will read, but figured as I'd done it, I may as well upload it and see what you guys think. Open to suggestion, and hope you enjoy! If you like it, I have a couple of ideas on how to expand from here :) Please review!

"Whatever, I just think we should have stuck together. You heard what Hook said about this place."

The pirate looks up as his name falls from the blonde's lips, but she doesn't even spare him a glance; her attention focused instead on Mary Margaret.

Charming stands at his bride's side, but takes minimal offence to the way the Sheriff directs her words almost solely towards Snow. Enough time- and conversation with the schoolteacher- has passed since the breaking of the curse for him to understand that Emma doesn't so much blank him, but rather struggles to get her head around the fact that he plays a part in their conversations at all. He and Snow are her parents, but for Emma, she has yet to shake the veil of seeing them as Mary Margaret and David, and while she trusts her former housemate regardless of her guise, she has yet to warm to him in quite the same way.

He has desisted trying to hold her to him as he might like to since coming to this realisation.

Save for pulling her from an untimely death at the wrath of the sea not a couple of days ago...

"I understand, Emma, but right now we need to continue searching for Henry. Regina can look after herself."

Snow insists with diminishing patience; the Mayor's slap to her face still fresh in her memory.

And that's not all... In the madness of what has come to pass, are we just to forget that the woman attempted to poison you? That she has tried- failed, but tried- to kill you on several occasions? After all this time, such things have yet to be addressed... In fact... It's sometimes almost as though you seek her out!

She says none of this. It is simply something she has come to accept, and ask of her husband to do the same.

She supposes she can understand it.

In a way.

Ever since the curse broke, Emma has clung firmly to some sort of bond- be it negative or naively positive- with the bothersome brunette, and in a way it makes sense, as it is with Regina that she had endured the most realistic of relationships while the rest of them had remained blind to the truth.

Regina is the Emma's normality.

That... And there seems to be some inexplicable sense of camaraderie that has been building between those two over the past couple of days.

Before the brunette took her leave.

Before the Queen deserted them.

"I know that, but what if it's what he wants?"

"Who?"

"Pan. What if he wants us to split up, because it's the easiest way to eliminate us?"

"I wouldn't fret, love. Pan gave you that map, didn't he? He still has a game to play, Emma... We're no fun to him dead..."

The pirate reasons from the shadows; lent against the stone face of a cliff as he winds a vine of ivy around the sharp curve of his hook.

The Sheriff frowns, but her father nods in agreement.

"Regina was pitting you against us, Emma, and she was fighting a losing battle. She'll be fine. Of all of us, she's best equipped to deal with Pan and his boys, and for now, we need to save Henry... We're not going to leave this island without her if we can help it, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

The blonde's frown deepens. She imagines David is sincere in what he says, or at least, he believes that he is, and that her parents- the fucking Charmings- are unlikely to leave a fallen man- or woman- behind. What concerns her is how little they know about their antagonist, and how ominous the landscape that surrounds them has become. She may find the Mayor to be a handful, but at least she knows what she's getting with Regina.

She hadn't wanted the Wraith to take the Queen.

And nor, now, does she wish for Regina to fall prey to any unforeseen dangers on this godforsaken island.

For one, she understands that enough has changed to mean that Henry would no more forgive her if she allowed such a thing to happen then he would have forgiven the brunette should she have failed to pull Mary Margaret and herself from the well.

For another... She's grown accustomed to having Regina around.

Snapping at her.

Dismissing her.

Aiding her.

"And what am I supposed to tell Henry if something bad happens?"

"It won't, Emma!"

Snow argues earnestly; her eyes flickering to the comfort of the tents lined up neatly by the dwindling fire.

"I can't risk that... For Henry's sake...Look, I'll be back in a bit; I'm going to take one last look around to see if I can find her."

Emma slips her sword into its sheath slung over her shoulder before the others can stop her and stalks towards the militant line of shrubbery that lines the clearing. Several adverse opinions are voiced from behind her, but she takes care not to address them or acknowledge their existence. She doesn't want to argue with her parents, and she doesn't want to engage Hook in the obscure... Whatever it is... That they have going on between them. She doesn't want a companion on her search, and not just because of the way her brain is wired to find such a feat of camaraderie and care undesirable... The others have made their thoughts on the long ago Queen quite clear, and she doesn't want to listen to them any longer.

Sure, with Regina accompanying us on this strange excursion it had been trying.

But it had been preferable to this.

Pushing aside a thick snare of leaves, she disappears into the heavy musk of the jungle with a silent prayer to any interested deity that her sense of direction will be adequate to lead her back to camp when the time comes.

Looping coarse vines around slender wrists and securing her ties, the disgraced fairy sits back and admires her handiwork.

She feels oddly smug, but along with the anger and cunning that have led her to momentarily overthrow the Evil Queen, she is also subject to another feeling...

Confusion.

Truth be told, it had shaken her to find herself back in the company of Regina after all that has come to pass, and she is wary now of just how to continue from the little tableaux she has instigated upon them.

When she'd learned of the brunette's presence on the island, she'd been understandably thrown, and her surprise had only heightened upon spying on her former friend and discovering that the darker woman hadn't been travelling alone, but rather as part of a group. This had struck her as entirely out of character; never knowing Regina to be one to play all too nicely with others.

True to form, the Queen's interactions with three of her companions had seemed brisk and snide; bordering frequently on contempt... But with the blonde?

Well... With the rather brutish blonde that accompanies the strange party of newcomers, Regina had seemed a little more tactful, occasionally even friendly. The two have murmured between themselves several times that the fairy has seen, and each has seemed reluctant to let the other fall prey to Pan's tricks, almost in a way that might suggest a sense of caring.

"No. Not caring... Not from you... I know your true heart, Regina, and there is no space for such a thing."

So who, then, is the oddly clad young woman to whom the Queen has shown several moments of kindness?

Her idle pondering is cut short as, all of a sudden, the tranquility that casts its hazy grace over the cave in which she resides is broken by the snap of a branch lying on the forest floor.