Regina cocked an eyebrow. "What kind of different?"

"The kind of different that shows its difference to only certain people."

"Well," Regina began crossing her legs daintily, "that's what being a politician is."

"I didn't say it was bad. It's just, it's just really nice to put a face to the name."

"I admit, I imagined you more..."

"Butch?" Emma provided for her, smirking at Regina's blush. "If you imagined me doing chin ups for hours on end and spitting tobacco, then yeah, that's me, minus the tobacco."

"I guess we are all full of surprises." Regina toasted her glass to which Emma returned the gesture. Once she had settled her glass down, Regina looked intently at the young woman across from her, her voice softer than Emma had yet to hear. "How are you?"

Emma ran a hand through her hair and let out a dry laugh. "Good. Really, I'm- it's just good to be back."

Regina nodded, allowing the answer for the time being. "How long are you here for?"

"A month."

"That's all?" Regina asked baffled. "You've been gone for a year."

"Yeah," Emma let out another dry laugh. "Part of the job."

"Are you going back to Iraq?" Regina questioned, worry etched onto the lines of her face.

Emma shrugged. "I go where they tell me."

"And you're okay with that?"

Emma almost wanted to say she didn't have a choice, but she did, and at the end of the day, wearing the uniform, representing an entire country, meaning something, it was worth it. She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah I am."

Regina took a moment to soak in Emma's words before nodding almost imperceptibly.

"What?" Emma asked catching the action.

"Perhaps our first meeting may not have gone exactly as we imagined, but I was correct in one aspect."

"What's that?"

"I tell Henry about you, and I say you're away because you are very brave fighting dragons like the white knights in his books," Regina explained.

"I'm no knight," Emma shrugged bashfully.

"To him, you are. And you are quite brave."


Regina and Emma talked for the better part of an hour as if they were old friends catching each other up before the soft pattering of Henry's feet as he climbed down the stairs travelled down into the study. Regina had asked about Emma's plans for the month, and when the blonde was at a loss for words since in all technicality she had been kicked out of August's, Regina found herself offering to give Emma a tour of the town for the rest of the week before the party. Emma, after voicing her concerns about imposing her presence on the family, soon conceded and eventually, she found herself sitting in the living room after a ridiculously good home cooked dinner, Henry on the floor at her feet while Regina had left the room to take a business call.

Emma watched as Henry played with a horse and knights figurine set before she stood suddenly and walked to the entrance of the room where she had placed her rucksack earlier. She kneeled and carefully withdrew the letters and drawings she had accumulated, separating the drawings specifically before returning to Henry. "Do you want to see something?"

"Yeah!" Henry abandoned his toys and crawled into Emma's lap. She wrapped her arms around him as they sat cross-legged on the floor and held the drawings in front of them.

"Do you remember drawing me pictures?"

"Yeah!" Henry giggled pointing at his most recent one of himself, Regina, and a dog at the park. "That's Pongo."

"I have all your pictures that you gave me." Emma went through them, one-by-one, the boy disbelieving that he could ever draw something like a bunch of scribbles, but Emma insisted it was a rainbow tornado. When they got to the farm picture, Henry recounted a tale, to which Emma nodded and agreed enthusiastically about the facts, of how Henry caught a big fat pig and got to bring him home but his Mommy was "'llergic."

"Was I?" Regina chimed in from the hallway. Judging by her relaxed stance against the door frame, she had been standing there for a while.

"Yeah!" Henry agreed, leaping from Emma's lap and jumping up and down in his toddler excitement. "You like achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

Both women laughed at Henry's silliness before Regina finally shook her head and crouched to Henry's level. "It's time to say good night to Emma."

Henry ran to Emma who was just righting herself, colliding into her legs for a hug. "Night night, Emma. You come too?"

This time Emma received the puppy dog eyes in full force, and Emma pulled one of her own to Regina either to concede or to save her. Regina rolled her eyes playfully before agreeing to the former. "Very well."

Emma placed the drawings on the coffee table before lifting Henry into her arms and following Regina up the stairs and into the boy's room. The dark blue paint was soothing, and the glow in the dark stars and planets on the ceiling was a nice tough to the solar system that hung from the ceiling. No doubt it was Regina's attempt to encourage an interest of science in her son.

When Emma set Henry down, mother and son went through their nightly routine of getting him into his pyjamas and brushing his teeth. Emma lingered in the space between his room and the hallway before she found something in the room to be much more enticing. There were pictures all over his room from the walls to the dressers. The picture on his nightstand was one of Regina and Henry, and from the looks of the boy it was quite recent, as mother hugged her son from behind, Henry's arm reaching behind him to return the gesture. She continued her search, walking along the walls opposite the bed when her eyes became trained on a picture of Henry at his first birthday, clinging to his mother for dear life. Emma laughed when she remembered the clown incident, but the laugh was cut off when she saw a smaller frame that held just the sliver of a corner of paper. It was the drawing Emma attempted of Henry blowing out his candles. The butterflies in her stomach were back, but it wasn't from nerves or anxiety. It was a good fluttering. Like the butterflies were trapped for so long and seeing home for the first time type of fluttering. They moved from her stomach and pounded rapidly in her heart as a smile overwhelmed her face.

"Emma?" Regina called as she sat on Henry's bed.

Emma turned to see both brunettes waiting for her and hastily apologized before strutting over to the bed, stuffing her hands in her pocket at a loss for what to do. Henry flipped open a large book that boasted the title "Once Upon a Time" before he settled onto a story and looked expectantly at his mother and Emma.

Emma nodded her understanding and moved to the other side of the bed effectively sandwiching Henry in.

"Once upon a time in the Enchanted Forest, there lived a Queen and a Knight..."


"Sorry for keeping you up so late," Emma said as they lingered by the door after Henry had fallen asleep. "And for knocking into you this morning. And for inviting myself to your house."

Regina shook her head dismissing the apologies before she gasped suddenly. "Oh dear, I forgot about your car."

"It's cool, everything is in walking distance. The waitress at the diner said her grandma owned a B&B, so I'll just head over there."

"My, my, making friends already," Regina quipped.

"You know me, the orphaned soldier with a sunny disposition."

"Especially if you're able to get through to the hard-ass Mayor."

"There's an 'awesome' in there somewhere."

Regina laughed, a sound that Emma was going to imprint to the deepest corners of her mind when missions looked to be bleak.

"You can stay," Regina offered quietly. "I wouldn't want you getting lost in my town."

Emma found that she couldn't express her gratitude to Regina's generosity, something that had been shown to her time and time again, other than by nodding her head and removing her jacket, following the brunette back into her study.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

Disclaimer in Chapter One.

AN: Trigger warning for violence and warfare. In celebration of the 3B premiere tonight, a new update! I haven't gotten the chance to reply back to everyone's review from the previous chapter, but I am slowly but surely working on it. I hope you guys enjoy! HAPPY ONCE DAY!

Emma kept her eyes peeled as she sat in the passenger seat of the camouflaged jeep, a vehicle of similar design driving along ahead of them as the teams made their patrol around the surrounding land. Dust picked up under their tires as the sun blazed down on the open road, the sparse dried out shrubbery their only companions on the lonely road.

The radio crackled to life, and Emma picked it up in time to hear August's voice through the line. "It's quiet. Go another quarter mile then we'll head out. Over."

"Roger that, over." Emma replaced the device and glanced at Neal who looked like he wanted to snort in derision.

"It's always quiet," Emma filled in the man's thoughts.

"Are you gonna radio in and tell him to turn around now?"

Emma shook her head. "Let him have his fun, then you can go stare at your picture of Tamara."

Neal rolled his eyes but didn't deny her claim as he continued to follow the dirt road path.

Emma had become accustomed to a quiet patrol. Occasionally they would see civilians on the side of the road, some cursing their presence there with obscene gestures, but that had been the extent of their altercations. Her days were long, but when she was on patrol, she got back to camp not as drained as she usually would be and got to spend more time reading Regina's letters or writing her own. Regina had just come back from New York and had sent Emma a keychain with an engraved swan on it. The gesture made the blonde grin as she fingered her dog tag necklace where she had strung the keychain through. I saw it and thought of you, Regina had written. The blonde had a hard time suppressing her grin after that line.

"All right, guys," August's voice crackled through the speaker, "let's head-"

The line went dead as August's jeep careened off the road, glass and metal bits flying off as some faraway rocket hit the land just ten feet shy of the side of the jeep. The jeep rolled over once, twice, glass shattering with each roll before it settled down as a firing heap on its side.

"Shit!" Neal yelled, pulling their jeep into reverse and flooring it just as another rocket exploded where their car had once been.

Emma's face heated immediately from the heat and fire it created. She shielded her eyes and braced herself for another attack, staring wide eyed at the two craters in the earth that would have been their graves. After fifteen seconds of calm, Neal put the shift back into drive to race to the damaged jeep. Its left side doors were nearly blown off its hinges as they hung limply in the air. Emma could see the driver as he slumped over the steering wheel and leaning toward to the passenger seat, knocked unconscious. The only thing keeping him upright was his seatbelt, but the attack had made his side vulnerable. They had to get to them quickly.

Then the bullets sounded. Emma didn't have time to process before instinct took over. She turned swiftly in her seat, locking eyes with the men behind her. "Cover us."

They nodded, and as one, they slipped out of their jeep, raising their rifles and shooting in the direction of the hailing bullets. Emma caught enough in her periphery to see that the shrubbery opposite them was moving, no doubt camouflaging their attackers, and judging by the distance of the rockets, a few others were hidden in the mountains.

Metal clinking metal as bullets attempted to tear through the armour of the jeeps. The heat from the fire of the car in front of them. The groans of the wounded and the yells of the attackers. All of that faded when Emma spotted August, collapsed under the weight of the jeep's side.

"Man, down!" Emma yelled, barely processing the fact that she was narrowly avoiding a hail of bullets as she ran to August who had yet to move. It was only thanks to his position behind the burning vehicle that he was protected against the rain of bullets, but that did nothing but keep him paralyzed for his leg was trapped between the car's roof and the dusty dessert floor.

Staying low to the ground, she quickly checked his vitals and breathed out heavily when the pulse underneath her finger was faint. The gashes on his face were embedded with glass, and the angle of his body told Emma he must have been thrown from the car on impact. Jesus Christ there was so much blood. The man's eyes fluttered open just a fraction of an inch as he coughed, a red stream escaping his lips. It was then Emma truly took inventory of him and found that not only was his leg pinned under the roof, turned at an odd angle from the impact, but there was a dark red patch under his left rib that was growing by the minute. She felt around the wound gently and cursed under her breath when she felt the sharp point of a large shrapnel.