hunnyfresh - Letters from War

"Look at me, Regina." Emma couldn't help but turn her scarred cheek away and tuck her handless arm into her side. "I was the last thing you would have wanted in your life when they found me."

Regina took Emma's chin between her fingers and caught her eyes. "But you would have been in my life."

Emma shook her head. "No. You would have gotten an empty shell."

"I wouldn't have cared," Regina insisted. It was her turn to look away, dropping her hand from Emma's face and playing with a loose thread from her pillow. "Do you have—every single day I wanted you to come home and you were just in another state?"

"I wanted to. Believe me I did." Emma reclaimed Regina's hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, not willing to let go just yet. Regina could easily be one step away from kicking her out of her bed, out of her life, to let this miracle be just a fluke. Another desperate kiss to her wrist, a tongue to her forearm, and soon Emma was trailing her lips up Regina's neck and jaw until the sweet taste of the brunette's lips was on her tongue again. "I wasn't okay. I was—I wasn't good yet."

"You could have come here instead of you making a decision for me." Despite the hurt in her tone, Regina craned her neck to give Emma free reign over the tendons there, whimpering when she nipped at the spot between her neck and shoulder.

The younger woman pulled back far enough that Regina opened her eyes from the loss. Sadness and toil shrouded green eyes apologetically. "It was for me. For once I thought about myself and I needed to be okay with myself before I kept continuing on with my life." She closed the gap between them and instinctively reached out to grasp Regina around the forearm. "I couldn't let you deal with me when I couldn't deal with me."

When their foreheads pressed, Emma whispered so quietly it was as if she were revealing a state secret. In a way it was. The reason why she didn't return to Storybrooke the second she returned to the States, why she continued to torture herself. "I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Hurting you. Hurting Henry," she explained.

Regina's hands moved to tug Emma closer by the waist, but the blonde refrained from exhaling her relief at the source of comfort. This was too good to be true.

"When they found me, there were days where I would lay there, shaking, twitching, trapped. I could barely be in the same room with someone without flinching and if someone got too close, sometimes I'd react. Not in a good way."

"I want to be mad at you," Regina admitted.

"You can," Emma mumbled sheepishly.

"No need to be a martyr." Regina bristled with a scoff before stroking the smooth plane of Emma's stomach. It wasn't as defined as Regina remembered, but it drew her in just the same. "A part of me is upset. A big part of me wants to smack you."

"Yeah," the blonde muttered, gazing downward and focusing intently on the quilted design of the bed sheet. Here it comes. Any minute now.

"But I'm just too happy that you're home to really give a damn."

Emma's eyes snapped up to Regina's, a blush heating her cheeks and a smile quirking at the corner of her lips before she kissed the grin off the older woman's face.

"I want to hear it though." Regina pulled back slightly, her own hands coming up to hold Emma's face tightly between her palms. Green eyes fluttered when Regina caressed a thumb along the scar there, feeling every bump and groove of the sliced flesh from the corner of pink lips all the way to her right temple. There was wonder in Regina's gaze as her eyes tracked over her scar, every minuscule scratch or blemish as if comparing the woman standing before her to the one she had seen off in the middle of an airport years ago. Emma knew she wasn't that woman anymore, no matter how much she wished it so. But when Regina pecked her scar and then her lips, rubbing their noses together with such intimacy it made Emma want to cry again, wishing for the past seemed ludicrous. Emma wanted the future. With Regina. Their family. "I want to hear all of it. Whenever you're ready."

"Okay."

Chapter 26

Chapter Notes

Disclaimer in Chapter One.

AN: We're coming to the end of this emotional rollercoaster, but I've got an epilogue after this. Thank you for all your reviews, alerts, and favourites! You guys are seriously the best ever!

There were voices overhead. Emma couldn't make it out. She could barely open her eyes. She fought to pry her eyelids apart though it was a useless force since her surroundings were blurry. Bright. It was just all so bright. Voices again. Speaking. English? Arabic? Elvish?

Emma tried to move, but her whole body felt like it was filled with lead while an anchor sat atop of her chest as she sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Her ears were ringing. Her head was throbbing. The brightness dimmed at the edges until she let the darkness consume her once more.

Black blurs hovered overhead. Whispers. No . She flinched when they touched her. No .

"No," she groaned though the pained moan accompanied it masked her protest.

"Shhh." A voice. A woman's voice. Her eyes tried to track the sound, head whipping to and fro attempting to clear the blurs into something more clear.

Hands on her again. She flinched, whipping away successful this time when a clatter accompanied the quiet voices.

They were gonna hurt her again. Why couldn't they just let her die? Her arms flailed, her body numb and unfeeling, but hands kept her still as the same woman's voice calmed her movements. Wetness on her forehead. Sting in her hand.

"Shh," the voice repeated.

One blur became two, and whether Emma had just given up, resigned to remain paralyzed, or some instinct in her told her she was safe, she wasn't sure. She calmed. Her waving limbs shivered by her side, and the blonde was faintly aware she was on a soft surface. The blurs spoke to each other, and Emma squeezed her eyes shut willing them to come into focus.

"Emma." A voice, distinct, familiar, sounding like safety and comfort. "Emma."

Green eyes snapped open as the final remnants of Emma's dream got away from her. The time between the prison and Landstuhl had always been hazy. Months of her life a delirious and pain-induced blur she could never quite comprehend even through the numerous therapy sessions Emma had attended. There were always figures above her, touching her face, her arm, her leg. She admitted to Dr. Mitchell once that she could have sworn it was Regina and Henry, but her subconscious had been playing tricks on her for months before then.

She stared up at the ceiling she had never paid much attention to until what woke her had her snapping away. The warmth that had cocooned her in her sleep was gone as Regina was sitting up on the edge of the bed, her naked back tense as she hunched over with a rumpled bedsheet keeping her decency.

" Emma ," Regina hissed quietly. Emma sat up enough to see that she was on a phone and shaking. "It's Emma, Dr. Hopper. I think I might be hallucinating, but it's never been this real before. Please give me a call when you get this—"

Dipping the bed with her weight, Emma jarred Regina from her telephone conversation as she whipped her head back, eyes wide as if she was a child caught stealing cookies.

"I'll call you back." Regina ended the call and lowered the phone into her lap, moving slowly as if Emma were an injured animal. "Hey."

"Hi."

Emma swallowed thickly as she sat up in the bed, tugging the duvet up to her chest as if she and Regina hadn't spent the last couple hours discovering each other's body. She had held Regina as the older woman sobbed and laughed into her neck, and eventually Emma joined her because that moment, hell that day, had been too surreal not to border on absurd. It couldn't be real. It couldn't be this easy. Not that this road had been easy. Her mind was warring again and all Emma could think of was how they spent their final moments of exhausted energy curled around one another, kissing the grins and fears off the other's face.