Usually Regina took care when penning her letters to Emma. Her words were written and rewritten with the utmost clarity and precision as she strived to get in as much as she could about how they were doing and commenting on Emma's performance. Now, however, Regina reached blindly for whatever writing utensil she could get her hands on until her fingers found a pencil. She didn't even bother with the date or a "Dear Emma" of any sort. I'm sorry was the first thing she even thought to jot down as she leaned over her desk, scribbling and scratching out her words. I was frustrated––no, no excuses. It's not you––no, cliche.

I'm sorry, she wrote again. You are not a problem that needs to be dealt with. You are brave and kind and you mean so much to myself and Henry that it scares me to think of anything bad happening to you. I am so grateful that you are alive. I'm so sorry for snapping at you.

She did a threefold on the paper and placed it into an envelope then jogged quickly to her front door. As soon as she placed the letter into her mailbox her nerves numbed.

She waited.


"I can't deal with this."

Emma's breath hitched and she paused before staring at the phone. Swallowing hard, she pressed it back to her ear only to growl at the static emanating from it and pressed end on the satellite phone, slamming the device down on the table with more ferocity than needed. She was lucky the two other soldiers waiting outside the tent had given her some privacy to speak in the makeshift living room since she stood swiftly, kicked the back of an old ratty plaid couch stationed in front of a box set TV and pushed passed the flap of the tent. The two soldiers parted like the Red Sea as she stormed passed, both seeing her fists clenched and her shoulders tensed before deeming the room safe to enter.

Emma was pissed, and she was pissed for being pissed, and god fucking dammit! She kicked at the dirt and flew up a dust cloud. Who the hell gave Regina the right to be mad at her? And for what? She didn't kill anyone she wasn't supposed to kill.

Bile rose to her throat as the lifeless eyes of that mother and child she had fought so desperately to save stared back at her as allies were moving her from under the pile of rubble the following morning.

She was alive, god dammit. She did good. She did good.

"Swan!" An arm came around her neck as Kennedy swooped in from behind and placed her in a headlock. "Looking better, sweetheart."

Emma grunted against his stomach where he had her pinned and pushed hard against his waist, freeing herself and toppling him to the ground. "Fuck off."

His slack-jawed expression would have been funny if Emma hadn't been in such a foul mood. She stepped over him and made a beeline to her tent.

"The fuck, Swan?" Kennedy picked himself up and continued to follow her. "That's how you're gonna treat the guy who saved your ass?"

Emma turned suddenly, very well remembering the tip of a gun pointed between her eyes before it simply fell to the ground when a bullet had found its mark.

"Yeah," Kennedy said smug as he took a step closer, his expression dark. "Push me down again and next time I won't be so generous."

He marched away, leaving behind a flustered and tempered Emma. She bit her tongue, forcing herself not to go after him just to take out her frustrations on his annoying, good-for-nothing face, but getting written up wasn't on her agenda today, so with much effort, she turned back toward her tent finding the five cots in it empty except for Neal, sitting on the middle one, the American flag pinned proudly behind him on the tarp, his jacket and shirt off as he gingerly touched a patch of gauze covering nearly his entire left side of his neck.

Emma paused at the entrance, surprised he had been let out of the infirmary. Honestly, her squad was sure he was going to be sent to Germany because of how badly his burns had been–but then again there were people with fresh eye patches and scars so deeply engraved on their face it could have been a tattoo and they were still walking among them. His left arm was still blistered, but apparently the pus and blood had dried out leaving his arm in rolling waves of excess skin. It started at his shoulder and ran down his bicep where it crumpled at his forearm before finishing off at the back of his palm. Medals of honour were what soldiers aspired to get once they got out of army, but these medals that marked their bodies, both seen and invisible, weighed heavier than any amount of gold pinned to their breast.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stare?" Neal teased with a smirk behind his ever growing goatee.

She had momentarily forgotten about her anger until Neal snapped her back to attention. "My mother left me on the side of a highway when I was born."

His smile dropped as he glanced to the ground shamefully. "Sorry," he muttered before clearing his throat and attempting a salvageable reprise. "What's up? Bestie problems?" He teased with a boyish grin.

Emma sat on the cot in front of him, her eyes shut and her hand in the air as she struggled to form words. "Can you just, shut up?"

His eyebrows disappeared to his hairline. "Where did that come from?"

"It's just none of your business, okay?" She snapped and lay down on her cot, putting the pillow over her face. "I'm getting some sleep. Don't wake me."

She stewed under her pillow, and though she squeezed her eyes tightly to block out the world, Regina's words kept replaying in her ear.

I can't deal with this.



How many times had Emma heard that? Not being able to deal with a three-year old because a new biological baby came along. Not believing a child that their husband was a perverted freak because the reality of the situation was too overwhelming. Not accepting the fact that Emma liked girls.

Emma had always been the problem child, and whenever those problems became too much, the solution was simple: pawn her off to another family, put her in jail, send her to fucking Iraq.

She felt hot tears sting her eyes from the unbidden emotion swirling inside her like a contained tornado, and she fought to push them down because she should have been used to it by now. But the ache in her heart throbbed harder than the past twenty years combined, and though Emma didn't want to admit it, she hated that it hurt this much for the sole reason it had come from Regina.

Wiping her face on the scratchy underside of the pillowcase, she evened her breathing and pushed away her thoughts. Now wasn't a time to be seething, but apparently it was a time to be annoyed since she felt Neal shift from his cot across from her to the one beside her. He just waited. She could feel his eyes on her, and that made her all the more pissed off because the stupid guy with his stupid perfect life couldn't take a goddamn hint.

Finally his presence grew to be too much, and she whipped off her pillow and glared. "What?"

"You look like you could use a talk," he offered lightly with a shrug of his hands.

"Then you're really bad at body language."

"Ems," he pleaded.

"My name isn't Ems," she snapped, chucking the pillow at him and sitting up. "I'm not 'man' or 'bro' or 'chick.' Just 'cause August isn't here anymore doesn't mean you have to take me under your wing like some little sister you never had. I've been alone my entire life and I can take care of myself."

He put aside the pillow and cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong!" She yelled extending her arms out to make her point. "It's fucking peachy."

"Hey, look, it sounds like you got a little cabin fever going on."

"Stop trying to pretend like you know what's best for me, Neal. You couldn't even tell your wife that you got hurt."

His eyes darkened and he shook his head, a forewarning to the blonde to stop, but with the mood she was in, she was itching for a fight from any and everyone. "I pick my battles."

"You're scared," she stated simply with a defiant chin. "You're scared she's gonna realize, just like you do, that your life here doesn't mean shit, and when you go home all your battle wounds that you killed to get are gonna chase her away."

Neal scoffed and stood, tossing the pillow back onto her stomach. "I know what I'm scared of, but don't try to push your insecurities onto me."

He turned to enter the aisle of cots when Emma stood.

"My insecurities?" She questioned with a dry laugh.

He turned abruptly and poked a finger into her chest. "Yes. Your insecurities. How you're so freaking terrified of being outed that you can't even function right."

"Have you ever been fucked straight?" Her words sobered him, but she continued with a pitying laugh at his silence. "Thought so. Because that is a hard reality for me, and it's not like I can escape it here. And what do I have left when I go home? I don't even have a fucking home. I'm just a nobody there and I'm a nobody with a gun over here."

Neal squinted as Emma pushed passed him, holding down the wince when she brushed a little too hard against his left side. All the emotion Emma kept bottled up over the past hour, even the past few months, hell, probably all her life came pouring out as she passed the aisle between the cots, tugging the severe bun she wore loose as she clutched at her scalp.

"When you're a girl in a boys' club, everyone automatically looks at you funny, but god forbid you're gay too because you're just making that target on your back even bigger, and it's not like I can just whip out a picture of Regina and tell everyone that she chose me out of all these big, macho men who constantly play the my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours game because no, I'm a jarhead, so I freak her out and scare her, and I don't ever fucking win." She paused her pacing to look squarely upon Neal, a mixture of resentment and confusion fighting for dominance over her facial features. "But you, you get the wife and the kid and when you go home Tamara's gonna kiss your burns away and you're gonna be a happy family and all the generals love you because you're still fighting here even when you should have gone home."