"I'm here," Regina repeated, kissing her way up Emma's sweat-slicked body.

Tears prickled at Emma's eyes, but she didn't care to wipe them away for as soon as Regina was levelled with her. She caught smudged red lips with her own, tears freely streaming down her face. It wasn't until they pulled back moments later did Emma realize that Regina's cheeks were just as damp, not from Emma, but from her own happiness as her eyes shifted wildly over Emma's face, still not sure the blonde was really in front of her.

Emma kissed her softly, tugging brown locks to the side of Regina's neck in a fist to hold her tightly as she whispered against her lips. "I'm not going anywhere."

Regina released a breathy sob. It became more than just a whimper as the brunette shook with tears, burying her face in Emma's neck and holding her just as fiercely. Their fingers found one another, lacing through the spaces until they connected instinctively, their hands squeezing in reassurance to remind the other that they were there. Together. Finally.

Emma held Regina for long minutes, their heated bodies cooling as they lay naked on top of the rumpled blankets and scattered pillows. Once intimate desire was taken care of for the time being, it gave way to more rational thought as Emma stroked up and down Regina's back, her arms tight and sure around her as she cried.

She had done this. She had made the strongest woman she ever knew choke with sobs so fierce they wracked her body. She had no choice, Emma reminded herself. If Emma hadn't have taken care of herself, the baggage she carried would have driven a wedge between them or worse. She shut her eyes. There were always choices. Maybe she really did make the wrong one.

"I'm sorry," the blonde whispered genuinely into Regina's ear as she pressed kisses along Regina's temple and hummed the one song that kept her sane as she rocked her.

Regina continued to cry, and the tear tracks staining Emma's face minutes earlier moistened again with fresh regret. Then suddenly the cries against her neck weren't a watery, mournful sob. Regina's shoulders continued to shake and Emma pulled back to see the brunette smiling, laughing like some mad woman. Cheeks were red and wet and brown eyes were red-rimmed, and god did she ever look gorgeous.

"I'm sorry." It was all Emma could think to provide, but that seemed to make the older woman laugh even harder.

"Sorry?" Regina repeated as she wiped at her eyes. With a quickness Emma hadn't anticipated, Regina clutched Emma's neck and brought their lips together in a kiss that should have been hard, but the intimacy and pure devotion pressed into it made it soft, tender, right. "You're home," she whispered. "Don't apologize for that."

They lay against one another, shimmying under the blankets to escape the chill yet refusing to have their bodies part. On their sides, they faced one another, legs tangled under the duvet and their faces a hair's breadth apart. Emma ran a toe up a smooth calf, grinning when Regina's concentration faltered as she played with the harness of the prosthetic. Silence came over them, but neither found the words to say what they were feeling. When Regina fingered the spot where the attachment met her flesh, Emma's eyes flashed worriedly before examining brown eyes to see nothing more than curiosity, wonder, and sadness. No judgment. No pity. Love at its finest. Wordlessly, Emma leaned up on her forearm and removed the harness and fiddled with the base until her hand was off, leaving the stump of her arm crooked just at the elbow.

Emma wondered if the move may have been too much as she deposited the prosthetic on the bedside table, but as soon as she settled down, Regina's hand hovered over her right arm. Painted nails raked up and down her bicep, tickling her shoulder all the way down to the bend of her elbow where it curved over. Most days Emma could still feel phantom pain in the hand that wasn't there, but right now, she could have sworn she felt Regina's thumb rubbing circles across her knuckles. Tingles shot through Emma's spine at the sensation as Regina repeated the motion up and down.

"Why didn't you call?" Regina asked in a dejected whisper, her free hand playing with a strand of yellow hair.

"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.