Distance.

I know you're probably asleep still. I just need you to tell me it’s okay. I miss you so much. im getting bad again. it hurts.

Regina woke to the bleep that her phone emitted through her room. She'd had Emma's text tone set as loud as possible for as long as she could remember - long before the two had begun dating - just in case Emma fell into another depressive episode and needed to talk.

She read the text and sprung out of bed before remembering that she couldn't just run to Emma's house because the blonde had been moved nearly four hundred miles away by her family for the year. Her father had been transferred for the year and where he went his family followed. She dropped heavily onto the edge of her bed and pulled her laptop to her. As she unlocked it she saw that it was barely nine in the morning, so much for her lie in. Not that she minded. The blonde with emerald eyes was so much more important to the brunette than sleep would ever be. She decided to ring Emma; there was barely enough signal for internet where Emma was and so skype was out of the question.

'Hey' Regina said, her voice still heavy with sleep.

'Gina.' Emma breathed out. Regina's heart clenched at the sound of Emma's voice. It sounded like she was mid sob. Or mid panic attack. Possibly both. Probably both. Normally Regina could tell immediately what state Emma was in but between the static crackle because of the low mobile reception Emma was getting and the fact that it had been so long since Emma had found herself in such a state, Regina couldn’t differentiate between the two. Over the nineteen months the two had been dating Regina had found that Emma was having less anxiety attacks and her depressive episodes werent nearly as frequent or severe. Emma had said that it was because Regina was her reason to get out of bed. Now it'd had been less than a month apart and Emma was crying down the phone. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know you didn’t go to sleep till late, im sorry for this, im so sor-'

'Hey, hey, hey, Em, darling, hey, it's okay, it's okay, you don't need to apologise, it's okay, what's going on?'

'It's just - I don't - I just and then-'

'Em' Regina interrupted the sobbing blonde once more. 'Deep breaths? Okay? Deep breaths. One and Two and Three and Four and...'

As Regina helped with Emma's breathing she loaded the internet browser and began searching for what she wanted.

'Are you able to talk now?' Regina said softly.

'Yeah, I think so, yeah. Thank you.' Emma almost whispered.

'No problem, so what's wrong?'

'It's just so much being here. Its day after day of being trapped in the same house with the same people with no new conversation and everything’s boiling over. It's been twenty-two days now. I hate it. I had a massive row with Neal. Over rice. Over fucking rice. I argued with my kid brother over a bag of rice. There's just so many little buggy situations and it’s all becoming too much 'Gi.'

'It'll be okay. You're going to stay on the phone with me until you're calm and then you're going to go and make yourself some coffee. And breakfast because I know you haven't eaten anything yet. And then - is it raining there?'

'No. Its cloudy though. Not raining yet.'

'Good. You're going to get your headphones and iPod and a book and go and sit on that bench outside your house or even the ground and you're going to read and listen to music for a few hours and if anyone talks to you, you just smile and be nice and just keep messaging and phoning me and it'll be okay and then you'll have lunch and keep reading and then-'

Regina looked at her laptop again, making sure that everything she was trying to do would work.

'And then you're going to join your mom and dad and brother for dinner out a-'

'I don't wanna go out.'

'Please Em, pretty please. You can use the internet at the pub to snapchat me?' Regina said hoping that the offer of decent internet would help sway the blonde.

'okay' Emma conceded.

'And please keep in contact with me, Em.'

'I will.'

The two sat in a comfortable silence for a long while, eventually Emma broke the silence.

'Gi?'

'Yeah em?'

'Thank you.'

'It's no problem.'

'I love you.'

'I love you, too, Emma.'

Emma smiled softly for the first time that morning.

'I'm going to hang up and make breakfast. I'll text you.'

'Sounds good. love you.'

'Love you too 'Gi' Emma said as she hung up.

Not even an hour later Regina found herself at the airport, checked in and waiting for her gate to be called for what should be a forty-five-minute flight. As Regina sat in the hard metal seats that claimed to be ergonomic but in reality were just S shaped torture mechanisms her phone bleeped and the photo that had been texted to her was a photo of Emma's view from the bench; there was an open book on the blonde’s lap, a mug of coffee and acres upon acres of green land that belonged to neighbors and family, the horizon only broken by the mountains in the distance that surrounded the area.

Looks perfect xx Regina sent back quickly.

Regina looked at the view in front of herself. There was an unopened book on her lap, a nearly empty paper cup that had been full with earl grey tea in one hand, her phone in the other and her hand luggage was next to her foot. As she drank the last of her tea she heard her flight being announced and headed towards the gate, swinging her rucksack onto her back as she did so.

She was nervous to fly - it was her first flight in nearly a decade and her first flight alone in her entire life. But it would be worth it. It was always going to be worth it.

Slightly more than an hour later the plane thumped to the ground at an airport a little more than a hundred miles from where Regina had taken off from, she rushed down to the exit having not brought a suitcase with her and rushed out to the shuttles where she was ushered onto one that would bring her to the coach she needed to get on.

She waited impatiently for her phone to pick up signal but after a few minutes it did and in came a few messages from Emma.

i can hear Neal looking for me :/ xxxxx

i dont wanna be found xxxx

im in a tree xxxx Attached to this text was the new view Emma was enjoying; she was parallel to the second floor of the house and her legs were crossed in front of her as if she was just lounging on the floor instead of twenty feet of the ground.

dad found me. i think he understands though. he brought me out some more coffee xx

are you okay? xxxx

have you gone awol? xxxxx

message me xxxxx

im good, sorry id gone out and my phone died, are you okay? xxx Regina replied, part of her regretting not telling Emma she would be out of contact for an hour, she knew how much Emma worried about her.

glad you’re good Gi. im ok. still not good but im ok. sorry for panicking about you.

Never be sorry for panicking about me, Em xxxxx

:) xx

Regina looked up from her phone after seeing she'd been on the shuttle for nearly an hour and saw it was turning into the coach station, she grabbed her rucksack and as soon as the shuttle was stationary she ran off and into the waiting coach that was to drive more than two hundred miles. She sat on one of the seats next to a plug socket and plugged her phone in, smiling whenever she got a message from Emma because at least it meant that Emma was stable enough to text. It was another hour before the coach was completely loaded, the brunette becoming increasingly impatient but knowing there was nothing she could do.

After three hours, the coach pulled up into the city center. Regina thanked the coach driver as she jumped down the coach stairs and onto the unfamiliar street.

'excuse me?' she said to an elderly woman who was walking down the street.

'yes dear?'

'do you know where I can find the bus that will bring me to the mines?' she said, knowing the stop she needed to get off the bus was three stops before the mines but she didn’t know where to get the bus from. Or what bus she actually needed. She knew that where to get off was obvious because Emma had text her the week before making an offhanded comment about how the bus route from the city was 'literally twenty minutes of nothing; a pub, forty minutes of nothing and then the village with the pink pub.' Regina was to get off the bus as close to the pink pub as she could get.

The elderly woman gave Regina directions to the bus stop 'but you'd better hurry if you’re in a rush dear, the next bus is in ten minutes and it’s a fifteen-minute walk.'

Regina nodded and thanked the elderly woman before taking off at a sprint down the two lefts and second right, reaching the bus stop mere seconds before the bus itself did. She realised that she didn’t have enough loose change in her wallet for a single fare and ended up buying a week pass. She sat down on a low seat of the rickety bus and counted her money; thankful that she'd remembered to exchange currencies in the first airport.

Don’t wanna to go to this meal out xx

Please go Em. For me? I want to skype you xx

Fiiiine, just cause I miss you xxx

Regina sighed in relief that Emma was going out for the meal.

Her phone went off forty minutes later;

is this okay? xx

Attached was a photo of Emma in a pair of skinny jeans, her doc martins and a satin button down shirt that Regina was certain used to belong to herself.

you look perfect. especially in my shirt ;) xx

;D xx

For the next few minutes Regina stared out of the window. She understood the appeal that the place the Nolan's had moved to held. Greenery, mountains, wild flowers, farm animals and dainty cottages were scattered everywhere - it was truly breathtaking. Eventually she saw the beginnings of a second village. It began with a garage and then a few yards later she saw the bright pink pub, sandwiched between a gift store and a convince store. Opposite was a B&B, a hotel, a few more pubs, a post office and, surprisingly, a branch of a fast-food chain. Regina pressed the button to stop the bus and jumped off at the nearest bus stop. It turns out that the nearest bus stop was at the very end of the village, next to the church, a river and a beautiful, quaint park that Regina mentally vowed to bring Emma to, even though she knew that Emma had probably already been to that park many times before.

The brunette began her trek back to the top of the village; her legs ached from her haphazard sprint in the town but she didn’t care. Emma and her family would be sitting down to eat dinner in less than an hour and she had to get to the pub before then to stop the Nolan-Swan Family from driving past and spotting the brunette. Regina had seen the pub had a hidden carpark behind it and the carpark led to the smoking area - this is where Emma usually skyped Regina from - inside the pub was usually too loud for calls and the blonde hated taking personal calls in front of her parents and brother anyway.

It took Regina thirty-five minutes to walk back up to the pub. After a careful, quick glance to make sure that Emma and her family weren't there yet, Regina darted inside. She ordered herself a lemonade and then walked out to smoking shelter, as she looked at it she realised that the shelter was incredibly distinctive and that as soon as Emma answered skype she would know where Regina was. It also dawned on the brunette that if Emma's family used the car park they would walk past her to get into the pub and so Regina set out on a walk to find a less conspicuous spot. She settled on the front of a black garage door a minutes’ walk away and then waited for Emma to skype her.

 After a while, though not as long as she had expected to wait, Regina's phone buzzed with the skype tone, she saw Emma's face made up of pixels on her phone screen.

'hey sunshine, how're you feeling?' Regina said as she began walking, making sure her face made up the majority of the screen so Emma couldn’t see where she was. 'I'm feeling better. Thank you for making me get out of my room this morning.’

‘I’ll always help you, no matter what.’

Emma smiled.

‘Where are you walking to?’ The blonde asked.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her back and jumped at the sensation, turning around to glare at whoever it was for interrupting her conversation with her girlfriend.

‘You’ the brunette whispered. She was instantly enveloped in a tight hug which she returned with gusto. Emma pulled away slightly after a moment or two, keeping their arms wrapped around each other but looking at each other’s faces. Emma was shaking from the shock that had washed over her when she’d seen the brunette as well as the tears that were steadily making their way down her face.

‘I missed you.’ Emma whispered just before she leant in and gave Regina a gentle kiss.

‘I missed you, too.’ Regina replied as she bought her hands up to Emma’s face and cupped it, wiping Emma’s tears away with her thumbs.