Chapter Text
Hope’s eyes have shifted to brown overnight, a deep, familiar brown that leaves a lump in Regina’s throat. Or maybe it’s there because of the way that Emma breezes into her office the morning after the coronation with her eyes bright as though she’s never been happier. “Good morning, Your Majesty-est,” she says cheerfully. Regina quirks an eyebrow, doing her best not to glance down at the stroller in front of Emma. “Your Excellency?” Emma tries. “Queen of the Universe?”
“Madam Mayor,” Regina says archly, and Emma grins, sliding the stroller over to the desk and plopping down on one of the chairs.
“My very favorite version of Regina Mills,” she says, and she leans over to brush a loose lock of hair out of Regina’s face. Regina bats her away, her heart beating too quickly. It’s just a touch. This is them , and this is normal.
The baby is fussing, and Regina can feel it tug at something instinctive within her. She rounds the desk, relieved at the opportunity to avoid eye contact with Emma, and lifts Hope into her arms.
Hope calms at once, gurgling sleepily, and Regina rocks her and notices for the first time that her eyes are brown now. “I thought they’d stay blue,” she comments.
Emma shrugs. “I guess there’s someone far enough back in my family with brown eyes. It’s dominant.” But she’s watching Regina as she says it, a wistful look in her eyes. “In the memories you gave me, Henry’s turned green after almost a year. I didn’t even notice at first.”
Regina looks up, startled, and Hope fusses for a moment until her eyes drift shut again. “You still remember those memories?”
“They were the greatest gift anyone’s ever given me,” Emma murmurs, and the mood shifts, becomes too heavy instead of the breezy they’ve been trying hard at. She watches Regina with warm eyes that mean too much, and Regina clears her throat and looks down at Hope again.
“Not this little girl?”
Emma snorts. “Are you kidding? Ten months straight of hormones and waddling and– you know, they say that morning sickness ends after the first semester, but it’s a lie – not to mention that hellish night where I spent four hours in labor alone because Killian was battling some random pirate from his past who’d shown up in Storybrooke.” She makes a face, which isn’t enough to assuage the burn that comes from hearing Emma talking about her husband.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Regina says, and she means it. She’s heard enough about the drama that had come with Hope’s birth to last a lifetime, and there’s a petty part of her that’s always going to be smug that Hook had missed the birth of his daughter. But she had never intended for Emma to be alone .
Emma’s face is solemn, her eyes seeking out Regina’s and holding them. “You were looking out for our son,” she says, an easy forgiveness before a murmured confession. “But I wish you’d been there, too. I missed you these past months.”
It would have been hell to witness, and had been a considerable part of why Regina had left in the first place. Emma can’t know that, though, and there is nothing but simple longing in her voice. “I missed you, too,” Regina whispers.
It’s been longer than months for her. It’s been eleven years of standing still as Henry had grown and raised his own daughter and they’d fought new enemies together, and eleven years of Emma the brightest star in the night sky of her memories. She’d come home and Emma had been sequestered in her house with a newborn, and Regina had kept herself from visiting and sent fond messages through Snow instead.
She hadn’t been ready. Emma hadn’t come to see her in the weeks that had followed; and she can blame it on Hope, but Regina wonders if Emma might know deep down and had been sparing her. It hadn’t been until yesterday that she’d seen Emma for the first time.
And now Emma is back in her office as though nothing has changed, baby in tow. “And you were across the country all this time with a bar and Def Leppard tattoos ,” Emma says, smirking.
Regina’s head jerks up in outrage. “Who told you about the tattoo?” she demands, horrified. “I’m going to kill Zelena.”
Emma scoffs. “Of course Zelena knew,” she mutters, mostly to herself, and then brightens again. “You’ll have to kill our older son,” she says, and she stands, moving a little too close to Regina. Regina steps back, balancing Hope against her. “Where is it? On your arm?” She lifts Regina’s arm, examining it until Regina yanks it away. “Your back,” she guesses, her fingers grazing the small of Regina’s back. “No, right under your collarbone–”
Regina ducks away before Emma can touch her chest, and Emma’s hand lands on her shoulder instead. “It’s gone ,” she says huffily, turning to ease Hope back into her stroller before her stiff hands wake the baby. “I was cursed.”
“That’s what they all say,” Emma says, smug, her hand still loose on Regina’s shoulder. When Regina looks up, Emma is still gazing at her, the playfulness gone. “I really did miss you,” she whispers. “You’re my best friend, you know?”
“I know,” Regina murmurs back. It’s what they’ve been for a long time, and Regina has never wanted to disrupt that. It’s been complicated and an arduous journey to this place, and Regina has had precious few things in her life that have lasted to toss this one away because of…
…Because of Emma’s hand, squeezing her shoulder, her brow furrowing. “You’re so tense,” she says absently, her other hand moving to Regina’s other shoulder and massaging it. Regina feels a bolt of heat to her core, an electricity that leaves her skin charged. “All the stress of protecting all the realms, huh?”
“Emma,” Regina says in a strained voice, and it takes a moment before Emma stops rubbing her shoulders, looking down at her with very familiar glazed eyes. “Please remember what happened the last time you tried giving me a massage.”
The reminder hits Emma like a bolt of lightning, and she stumbles back, eyes wide. “Shit,” she says.
“No language in front of the baby,” Regina reprimands shakily.
“ Shit ,” Emma repeats, staring at Regina, wide-eyed. “I didn’t mean to– god, Regina. I wasn’t trying to–” She twists around, clenching her fists. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she says, her own shoulders dropping in defeat, and it stings where it shouldn’t. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was–”
Regina nods, planting a hand on her desk for some balance. “I know,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. Her heart is twisting, and she’s reminded acutely of why she’d left in the first place. “You have a baby now, Emma.” She infuses that with all the emotion she can, all the sincerity and all of the hopelessness that comes with it. “With a terrible name,” she adds, partially to lighten the tension and partially because it is .
Emma smiles, her eyes hollow but her tone light. “Whenever you lecture her, we can call it a Hope speech,” she says, and it’s truly terrible, it is, but Regina is near tears already.
“Emma,” she says, a shuddering laugh escaping her lips, and Emma surges forward and burrows in her arms, squeezing her eyes shut. Regina holds her, feels her trembling and kisses the top of her head, and this was a mistake. Trying to go back to who they’d been had been a mistake. There had been no going back before Regina had run off to another realm, and now…
She blinks away any stray tears that might have escaped and lets Emma go. “Go home to your husband,” she whispers, and Emma’s jaw tightens. She looks younger, suddenly, stubborn and lost. “We’ll figure this out. We just need time.”
Hope cries out in her sleep, and Regina strokes her cheek, searching her face for some remnant of Hook. She can’t find him in this little girl, can’t find any reason to resent a baby for being , and she sees only Henry within her. Hope quiets again, and Emma watches her with wet eyes as Regina pushes the carriage to her.
She backs out of the room, her eyes anguished and all breeziness forgotten.
There had been a time between the marriage and the road trip when everything had been fine. Henry had been growing up and they’d been parenting him ably, Emma had lived in a house across the neighborhood but she’d still been at Regina’s house nearly every day. There had been a lot of squabbles between the newlyweds as the years had gone on, and Regina had borne them with self-control, had listened to Emma rant and demurred when Emma had given her a knowing look and said I know you don’t think any of this is worth it.
Emma had been in love– if not with Hook, then with picture-perfect happy endings. Regina hadn’t begrudged her for it. Regina had been content in Storybrooke, if not perfectly so, and she’d only wanted to do right by the growing number of people she’d loved. She hadn’t lied to Emma, but she hadn’t quite encouraged her to work through her marital disputes as enthusiastically as she should have.
They’d made plans together for a graduation trip for Henry, and Regina had been resigned to the fact that Hook would be accompanying them, only to be pleasantly surprised when it had just been Emma. This is for us, Emma had said adamantly. Swan-Mills family road trip. Regina’s heart had felt like it might burst just at Swan-Mills family , and she’d felt a little more contentment than before.
It had all fallen apart a week into the trip, somewhere deep within a segment of New Hampshire national park that has boasted some unusual local legends. They’d had a long day hiking through it, laughing at the idea of an enchanted forest in the Land Without Magic and taking trails that had been rocky and rough. They’d all been exhausted at the end, and they’d barely made it to the edge of the forest, hungry and tired and with the slightest magic tickling at Regina’s senses. An irritable Henry had passed out on his bed before they could pick a restaurant, and she and Emma had picked up food together and then headed to the motel room they’d been sharing.
She still remembers every moment of it acutely. Regina had been sitting on Emma’s bed to pull off her stockings, and Emma had rubbed her shoulders, griping in solidarity at their son’s mood swings. You get so stressed when he’s cranky , she’d said, her hands sending little shockwaves through Regina’s body when they’re meant to relax her. It’s not healthy for either of you .
What would I do without you? Regina had murmured, and she’d twisted and– she replays it over and over in her mind, and she still can’t piece together which of them had initiated the kiss. It had happened so quickly, the massage and the kissing and then suddenly Emma’s hand creeping up her bare legs, Regina writhing, both of them lost in each other. They’d laughed and panicked and lost themselves in each other breathlessly, kissed enough to make up for years without kisses, and they’d fallen asleep together wrapped in each other, fully spent.
It had ruined Regina’s life in a single night. And there had been no choice , no other option, because Emma is married and it means something to her. Regina won’t be the one to stand in the way of Emma’s happiness, and that means that Emma can never know what that night had meant to Regina. They had laughed it off shakily in the morning, had promised each other that it had been nothing, had managed one lingering, scorching kiss in the morning before they’d left that motel room and ventured back into reality.
And everything had changed regardless. They’d made an extra effort to keep things normal , to be best friends in defiance of what had happened between them, and Emma had succeeded, of course. She’d had Hook, and she’d settled right back into her role as happy homemaker as soon as they’d returned home. She’d still come by for drinks and visit at lunchtime and they’d studiously avoided discussing the tension between them, because Emma is happy .
Regina hadn’t been so fortunate, had never been, not after what’s been seven years of being quietly in love. She’d always been careful, had never let her feelings consume her, but then Emma had turned down her cider one night and sat there guiltily on the couch with her fingers twisting together over her stomach, and Regina had known.
The marriage hadn’t changed anything between them because Regina had always seen it as temporary, she knows. Marriage is dissolved with only a paper and a few words. A child is eternal , is something that binds two people together beyond any silly vows or ceremonies. Regina knows that intimately, knows what it means to share a child with Emma Swan. A child changes everything.
I’m sorry , Emma had whispered, and Regina had said, You have nothing to apologize for , though they both had known that she had. The math had been easy to do on the spot, and the timing had been precise. Emma had gone right from their road trip to conceiving a child with Hook, and Regina hadn’t been able to pretend that she’d been all right anymore.
She wonders what it had been that Henry had seen on her face to push her to join him in a different realm. Maybe it had only been how desperately she’d wanted to escape Emma Swan.
Eleven years hadn’t been long enough.
The house is dark when she comes home that night, and she’s startled when she sees a movement in the living room. “Show yourself,” she snaps out, calling a fireball, and it illuminates Ry’s face. Ry , Henry for short and for simplicity. He’d chosen the name. He’s a Henry from another realm whom she’d brought home to Emma months ago, who’s still adapting to this world and had called her Mom yesterday.
“Sorry,” he says. “I came in through the back door.” He glances at her fireball, fidgety, and she extinguishes it and flips the light on. “Is it okay if I stay here tonight?”
He hasn’t asked that before. He stays with Emma most of the time, she knows, and he visits her only for brief periods of time. Too many years conditioned to hate her have taken their toll, and she’s prepared for baby steps.
But he sits today on her couch, a surly teenager with so much repressed that she’d never dealt with with Henry, and she sits next to him carefully, folding her hands onto her lap. “Is everything all right between you and Emma?”
He shrugs. “It’s fine.” Another moment of silence, in which Regina waits as patiently as she can manage, and then he says abruptly, “She went to see you today.”
“She did. We were very close for a long time,” Regina says delicately. “I know it wasn’t like that in your realm–”
“She locked herself in her room when she got home,” Ry says, and his eyes are challenging, on a precipice. “Just her and the baby. What did you say to her?” he demands. There are times when she’s sure that this is it , that he’s going to storm out and return to Emma and never look back at her. There are times when she doesn’t understand why he’d want to be around her at all.
But today, he sounds like raw energy desperate to be calmed, and she takes a slow breath and touches her hand to his. He isn’t quite like the Henry she’s raised, but he’s still Henry , and she feels it each time that they talk. “It’s complicated,” she says, and her voice cracks.
Ry looks at her in alarm, the hostility fading into chagrin. “Mom,” he says worriedly, and it’s the second time he’s called her that but it still leaves her breathless. “Mom, what’s wrong with you two?”
Regina leans back against the couch, resting her head on the cushion and staring up at the ceiling. Ry’s hand touches her shoulder, tentative and not quite comfortable, and she says, “How is Hook with Hope?”
She’s tormenting herself. It’s been many years of redemption and a damned coronation as an elected queen, and she still feels the need to make herself suffer. There is no other discernible reason why she’d ask–
“He’s okay, I guess.” Ry shrugs. “He doesn’t really know what to do with a baby, but he plays with her sometimes. Mom takes care of Hope.” He says it definitively, as though he’d never imagined anything different, and Regina aches and doesn’t know why. “He’s always talking about how he’s going to take her out sailing when the weather is nice. Which is stupid. She’s a baby.” He sounds cranky about it, and Regina sits up to watch him for a moment, finding all the tells that she’d learned so well from the other Henry.
She chooses her words carefully. “If you were worried about Emma, why would you come here tonight? Why not stay with her?”
Ry shrugs sullenly, caught in whatever he’s hiding, and he mumbles, “I just didn’t want to be there with just him.”
She can feel suspicion rising within her, and she studies his face with sudden concern. “Ry, is Hook…is he making you uncomfortable, or saying anything he shouldn’t be–?”
“No,” Ry says quickly, and he bites his lip. “Not really. He’s just…I don’t think he really sees the point of me now that he’s already married to my mother.” Regina lets out a strangled sound and Ry scowls at the floor. “He says things like…he doesn’t even see me as real.”
“Ry,” Regina says, the guilt overwhelming. She’d brought him home to this timeline just before she’d known her past self would be leaving with the other Henry, and she’d entrusted him with Emma and her husband. She hadn’t thought that he’d be unhappy with them. “Of course you’re real. You might be from another realm, but that doesn’t make you any less real than…than Lucy, or Alice, or anyone who’s come to this land from somewhere else. And you’re still Emma’s son,” she says firmly. Emma would be aghast if she knew about this. Wouldn’t she? “You’re still my son. We found you and we chose you.”
Ry stares up at her, his jaw clenched and his chin wavering, and she’s ready for him when he lunges into her arms, burying his face in her shoulder. For all the tension that suffuses them when they’re together, they’re connected now, as much as they might have been in another lifetime. “He isn’t good enough for her,” Ry mumbles into her shoulder.
His mother had been a princess, and she might not put any stock into that in this realm, but Regina knows as well as Ry does that he’s right. “I know,” she murmurs, and she thinks they have a child together like a sick reminder that they’re always going to be connected. “But Emma has never done very well with being told what to do or who to love.”
Ry sighs, and they settle into silence, fraught with uncertain discontent.
She isn’t planning on approaching Emma after their last failed attempt at friendliness. She isn’t . But there are documents on her desk that need to go to the sheriff here if she wants to take care of a conflict that’s risen between two of the realms, and she expects to meet Hook at the station, not Emma.
A foul alternative, but a safer one. Her heart twists when she walks into the station and Emma looks up at her with soft eyes. “Regina,” she murmurs. Ry is in a chair on the opposite side of the room, Hope cradled in his lap as he squints at one of the textbooks that Regina had gotten for him from the high school.
“Mom,” he says, his eyes flickering from Emma back to Regina for a curious moment. The odd look is gone as quickly as it had come. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, and there’s a familiar jutting out of his lower lip in a pout. “Everyone in this town just had an education cursed into their brains. I don’t see why I have to–“
“ Study , kid,” Emma says, tossing a crumpled piece of paper at Henry.
He bats it away without a second thought. “I know everything about running a kingdom,” he says sulkily.
“And nothing about basic science,” Regina interjects, frowning severely at him. “Listen to your mother.”
He slumps in his chair, pouting at both of them. Regina mutters, “At least one of our children is going to college.”
Emma snorts. “We may need to have another, then.”
Regina looks at her askance. Emma looks down at her desk, a flush spreading high on her cheekbones. Regina swallows. “Not if you pick the name,” she says instead, smirking at Emma, who looks very offended.
“What’s wrong with Hope? It’s inspirational.” Regina just stares at her, an eyebrow arched. “I wanted Reina,” Emma says dryly, and that’s a twist. “For some reason, that made Killian very cranky. So we settled on Hope.”
“Sweet,” Regina says, her voice too hostile to be playful. Ry is looking between them again, brow furrowed, and she forces her tone into something lighter. “Let me guess. Your mother put it on the list.”
Emma rolls her eyes. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of you will be insufferable for the next ten decades.”
The tension fades and Regina grins smugly. “I would have expected her to pick Milah.” Emma gives her a pained look, but there’s relief beneath it. This is a safe conversation, playful jabs and light responses. Nothing simmering beneath the surface today will emerge.
“Oh, gross !” Ry says suddenly, lifting up the baby in dismay. There’s a little puddle of spit-up on his jacket, dripping down his knee, and Emma groans in solidarity and tosses him a burp cloth. “Mom,” Ry says pleadingly, and Regina sighs and scoops up the baby.
“Hello,” she whispers, and it’s hard to resent this baby when she looks so much like Henry, her skin a shade darker and her eyes brown but the same features to her face. Hope looks up at her as Regina smiles tentatively, and the baby’s face splits into a toothless smile.
“Oh, you smile, do you?” she murmurs, stroking the baby’s cheek. She can feel that instinctive tugging at her again, and she lifts the baby, cradling her in her arms and pressing a kiss to her brow. Hope is smiling again when she looks back at her, and Regina can feel a lump in her throat, an overwhelming emotion that she can’t deny.
Emma touches her shoulder unexpectedly and Regina startles, jostling the baby. Hope fusses and Regina moves to pass her to her mother but can’t , not yet, not when she can hold Hope against her and rock her as she hums gently. “You’re so good with her,” Emma whispers, and Regina turns to look at her.
They’re standing too close, the space between them fraught and tender, and Regina clutches Hope and meets Emma’s eyes. Emma is smiling tentatively, her eyes so warm with emotion that they were never supposed to express, and Regina can only gaze back with equal intensity. “She’s a good baby,” she says.
Emma laughs, just a breath against Regina’s cheek. “She never stops fussing,” she says. “This is your…gift with my family. The whole Charming clan loves you.” She lays a hand over Hope’s back, the tips of her fingers brushing against Regina’s hand. Regina shivers.
“That’s my curse, you mean,” Regina manages. She can feel a deep warmth blooming in her body, a wanting that she’s never managed to fully quell. Emma spends so much time shifting between superficial wants and needs that it’s intoxicating when she peels them away and leaves raw, deep-seated affection in their place. “I suppose I’ll have to live with…with capturing the heart of another of Snow’s spawn.”
Emma laughs again. “I suppose ,” she says, and she wraps an arm around Regina, pulling her close and leaning against her shoulder. “I knew I picked the right godmother.”
“Godmother?” Regina says, distracted. “You didn’t say.” It might have been cruel, perhaps, if she’d been around when the baby had been born. Instead, she’s left with the disquieting knowledge that Emma hadn’t forgotten her the moment that she’d left or moved on, had instead…
Godmother , she thinks ruefully, and strokes Hope’s back. Emma says, “Of course.”
From his chair, Ry is watching them, his brow creased and his eyes inquisitive. Regina straightens, and Emma shifts off her shoulder, but her hand remains with Regina’s on Hope’s back.