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“Regina?”
“Regina, I said I was sorry,”
“Regina, come on!”
Still, there was no answer.
She sighed. “Regina, please? I’m sorry about the tree. And the window. Really, really sorry,”
The door opened, just enough to reveal Regina’s face. “You are a terrible example for our children,” she said and, if Red had had a tail at that moment, it would’ve been dutifully tucked between her legs. “What if Adrianna had seen you? Or the twins? What would they think?”
She swallowed and offered the sorceress what she hoped was a charming smile. “That trees aren’t our friends?”
The door slammed and Red winced. “Regina? Regina, I’m sorry!”
“Please let me in,” she whined, “It’s cold out here!”
“Then put on your coat,”
Red huffed, crossing her arms. “You’re not funny!”
“Just one more thing we have in common,”
Red huffed again, turning her back to the house. And then, then she got an idea. A brilliant idea.
With a grin too wide to be anything less than victorious, away she went.
From her place inside, Regina watched as Red dashed down the walkway and disappeared from sight, her heart stuttering painfully in her chest. Logic told her it wasn’t forever, that she had simply tired of fighting and had chosen to retire to Granny’s, or perhaps even Miss Swan’s, for the night. But her chest ached with the sting of rejection and, as she settled onto the couch, she found herself blinking back tears.
It wasn’t too much later that a rapid beat on the door drew Regina from her rising misery and, with a snarl she didn’t quite feel, she wrenched the door open. “What do you-” she cut herself off, blinking at the sight before her.
Red, shivering slightly despite her natural resistance to the cold, stood before her with a small index card held up like a sacred offering. “Before you slam the door,” she began, “This is for you,” she said, handing it to her.
Turning it over in her hands, Regina frowned slightly at the index card that, it seemed, was covered in the cramped but still readable script of Storybrooke’s own Eugenia Lucas. It looked like a recipe…
Regina blinked, looking from the offering to Red and back again. “Is this…?”
Despite not having actually asked the question, Red nodded. “Granny’s top secret, award winning cherry pie recipe,” she said, “You don’t wanna know what I had to agree to to get it,” she admitted, grimacing slightly.
“You got this…for me?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, ducking her head, “I mean, I tried to wreck Christmas. Not on purpose, but, well, anyway, I did. I thought the least I could do was try and fix it. But, since you magicked the tree and the window and, ya know, locked me outside, I had to think of something outside the box. And the house,”
Regina felt her anger melt away at the look on the brunettes face. It hadn’t been planned, she knew, her decimation of their Christmas tree. And, really, since everything had been righted, what did it matter? It wasn’t as though she cared what the neighbors thought.
Stepping back, she pushed the door wide and gestured the were inside, “Come in before you catch your death,”
Red, beaming like Santa had come early, rushed inside before the raven haired woman could change her mind. “So…since the trees done and all…what’s next?”
“That depends, dear,” she said, “If you get a paper cut, do you promise not to throw the presents out the window?”
“Oh, har har. Very funny,”
Heading to the kitchen to put the recipe in a safe place, Regina offered the were a smile. “Well, dear, one of us has to be,”