Archive of Our Own

okay, so i’m the dragon. big deal.

you still get to be the hero.

richard siken, “litany in which certain things are crossed out”

i. friday

The thing she’s most aware of when she wakes is that there is a kink in her neck from where she’d apparently—accidentally—fallen asleep in an awkward position last night. She notices next that Emma is still asleep, curled up in the fetal position and covered by a throw blanket at the other end of the sofa. Hope is sleeping between them, her little legs thrown over Regina’s lap, and she resembles Emma so much like this, both of their faces relaxed into similar expressions.

The early morning sunlight is creeping in through the curtains. She glances up at the television where it’s mounted above the old fireplace, the screen stuck on a DVD title menu for an animated movie that Hope has made them watch at least twelve times, and the theme song that plays on a loop is an annoying tune that Regina could practically hum in her sleep by this point—

Her sleep. She remembers now, remnants of the dream flooding her mind. That’s what’s woken her up, then. A strange dream, but not a bad one.

Hope suddenly shifts, and Regina is reminded that the position she’s in isn’t an entirely comfortable one. Gently, she lifts Hope’s legs from her lap and stands, placing them back down in the space where she’d been sitting. She grabs her phone from the end table beside the sofa and slides it into her pocket, steps into her shoes.

She makes it to the front door, is careful to be quiet when it shuts behind her. Although, truthfully, it doesn’t matter. Hope sleeps about as heavily as Emma does.

She walks out onto the porch, goes over to lean against the wooden banister. The sky is pale and blue, and the air is balmy, fresh with the scent of earth. If she really tries, she can smell the rose bushes in bloom that she’d helped Emma plant sometime in spring. Birds are fluttering back and forth between the trees in Emma’s front yard, rustling the leaves and singing to each other.

It shouldn’t surprise her that she is only outside for a few minutes before Emma joins her. It’s something internal, she supposes. Instinctual. She doesn’t know why she expected to slip away unnoticed. Since when has Emma ever allowed her to slip away unnoticed.

“Hey,” Emma says, and her voice is drowsy, the soft sound finding a home somewhere in Regina’s rib cage.

Emma’s bathed in sunlight with her shoulder length hair that’s been slept on to the point where all the curl has fallen out, wearing nothing incredibly remarkable—soft shorts and a gray tank top. Regina has never wanted to reach out and touch her more, not despite these things but because of them.

“Hey.”

Emma comes to stand beside her, leaning forward with her elbows against the splintered banister.

“I thought you might’ve gone home,” Emma says. “How long have you been out here?”

“Not long at all.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I had a dream about you,” she says, and Emma frowns.

“Just now?” Emma asks, and Regina nods.

“I was driving your Bug. But you weren’t there.”

“Then how was it about me?”

“I think I was looking for you,” she says. She can still see the edges of the dream when she closes her eyes. “I kept running stop signs.”

Does it sound as romantic to Emma as it does to her, she wonders. Because who wouldn’t want the sort of love that you run stop signs for. Or she is reaching. Looking for things that aren’t there.

“Did you find me?”

“No,” Regina says, even though she wants to lie. Probably should have lied, because Emma just nods, doesn’t comment. “Sorry it’s not a happy ending.”

When Emma still doesn’t say anything, Regina goes back to watching nature wake up.

It’s nice here.

Her castle is too lovely, too impersonal. It reminds her of a time she’d rather forget, so she doesn’t spend too many of her days there. Her house on Mifflin hardly feels like her house at all. In her mind, in her heart, that is Henry’s house. He grew up there. He spent half of his life there. There are markings on the doorframe in the den that are consistent with his height throughout the years. There are faded, multi-colored paint smudges in the shape of Henry’s fingers on the handle of the fridge door that she’s been trying to scrub off since he first left them there when he was five. The rug in the downstairs hallway is frayed and tattered from being trampled over by the both of them during countless games of chase. Scotch tape has peeled some of the paint from the walls in Henry’s bedroom due to his endless rotation of posters as his interests changed over time, Marvel and Star Wars and Doctor Who.

It is a house heavy with memories, and without him taking up any space in it, she feels too small there.

But this place is imperfect in a way that her castle is not. Full in a way that Mifflin Street is not. The white-stained, wooden railing that she’s leaning on is chipping in places. The porch is made up of old floorboards that crack and pop when she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. Emma has gone a week or two without mowing the lawn, so the grass has grown unevenly, taller and thicker in certain spots than in others.

“I’ve had dreams about you before,” Emma finally says, casually, conversationally. Like they are talking about the weather.

Regina tries to picture what that might look like. What they might look like. What they’re doing. Which version of them Emma prefers.

“Are they any better than mine?” she wonders, and Emma shrugs.

“I don’t know. And, you know, it’s not, like…often. But sometimes Henry’s young again, and we’re saving him. One time, it was Hope.”

“That all sounds too familiar. I thought your subconscious might invent something new for us.”

Emma smiles as she stares into the distance.

“There was one where we’re not in Storybrooke. We’re at a gas station, somewhere. Nowhere. I don’t know. The point is, no one knows who we are. We’re at the counter where they keep the lottery tickets, and I ask you what you’d do if you won a million dollars.”

“And I tell you that it doesn’t matter because I would never play. It’s ridiculous. It takes advantage of people.”

Emma huffs.

“No, that’s what the real you would say. Dream you says you’d buy me a new coffee maker because I’m always complaining about how old mine is.”

“Well,” Regina says, “to be honest, I probably would do that.”

“I woke up before you could tell me what you’d spend the rest on, but…” Emma looks at her. “All that money, and the first thing you want is a new coffee maker, just to get me to shut up.”

Yes, there are things she could say here.

Can you really blame me? The damn thing breaks every other day, and you’re miserable without caffeine. Hell, I would consider buying you two of them just to save myself some trouble. While I’m at it, I’ll buy you a new toaster, too. Yours runs too hot, and you burn everything that goes in—

But it’s not her that Emma is talking about. It’s a version of her that is made of smoke, sand, sawdust. A thin, immaterial thing so light that the wind could carry it away. Something that lives in Emma’s mind while she sleeps.

She hasn’t won the lottery, and Emma will go back inside after this and use the same busted coffee machine and eat the same burnt toast, and this conversation won’t matter.

Regina has grown tired of things not mattering between them.

“Emma.”

“Yeah?”

She exhales, and there it goes. She feels it leave her no sooner than it had come. The time it takes Emma to say one word is how quickly she loses her nerve. But she does imagine it.

She imagines leaning forward, giving in. She imagines Emma not kissing her back, having to pull away and apologize, and Emma’s eyes will be wide instead of warm. They will have to call it a mistake, and then it will become another one of those strange things they never talk about. Another moment to toss into the graveyard of memories between them.

They are running out of plots, running out of room for all these headstones. They really can’t afford another.

So, she matches Emma’s small smile with one of her own, shakes her head.

“Nothing,” she says, and if Emma suspects anything, she doesn’t act like it.

“Come on,” Emma says around a yawn, nods her head towards the front door. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

Regina scoffs as she follows Emma back inside.

“I’ll pass.”

Despite her being completely serious, Emma laughs.

Emma sits at the top of the empty, elegant staircase, smoothing her hands over the skirt of her gown, and it does border on obnoxious, how the bodice is too tight, how all the tulle causes the lower half to balloon out. She’s very much looking forward to getting out of it.

It’s not that she hasn’t enjoyed the evening. As far as these things go, Lucy looked like she had a great time at her first ball. It’s just that Emma wouldn’t have minded enjoying the evening in a pair of jeans instead. Because all of this, the dressing up, the dancing, the etiquette—it’s fun at first. But she gets bored after a few hours. Restless.

She hears the distant rhythm of footsteps, a pair of heels clicking against the stone floor, and she expects to see Regina rounding the corner at the bottom of the stairs, but the wrong Mills sister enters her line of sight.

“What are you doing?” Zelena calls, and her voice echoes all the way up to Emma. “Regina’s still in the ballroom.”

“I know, but I was at least hoping to be out of this dress by midnight.”

“Why? Afraid you’ll turn into a pumpkin?”

“That’s not how it goes,” she tells Zelena as she begins walking up the stairs. “Like…at all, actually.”

“How should I know?” Zelena asks, settling down on the same step as Emma, letting her dress fan out around her. “Anyway, I’m sure the narratives are endless. You can’t convince me there isn’t a single version out there where she turns into a pumpkin.”

Emma frowns.

“I mean, maybe, but that’s kind of a miserable ending.”

“All endings are miserable,” Zelena says, and Emma remembers Regina telling her something similar, something that had held the same sentiment.

“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

It’s quiet for a moment between them, and when Zelena speaks again, her voice is all too knowing.

“You’d sit here and wait for her all night, wouldn’t you?”

Zelena, of all people. She and Emma don’t even talk much. But everyone knows. Everyone knows, and they’re just not saying anything, and Emma wonders how long it’s been this way, wonders how long she’s been willfully blind. All this time, she’s had something, someone, to hide behind. She hasn’t been fully awake to it. Not until last October, when she’d been signing legal documents on her birthday.

(“Separations are most common after seven years,” Snow says, and it’s meant to be comforting. Emma knows this. But she’s not sure which is worse—Snow calling it a separation because she can’t stomach the word “divorce,” or the past seven years or so of her life now serving as nothing more than a statistic.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted for me,” Emma says, and there is sympathy in Snow’s eyes when she smiles. Understanding.

“Marriages fail all the time, Emma.”

She tries not to take the word “fail” to heart. Snow needs to work on her phrasing, but her words are always decorated with good intentions. Emma can give her that much.

And, anyway, Snow is wrong. Marriages don’t fail all the time. Marriages fail when Regina comes back to Storybrooke.)

“I don’t mind waiting,” Emma says. “I’m pretty good at it.”

Zelena snorts.

“You certainly are. Both of you.”

“Regina might be a little better than me. In more ways than one.”

“You know, I really thought ten years would be enough for her.” Zelena shakes her head and looks at Emma. “I don’t think you quite realize the hold you have on her.”

But Emma does though. Emma does realize it. And she thinks something like that might make her feel guilty if Regina’s grasp on her wasn’t equally as unwavering. But it is, because it’s not necessarily a question of reciprocation between them but more so a consistent issue with timing.

Time. That’s the thing they usually get wrong. That’s the thing they’re usually running low on. But if this has all finally started to wear so thin that even Zelena is trying to nudge her along, then she and Regina are probably at the point in their story where they could get it right.

One last try, she thinks. Sometimes that’s all two people need.

ii. saturday

Regina is cleaning up the kitchen after lunch, and it strikes her in moments like these how familiar this all seems. Familiar and not, all at once. Because she has been here before, cleaning soggy chunks of smushed banana from the table. Refrigerating a spill-proof cup to ensure that the juice inside stays fresh. It’s just that when she’s done these things in the past, she’s always been alone. When she’s done these things in the past, she hasn’t had Emma just upstairs, putting Hope down for a nap.

And it’s a bit strange, their situation. She will admit that. But Hope had taken to her so immediately, so dearly, that by the time she could crawl, she was scrambling across rooms until she reached Regina. Choosing her, consistently.

Regina had been hesitant to become too attached to Hope for fear of overstepping, making things difficult for Emma. But as of a few months ago, that no longer matters. And she’s not vain enough to believe that she was ever the root of Emma’s marital struggles, but she does wonder sometimes if her name ever came up during arguments behind closed doors, even just once.

Regardless, if that had been the case, Emma would never tell her, and Regina would never ask.

Once she’s finished loading her dishwasher, she has a chance to wonder what’s taking Emma so long. Hope is usually asleep within minutes, but it’s been about half an hour, and Emma still hasn’t come back downstairs.

It’s possible that Hope is being stubborn. Possible, but not likely.

It might be worth it to check on them, she thinks as she starts up the stairs. When she reaches the top and glances towards her bedroom, she notices that her door is cracked. She makes her way over, expertly avoiding certain floorboards that have been known to creak and squeak.

She peeks her head in, sees Hope sound asleep in the middle of Regina’s bed, and Emma has fallen asleep next to her with a hand splayed protectively over Hope’s torso.

Regina has the overwhelming urge to take a picture of this.

Henry was already ten when he found Emma, so Emma is always doubting herself because she has never raised a child from the start before. Asking for Regina’s opinion, wanting to know what Regina would do in certain situations.

Is a new stroller something I could skimp on, or do I need one that’s, like, state of the art? Is it bad that I can’t keep her diaper bag organized? When do you think I should start letting her pick out her own outfits?

So, yes, Regina wants to capture this moment, if for no other reason than to show it to Emma later and put her mind at ease.

Stop being so afraid, Regina would say. Look at how perfect you are at this.

Regina’s Starfleet Academy blanket is draped over them both. Emma must have fished it out of the trunk at the foot of her bed.

Emma can never sleep without a blanket. Not even on a day like this, a humid Saturday in the middle of July. Regina used to think it was laughable until Emma had finally opened up about it. A result of sleeping in uncomfortable places under unpleasant circumstances. But give her a blanket, she’d said, and sleep comes naturally, no matter what. Her connection to her baby blanket had suddenly made sense. It had taught Emma that blankets imply safety. That someone out there cared enough about her to stitch her name into a piece of fabric before she was even born.

Now if Emma comes over and they end up having too much wine, Regina always makes sure that Emma has a blanket before she passes out on the sofa.

Regina crosses the room and lies down on the other side of Hope. She tries to be quiet, silently wills the mattress springs not to groan or the bedding not to rustle as she settles in.

It’s useless, all her effort. She forgets Emma has a sixth sense about her presence. When she looks over at Emma beside her, she is already blinking her eyes open and squinting at the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the windows. It’s not until Emma looks at her that she smiles, a mildly embarrassed, entirely endearing thing that causes a stir in Regina’s chest.

“Sorry,” Emma says, keeps her voice just barely above a whisper so as not to wake Hope. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your bed.”

“That’s alright,” Regina says. “You must have needed it.”

“Did you come up here for a nap, too?”

“That would be nice, but I doubt I’ll have the time. Henry will be here soon.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Emma seems to be coming back to herself now, stretching her arms above her head, then rubbing at one of her eyes. “Thanks for waking me up.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“No, it’s okay. I just stayed up way too late last night.”

Honestly, so had Regina. All of the planning that had gone into Lucy’s ball had built it up to be quite the event.

“That’s probably all Lucy is going to talk about when she gets here,” Regina says.

“Yeah,” Emma says on a quiet laugh. “Sorry for leaving you towards the end. I needed a break.”

“Don’t be. Almost everyone had cleared out by that point anyway.”

It’s this new system they’ve established. Each time at these grand occasions, Regina has always had two or three different men approaching her throughout the evening in hopes of securing her hand in marriage for ownership of the kingdom. They never ask outright, but she can see through their attempts. She can recognize where courting ends and the belligerent hunger for power begins. A few weeks ago, Emma had offered to go to the Summer Solstice ball as Regina’s date, and it’s something they’ve been doing ever since. So far, it’s kept men and their unwelcome advances away from her.

“It works though, doesn’t it?” Emma asks, and she sounds proud of it. “Me hanging on your arm all night.”

“It does,” Regina says. “Although, I’m still tempted to just let one of those idiots have the throne.”

She feels guilty as soon as the words leave her, wants to take them back.

“Is that why you’ve been off lately?” Emma wonders. “You’re unhappy?”

“I’m fine,” Regina lies, and Emma looks away, looks up at the ceiling in annoyance. Because she knows it’s not the truth. She always knows. So, Regina makes an amendment. “I will be fine.”

Except, even as she says it, she’s not sure she believes it. It’s been so many months of this—adjusting, repressing, pretending, and while she’d been joking about giving the kingdom over to an incompetent, corrupt man, she has seriously considered asking Tiana if she wants it.

It’s challenging. It’s exhausting, becoming reacquainted with a castle and a crown. The gesture had been immensely touching, and she is beyond grateful to finally be a first choice. But when it comes right down to it, she has never longed for this. Has never wished for it. Others have always wanted this for her, and it’s shocking how much those two things can differ.

“Do you want to leave?”

“Emma, I don’t think running away is the answer.”

“I’m not saying that,” Emma says. “I’m just asking if it would help, to get away from it all. Even if it’s for a little while.”

“Maybe,” she says. “But I don’t want to do that.”

“Okay. Whatever you want. As long as you know I’m here either way.”

Regina lets them fall into a brief silence while she imagines everything they could be outside of this. They could find a cottage somewhere quiet, or maybe even the farmhouse would do. They could watch Hope grow up, help her cultivate her magic, should she possess any. They could have an herb garden and horses and they could be happy. All she would have to do is step down, hand the realms over to someone she trusts.

But just thinking about those things causes a knot to form in the pit of her stomach.

“I hate talking about this,” Regina says. “I hate feeling like I’m being ungrateful.”

“I never wanted to be the savior,” Emma says. “Does that make me ungrateful?”

“Of course not. But then, that’s different.”

“No, it’s not. I finally had everything I’d ever wanted. I had a family. I had my son and this…new title. And I didn’t know how to act. There were days when all I wanted to do was run away.”

She’s familiar with wanting to run away, has felt the urge, mostly when she was younger and all she wanted was to be rid of her mother. She wonders, often, what would have become of her had she gotten away with it the one time she’d come so close. She’d have none of this, certainly wouldn’t have Henry or Emma or Hope. Living out the rest of her days on the run with her first love.

It sounds absurd now.

“I can learn to be happy like this.”

Because she has Emma, even if she doesn’t really have her, and she has Hope, and Henry and his beautiful family, and she’s got this incredibly full life. It would be wrong to wish for anything else, anything more.

Thankfully, Emma doesn’t try to fight her about it.

“Since we’re talking about things we shouldn’t,” Emma says, “can I say something without you thinking that I’m…I don’t know, weird?”

“You’re making the bold assumption that I don’t already think that.”

Emma’s face lights up for half a second with amusement.

“I was scared you might’ve changed,” Emma tells her.

“I have changed,” she says, because if she’d wanted to stay the same, she never would have left Storybrooke in the first place. “I hope I’ve changed.”

“No, you have,” Emma says. “But not in the way that I was afraid of.”

“What were you afraid of?” Regina asks, but she knows the answer. Part of her wants to hear Emma say it, wants to hear Emma say that she was afraid Regina would forget her, just so she can reassure her of what an impossibility that is.

Instead, Emma smiles softly, and Regina accepts that this is the only response she’s going to get.

Her house phone begins to ring from its place on her bedside table, the sound ripping through the moment as if it were made of tissue paper. She sits up, throws her legs over the side of the bed and reaches out to answer it before Hope can stir too much.

“Hello?” she says quietly.

On the other end of the line, Henry tells her they’re on their way, and behind her, she can hear Emma making fun of her, because “who still uses a landline anymore?”

As soon as they step out of the air-conditioned grocery store, the summer heat washes over them. The sun has started to set, so the warmth that soaks into their skin is pleasant rather than uncomfortable.

Emma has already opened her bag of peach rings, tore into them as soon as Regina had scanned them at the checkout, and she holds the bag out to Regina as they’re walking to the Bug.

Regina doesn’t particularly want one, but she takes one anyway, pops it into her mouth and feels the sugar granules melting on her tongue as she chews.

“Ugh,” she says with a grimace, shaking her head, because indulgence is one thing, but this much is just excessive, and her sugar tolerance remains much lower than Emma’s. “I can already feel the cavities setting up.”

“Are you kidding me? You bought two pints of Cherry Garcia.”

“They’re not both for me. It’s Henry’s favorite, too,” she argues. “Besides, cherries prevent heart disease.”

“That’s ironic,” Emma says. “I mean, come on. Right?”

Emma gestures to her chest, then mimes ripping her heart out.

Regina blinks at her.

Emma holds the bag of peach rings out again, and Regina pushes her hand away.

“Stop trying to spoil my dinner. Not all of us eat dessert first.”

“We’re having s’mores for dinner,” Emma says, as if that is entirely normal. As if Regina should recognize the snack as a legitimate food group.

Gathering graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows had been the main reason for this trip, but Regina had picked up a few groceries, too. They’d left Hope at home with Henry, Ella, and Lucy, and they’re all waiting for her and Emma to return with the ingredients. And she never intended on making s’mores for dinner, obviously.

It reminds Regina of before, when Henry was younger; a ping pong ball, and she and Emma were the paddles. She remembers dropping him off at the loft every other week.

Make sure he eats, Emma. Make sure he eats real food, Emma. I know you’re joking, but no, Pop-Tarts do not count. Unfortunately, I do feel like I have to clarify that.

“It’s hard not to be concerned about you,” Regina says. “And if you want me to be honest, I’m not even that fond of peach rings.”

“What,” Emma says, stares at her for a few seconds. Then Emma shakes her head. “No, you know what, I’m not surprised. Your favorite candy is Swedish Fish, so.”

“So I don’t get an opinion?”

“You can have an opinion,” Emma tells her with a shrug. “I’m just not sure I trust your judgement, that’s all.”

“You know, if you took anything else as seriously as you take food, you might find yourself to be a little more well-rounded as an individual.”

“Okay, well, that was aggressive.”

“You shouldn’t have attacked me first,” Regina says as they reach the Bug.

“Fine,” Emma says, and they begin loading the trunk with Regina’s reusable grocery bags. “Okay. You have bad taste in candy, I have bad taste in movies.”

Regina scoffs.

“The worst taste in movies,” she corrects. “You make me watch things that I’ve never even heard of.”

“I feel like not being familiar with David Spade’s filmography is kind of on you.”

“I’m not even that picky,” Regina argues, ignoring her. “Most of the time, I don’t really care what we watch. But your choices are consistently offensive.”

“You don’t care what we watch,” Emma says flatly, like she doesn’t believe her.

“No, I don’t,” Regina says, and after she places the final bag in the trunk, Emma shuts it. “Believe it or not, I care about the quality time that comes along with it.”

And maybe it’s not the right thing to say, because Emma looks at her with something like bemusement. Or surprise, perhaps.

“Oh,” Emma says. “You mean that.”

It’s not a question. It’s Emma’s innate ability to comprehend when Regina is telling the truth. It’s a magic all on its own, and being on the receiving end of it always makes her feel incredibly exposed. She tries not to cross her arms or shift her weight.

“Why else would I have asked you to come to the store with me?”

“I figured that was your way of getting out of driving.”

“Well, that was certainly a bonus,” she teases, and it occurs to her that maybe Emma is still getting used to this. Because it’s one thing for them to see each other all the time when it comes to family, when it comes to Hope. But Hope isn’t here, and this is something else. This time, when she speaks, her voice adopts a sincere quality. “I wanted to spend time with you on purpose.”

Emma’s smile grows a bit wider until it is a grin, her mouth almost seeming to pull down at the corners. It’s a thing that resides more in her eyes than her lips, and there is something so sweet about it—

This happens too often these days. She gets distracted, and she has to pretend like she doesn’t. Because Emma is still saying words, and Regina is going to be expected to respond to them.

“Even though I attacked you?” Emma asks, and Regina could do it. She could. She could crowd Emma against the Bug and kiss her, and Emma would taste like sugar and artificial peach flavoring. And maybe Emma would kiss her back. Maybe she wouldn’t.

But then comes the after. A drive home in silence. Or would they laugh about it? Would it feel strange, would it feel natural, would it feel like anything at all? And would Emma want to do it again? Again, and again, and again…

Oh, good. Somewhere on the other side of the lot, someone’s car alarm has started to blare repeatedly. No, this is good, because it reminds her of where they are, quashes the thoughts she has racing through her mind before she can become too attached to them. Before she can act on them.

So, not today, then.

Someday. Someday, she will have to cause a scene and ruin it all, but not right now. Not in the middle of a grocery store parking lot.

She nudges Emma gently, tries to smile.

“Go put our cart away,” she says.

Emma had gotten her hair cut when Hope was a baby. Hope had taken to curling her fists into it and pulling, much like how she’d taken to grabbing Regina’s hoop earrings. But Hope is older now, and Regina can wear hoops again, and Emma’s hair is finally starting to reach past her shoulders. Regina says she likes it this way.

(“It’s cute,” Regina tells her, and Emma’s expression does nothing to hide her mild offense.

“Cute?”

Regina rolls her eyes.

“It looks very attractive on you, Emma.”)

For reasons that may or may not be related to that, she’ll be keeping it short for a while.

Regina claims Henry never pulled hair or earrings or anything else he could reach, and Emma believes it. Polite and considerate, even as an infant. Emma often jokes that Regina had gotten “the good one.”

It’s not that Hope misbehaves or struggles to listen. She’s very well-mannered and kind for a toddler. It’s just that the kid never slows down, and Emma doesn’t want to dampen her energy by telling her to lower her voice or sit still. It’s something girls are always told. It’s something Emma was told.

She’s learning that the majority of raising a kid is essentially figuring out what you don’t want to do, and then doing the opposite of that. And what she doesn’t want is for Hope to ever think she has to shrink herself down. The idea of that makes Emma’s skin crawl.

Regina insists it’s a phase, but Hope has always been like this, even in the womb. Kicking and thrashing and constantly causing Emma to double over.

Right now, Hope is dragging armfuls of her toys out of Regina’s house and tossing them down onto the patio to show Henry. Which, like, it’s fine. As long as she knows she has to clean them up. Right?

Regina doesn’t seem to care, so that’s all that really matters. Emma has to remind Hope sometimes that this isn’t their house, but she doesn’t think Hope quite understands, and Emma can’t really blame her. They spend so much time here. Regina has sippy cups in her kitchen cabinet and a toy chest in her den and spare changes of clothes in case Hope spills something on herself. Hope probably thinks she has two homes.

“Some of this stuff is crazy,” Henry says, kneeling down and picking up Hope’s LCD drawing tablet. “When I was a kid, I had, like…blocks. And one of those dome toys with the little balls inside that pop when you push it.”

“You had some pretty high-tech Nerf guns when you got older,” Regina says. “I have the scars to prove it.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember those,” he says, then looks up at Emma with a grin. “You missed out on that. I know what I’m getting Hope for her birthday.”

“You think I’m scared?” Emma asks. “I’ll buy one for myself. I don’t care.”

“You’re not going to pelt your toddler with foam darts,” Regina says, and she brings two patio chairs over to where Hope and Henry are sorting through toys.

“See, it sounds bad when you say it like that,” Emma says.

She settles into the second chair, next to Regina, and watches Henry grab a small, plastic Millennium Falcon from the pile.

“Hey, this was mine,” he says, and he both looks and sounds like he’s just run into an old friend. Pleasantly surprised. Nostalgic.

“I’ve kept some things,” Regina says with a shrug.

“Most things,” Emma corrects, because Regina struggles to let go sometimes. They’ve talked about it. It’s a whole thing, and she’s not pushing hoarder status by any means, but she does have a collection of Henry’s…well, everything in her basement.

“Hope picked a dandelion last week and you still have it on the windowsill in your kitchen,” Regina says dryly.

“Yeah, for commemorative purposes. That’s the first time she’s ever picked a flower.”

“It’s a weed, Emma.” Regina just watches her with amusement in her eyes, and okay. Okay, maybe Emma has the same problem. “There’s not even any fluff left on it. It all fell off.”

“You’re saving a stem?” Henry asks, and sure, that’s fine, everyone can just gang up on her. He looks over at Regina. “I don’t even think you were that bad, Mom.”

“Mom,” Hope echoes with a smile.

Variations of “Mom” are things that Emma is familiar with hearing from Hope. What’s not familiar is that Hope is directing it at Regina, and Emma’s heart misses a few beats.

There’s not really any mistaking it. Hope is looking right at Regina, and she even says it again, attaching the term to Regina, trying it out, breaking it in like a new pair of shoes.

“Hope,” Emma scolds, because yes, she can feel all the blood rushing to her face, can feel the throbbing of her own pulse in her throat, but she has to do something.

But Regina is wearing a small smile as she looks over at Emma.

“It’s okay,” Regina promises quietly, and she’s not lying. Emma knows she’s not, can read it on her face. But there is still something so wrong about this, about allowing Hope to believe that Regina is something she’s not.

But Emma can’t fault Hope. Because it makes too much sense. Because Henry is her brother, so why shouldn’t they follow the same rules. She’s just repeating what she heard. In Hope’s head, it is that simple.

Emma doesn’t know how to tell her, and even if she did, she’s not sure who it would hurt more. Because while Regina is not Hope’s mother, Emma secretly, fiercely wishes she were. She wants Hope to be raised with Regina’s love in her heart, like Henry was. She wants Hope to have that. To feel that.

Would Emma be taking something away from her by correcting her? It feels cruel somehow, devastating in a way that Emma can’t even fully wrap her head around.

“Uh…” Henry glances between the two of them, between her and Regina, and he stands. “We’re going to go…check out the s’mores situation. Come on, Hope.”

Henry takes Hope’s hand and guides her out of earshot, over to where Ella and Lucy are making s’mores at the fire pit, and the fact that he knows what to do here when Emma doesn’t is somehow making all of this worse. A reminder, that Henry is good, and she might be the one who brought him into this world, but she never feels more disconnected from him than in moments like these.

“I’m glad he’s so close with her,” Regina says.

Regina’s right. He is, and he doesn’t have to be. He could easily choose not to come around. He could easily resent Emma, could, in turn, resent Hope. He could harbor feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, just like Emma did when her parents pushed the reset button.

“Do you think a part of him will always hate me?”

It leaves her before she can think about it, and there’s nothing but the sound of chittering insects for a moment, in the trees, in the grass. Hope squeals and giggles when Lucy swipes a dollop of melted chocolate onto her nose. Emma glances over, catches a glimpse of Regina’s frown.

“What?”

“For…” Emma shrugs, swallows. “I don’t know. Doing what my parents did to me. More than once.”

“Emma,” Regina says, and it finally gets Emma to look over at her, to really see her, and Regina even angles her body towards her, leaning in just a bit closer. “You and I both know he’s not capable of that. We raised him to be better than both of us.”

“Yeah, but I kept Hope, and I gave him away. Then…”

Then that horrible goodbye in the middle of a forest. Then leaving Henry behind—leaving both of them behind, him and Regina. Then returning to a hollowed-out Storybrooke.

Emma shakes her head and looks away, but when she feels Regina lay a warm, gentle hand on her arm, she meets her gaze again.

“You have to stop assuming that everyone is blaming you for everything,” Regina says, then she smiles. “And you didn’t give him away. You gave him to me.”

Hesitantly, Emma smiles back. She can’t help it. Regina has this very specific, very subtle way of chasing off all of her grief.

“I’m sorry,” Emma says. “About Hope.”

“She can call me whatever she likes.”

Great. Because that’s not going to make things complicated in a few years.

When Hope is older, Emma can have that talk with her. They can discuss bad timing and missed opportunities and why true love sometimes skips a generation. Hope won’t understand, of course, because no one ever does. She will ask the same questions that others have asked. She will want to know if there is something going on. She will want to know why nothing ever happened.

But for now, what’s the harm. For now, what’s one more child between them.

iii. sunday

hey, if i don’t answer my phone, it’s because i’m taking hope swimming. so we’ll be at the pool. in the sun. enjoying our day. but, you know, have fun in your meeting about important realm business or whatever.

Don’t forget to bring floaties.

hope’s already wearing them.

I meant yours, not hers.

that’s fine. i deserved that. i’m actually a great swimmer though, so.

Emma, please wear sunscreen. I don’t have the mental capacity to listen to you complain about a sunburn for two weeks.

it’s kind of embarrassing how much you care about me.

You’re right. It’s very embarrassing.

:/

:)

It’s something they’ve tried to make a habit of doing, visiting her parents in the Enchanted Forest every Sunday. Sundays are typically Regina’s days for meetings, and after they end, it’s usually late enough for dinner at Snow and David’s castle.

God, their castle. It still feels a little ridiculous, but that’s probably just because Emma is used to eating at a small, wobbly table in her dining room and not a great hall with silver platters and luxuriously upholstered seating.

Something else that amuses Emma: the way Snow watches Regina interact with Hope. Emma has seen her do it, has paid attention to the strange look that always settles onto Snow’s face. How her eyes narrow slightly. How she tilts her head. Like she wants to say something, but she’s not sure where to start, so she ends up staying quiet. Which is probably a good thing. Emma wouldn’t know how to explain it.

You might have noticed by now that Regina’s sort of helping me raise Hope for no particular reason other than because she wants to, because this seems to be what we’re good at, and no, it’s not weird, actually, we’re best friends, Mom, why are you looking at me like that—

Yeah, right now, they’re all just kind of going with it.

Emma is driving back now, and it’s already dark outside by the time she makes it into Storybrooke, the moon hanging high above them. Hope has fallen asleep in the backseat, and Regina has been skipping through stations—which are pretty much nothing but static—on the radio for the past five minutes.

Regina momentarily lands on a particularly fuzzy station made up of much louder, much more obnoxious static than some of the others.

“Oh, hey, I love this song,” Emma says over the hiss of the speakers, because if she’s not an instigator, then who even is she, really.

“At least the Benz has a cassette player,” Regina says, cutting the radio off altogether, and Emma glances at her. “As if I needed another reason to hate this car.”

“Even if I had a cassette player, I wouldn’t really have any tapes to go with it.”

“Well, I’d make you one.”

“So you’re where Henry gets that from?” Emma asks, and when she looks over this time, Regina is smiling.

“He gets all of his best traits from me. I thought we were all aware of that.”

Emma laughs, shakes her head.

“I know you think you’re joking, but you might actually be right.”

Regina huffs out a breath as Emma pulls up to the curb in front of her house.

“Please. He has more pieces of you in him than you’ll ever know. Good pieces.”

“Maybe,” Emma says, because she likes the thought of that. Because Regina is probably right, can probably see the things that Emma can’t.

“Hope does, too.”

Emma glances at Hope in the backseat, then looks back to Regina.

“She loves you,” Emma says, because that’s the largest piece of her that she has passed on to both Henry and Hope—this permanent, unyielding love for Regina. It’s the most meaningful thing they have in common.

“It’s mutual.”

It’s hard to distinguish what they’re talking about anymore, whether or not they are still bothering to keep these things separate or if they’re allowing it all to bleed together. They are a family, and Emma has withheld for quite a while, has always pulled back and used mostly Henry, sometimes Hope, to cushion the ferocity of her feelings. But that just seems like an unnecessary thing to do now.

“I don’t really know what that means, but it’s pretty clear to me now that I can’t raise my kids with anyone who isn’t you.”

“We make a good team,” Regina offers.

“Is that…” Emma hesitates, licks her lips anxiously and watches Regina’s gaze drop to her mouth for a half-second. “I don’t know, is that still enough? For you?”

“This is always going to be enough for me.”

Regina’s smile is small, something to offset the intensity of her words. Emma stares at the curve of her lips. All that lipstick, and what if Emma were to lean in and smudge it. What then.

“Regina, I’m trying. But it keeps getting harder to be okay with this.”

The silence that follows is deafening in the stillness of the car, even with their windows rolled down, a chorus of crickets just outside. She doesn’t know which is louder—their chirps, her words, her heartbeat.

Regina does hold her gaze for a significant stretch of time without saying anything, studies her face, her eyes. She doesn’t know what Regina’s looking for, but it shouldn’t be this hard to find, shouldn’t take this long.

“I know,” Regina says quietly. “I know it does.”

There is really only one thing left that Emma wants. It is to lean over the center console and take Regina’s face in her hands, to take Regina’s lips from crimson-painted to kiss-swollen. But that seems like a lot, feels like too much right now, and would Regina even want it, is the thing. She’s already said this is all she needs, but would she want it.

No. For Regina, this is enough. Emma won’t reach for more. Regina has already said it’s enough.

Pushing is how things get messy, so maybe just getting the words out there is plenty for tonight. Regina can leave, and Emma will go home, and they’ll get all of this thinking out of their systems so that someday, hopefully, they won’t have to be so patient.

Sacrifice today for a better tomorrow, or whatever. They’ve done that dozens of times. Emma wonders if that might actually be the only thing they know how to do anymore, if they are hardwired to procrastinate their feelings. Funny, how after everything that has tried to keep them apart, they started doing it well enough on their own.

“I should get home,” she says softly, with a smile that probably doesn’t reach her eyes. “If Hope wakes up before I can get her in bed, she’ll be up for the rest of the night.”

Regina’s lips part like she has something to say that she can’t manage to commit to. Emma wants to beg her to try.

“Alright,” Regina says finally, pauses for a moment with her fingers wrapped around the handle of the car door. She spares a final, lingering look at Emma, then nods. “Okay. Goodnight.”

Regina opens the passenger door and steps out of the car, shuts the door slowly and with care so as not to wake Hope. And Emma watches as she starts walking up the brick pathway to her front door.

Once she’s carried Hope to bed, once she’s changed into pajamas, she settles down on the sofa in the living room. She thinks about uncorking a bottle of wine but decides against it as quickly as she’d thought of it. Really, what she needs is to go to bed.

She can’t though. She knows her own mind. She knows she will go to her room and toss and turn on her sheets and stare at the ceiling and wrestle with her thoughts for hours. She will raise her window, thinking that the muggy, late night air will help, and it won’t. She will brush her teeth a second time just to have something to do with her hands.

She’d probably sounded selfish, telling Regina that this is too hard. As if what they have, everything they’ve worked for, isn’t worth it.

Okay, yes, it is selfish. It’s selfish because there’s nothing terribly wrong with the way they’re living. It’s selfish because their world is already good and full and safe, and they should be able to tell when it’s time to count their losses and move on. But here Emma is, after all this time, asking Regina what she thinks about the word “more.”

It should have been easy. This all should have been easy thirty minutes ago, when Regina was sitting beside her in the passenger seat, streetlights casting shadows over her face—

She knows she is too deep in her thoughts when she is startled by something as simple as her phone ringing.

Snow, probably, calling to tell her that she’s realized Emma’s forgotten something. Emma does that a lot. Hope has too many things, and she’s very bad at keeping up with all of them.

Except, it’s not Snow. When Emma picks her phone up from the coffee table and checks the screen, she sees Regina’s name, along with her contact picture. A candid photo Emma had taken of Regina and Henry on Henry’s graduation trip. Years ago. Lifetimes away.

It takes her a moment to dislodge her own heart from her throat before she can answer.

“Hello?”

“I don’t mean to bother you,” Regina says, and skipping greetings is something she does when she’s nervous, Emma knows. “Were you in bed?”

“No,” Emma says, rubbing at her forehead. “No, I was…well, I wasn’t doing anything, actually, just…sitting here on my couch. I don’t think I can sleep.”

Regina lets the silence linger between them, stretching on and on, growing until it is too heavy to be comfortable.

Emma’s heart is a wreck, fluttering furiously as if it’s grown wings.

She could ask Regina what she’s doing, just to make conversation. Just to put something between them that isn’t this white noise. She could pretend like they haven’t completely forgotten how to talk to each other. But Regina beats her to it.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?”

Just like that. Thrown with finality like a stone into a pond. Irretrievable. Sinking, on its way down to the bottom.

Regina asks the question with such care, as if she is willing to accept whatever answer Emma might give her. As if there’s no right or wrong.

“Uh,” Emma says, feels her skin flush with embarrassment, “you…didn’t ask me to.”

Frankly, she wishes she had a better reason. But it’s the truth, for once. For once, she’s not just shifting the blame, not just pointing fingers and asking, “well, why didn’t you do it?”

She means it. She would have kissed Regina if Regina had asked her to. That’s all she would have needed, all it would have taken to put her restless mind at ease.

It’s quiet for several seconds, and Emma counts them with every breath she takes.

Apparently, there had been a right or wrong here, and Emma’s chosen wrong because Regina hangs up. Emma hears the line cut out, hears the three, low beeps that signify when a call has been ended.

God. God, how the hell is this somehow going worse than she ever thought it would. This shouldn’t even be happening. Not anymore. Not when they are seemingly, finally, on the same page.

She is in the middle of trying to panic-call Regina back when she recognizes the familiar, faint gust of magic, hears it and feels the buzz under her skin at the same time, and when she looks up, she sees Regina standing in her living room a few feet away, wisps of purple smoke dissipating around her.

Emma watches the way Regina’s wide eyes take her in. Like she can’t believe she’s here. Like she can’t believe how easy it was to spend the magic to get here. Emma knows this look. Regina hasn’t thought this far ahead, isn’t thinking about what she’s going to do next, and it’s really beautiful in a kind of unfair way, how Regina so easily follows whatever her heart is screaming for in the moment. Her heart. The thing she wears like an accessory.

Emma slowly lowers her phone from her ear, and when Regina finally moves, it is with a bit of hesitation, coming closer to Emma and stopping just a few inches shy of where Emma is sitting on the couch.

“Regina—” she tries, rising to her feet so she is at eye level with her.

“This is me asking,” Regina interrupts softly, and it knocks the breath from Emma’s lungs.

It takes a few seconds for Emma’s brain to stop rejecting the request on instinct, but she realizes she’s been granted the thing she didn’t have before. Regina wants this. Regina is asking for this, and their light has been flashing and shorting out on yellow for so long that Emma doesn’t even know what to do now that it is finally burning bright green.

She could do the thing Regina has asked her to do. That might be a good place to start.

She watches Regina’s eyes carefully, watches when Regina blinks, when she drops her gaze for a blissful moment to Emma’s lips, and Emma doesn’t have to lean in very far to get close. This handful of seconds is miniscule, a blip on their timeline, but somehow just as agonizing as all the years they’ve wasted.

Her nose lightly bumps Regina’s as she angles her head, hands finding Regina’s waist, and once their lips brush, Regina reacts. She brings a hand up to the back of Emma’s neck and begins kissing her back, and something in Emma loosens. She exhales through her nose, whatever strange tension she’d been holding suddenly snapping. Nerves. That’s what it is. It’s her fear unclenching its fists as she and Regina melt into each other.

If she didn’t know any better, she would think this isn’t their first time, with the way they fit together, the way their lips meet over and over, soft, languid, and it’s dizzying, how right this feels.

But she does know better. And this is brand new. It turns out, they’re just really good at it. Regina is really good at it. She knows when to breathe, when to linger. Like she’s imagined this before. Like she’s already worked it all out in her mind, and all she’s doing is bringing it to life.

Regina follows her. Or, she follows Regina. She can’t really tell. Control becomes a wonderfully tangled and obscure thing, but before she gets entirely lost, Regina pulls away, and Emma feels herself sway forward as if drunk, chasing after her.

Regina licks her lips, exhales a laugh, and it makes Emma smile, how Regina seems too giddy to speak. To think that she is capable of eliciting such a response from Regina, and to think that maybe she’s always been capable of this. That it’s always been well within her reach and not nearly as far-fetched as she’d ever assumed.

“You’ve waited for that,” Emma says, resting her forehead against Regina’s, because it had all felt painfully overdue, divinely rehearsed.

“If I told you for how long, you’d never believe me,” Regina says quietly.

Okay, now Emma really wants to know. But Regina presses her lips to Emma’s again, and all she can think to do is pull Regina closer to her by the hips.

This will take a while to get used to, the slide of Regina’s lips over her own, the feel of Regina’s body pressed against her. It’s too good, too real, and she wants to be everywhere, wants to learn all of it, every curve.

Emma already knows it wouldn’t take much at all. She imagines it. More heat. Desperation, when their hands begin to wander, and does Regina think so, too. Is Regina picking up on how volatile this is. Emma’s heart hammers between her ribs, her stomach twisting with desire, and her head is swimming when they part.

She laughs lightly, because it’s funny. Hilarious, actually, the power that years of accumulated feelings can hold. Like a richly fermented cider, highly potent and almost immediately intoxicating.

“Don’t leave, okay?” Emma says softly, because it’s the first thing she thinks of. Because she doesn’t know what’s supposed to come next, where they go from here, but Emma isn’t ready to let go yet in case this is all somehow a dream that’s going to disappear. “I’ll put on a movie or something. We can hang out.”

Regina smiles, brings the hand she has at the back of Emma’s neck to rest against Emma’s cheek, runs her thumb along Emma’s bottom lip.

“You want to hang out?”

“Well, you know,” Emma says, “among other things.”

Regina hums.

“There it is.”

“Okay, whatever, my tactics aren’t subtle,” she says, feels lightheaded under Regina’s touch. “But if you stay for a while, I can probably get better at that.”

“I’m considering it,” Regina says, and when she draws Emma back in for another kiss, they are both smiling into it.