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"What are you doing?"
Mal pauses midway through the story and looks up from the book little Emma has her hands on. "Reading to Emma."
"Why?" Regina asks, arms folded over her chest. Even at ten, there are hints of the queen in her bearing. "She doesn't talk yet. She doesn't know words."
Mal tilts her head, encouraging Regina in from the doorway. "I think she likes having someone talk to her, even if she doesn't know what I'm saying."
"She likes you talking to her."
Emma looks up at Regina, then back at Mal, as if making doubly sure this is okay. That this person is family. Her eyes come back to Mal and she pats the book.
"One moment, little one." Mal looks to Regina, waiting. "Do you need something, dear?"
Regina looks down, then back up. "I heard you reading."
"You're welcome to stay."
Regina looks at the sofa, then Emma, as if the littlest one has staked a secret claim on Mal's affections. "She won't mind?"
"She likes the company."
Regina rolls her eyes. "No she doesn't. She cried all afternoon because you put the twins in bath with the twins and made Ruby hold her. She doesn't like Ruby."
Mal ruffles Emma's fluffy blonde curls and sighs. "She likes Ruby, and you, and Henry, she just thinks I'm never going to come back when she can't see me."
"Why is that?" Regina climbs up on the couch next to her, sitting primly with her hands in her lap. "Why does she get upset when she can't see you? You're not really her mom."
That is a complicated question. Mal gives Emma her hand to play with while she stares at the pictures on the pages in front of her. "I think she misses her mother."
"Snow?" Regina tilts her head and it's so her, even with decades stripped away, that Mal chuckles, then reaches out to touch Regina's cheek. "She didn't know Snow."
"Emma had another mother, an adoptive mother who gave her back. Ruby told me. I wonder if that woman, whomever she was, looked like me."
Emma continues playing with her fingers, then turns around and smiles at Mal. It's that smile, absolutely happy, full of wonder and love, that just hurts. Who gives that up? Who looked at this little girl and decides she wasn't theirs any more?
"Why would she give Emma back?" Regina makes a face, both appalled and affronted by the idea.
"I don't know." Mal kisses Emma's little head and bounces her and Emma giggles, cuddling up to her chest. She stares at Regina, looks back up at Mal and settles, smiling over at Regina now. "We'll never know."
"Emma's not your baby." Regina strokes her cheek and Emma stares at her, calm. "That doesn't, bother you? You've been stuck with all these kids, and we're not yours."
"Not being mine doesn't mean I don't like you."
"You remember me." That was a mayor look, and entirely adorable on Regina's little face. "I remember you, a little."
"You do?"
"I know you're a good mom."
"You've never seen me be a mom." Don't argue with a child.
"What's this?" Regina teases.
The child is teasing her. She's Regina, what did Mal expect? "This is helping out while Belle and the fairies figure out how to cure this. They can hardly watch all of you while doing research."
"Granny could."
"She has a business to run. Half the town wouldn't eat if Granny's was closed."
"So you'd rather be here, where you have diapers-" Regina wrinkles her nose in disgust, "-and little kids and Emma barely ever lets go of you. You didn't even shower yesterday."
"I can be clean with magic."
Regina nodded at that.
Having magic while looking after five children did make everything much easier. Mal wasn't sure how anyone looked after one child without it. Did Regina remember raising Henry? Was that why she was concerned?
"We're not your responsibility."
"I can chose to make you such."
"Why?"
Was that the heart of it?
"Because you need me." Mal kisses Emma's head again and smiles. "Lily doesn't need me. She's grown. She doesn't need a mother to put her in the bath and read to her. She needs to talk about being a dragon and learning to fly and what she should do with her life, and I can help with that, but I missed this part. I never read to her and walked up and down the castle singing to her. Emma loves that. The twins love that."
"I didn't know you could sing."
Regina's eyes are so much older than the rest of her face in that moment that Mal leans over and kisses her forehead, as she did, once.
"Not well," Mal answers. "I don't sing well, but children don't care. They just want to be loved. All of you, even Henry, though he's wise and strong and nearly an adult."
"He's fourteen." Regina smirks a little and Mal remembers that adulthood is much older here.
"He's a wonderful young man."
"Thank you."
Again, Mal wonders if Regina's memories are in there, somewhere, because there are moments when this little girl is her oldest friend, and she misses that woman tremendously.
"We'll fix this."
"I know." Regina yawns and she's ten again, the moment broken. "I'm glad we have you, and Ruby, until you fix this. Henry and I would probably fight on our own." She looks back at the book and Emma's half-asleep little face. "What are you reading?"
"Zen Shorts. It is about a panda who comes to tea. I think Emma likes the panda."
"You do a funny voice for the panda."
"Don't you think a panda would have a funny voice?"
Regina tilts her head again, and nods. "Yeah, I guess he would."
"Then I stand by that choice. Now then-" Mal clears her throat and shifts the book so she can see around Emma's body, though she's read this four times already today, so she won't need the book soon.
After Emma's asleep and Mal's only reading the book to her, Regina's eyes grow distant and she stops listening. Mal pauses as well, waiting for Regina to say what she needs to.
"What if they can't fix us?"
"You mean, if Belle and the fairies can't figure out how to change you back?"
"Yes."
"Then you'll grow up again, here. We'll do our best. Snow and David might have an awkward time of it for awhile, depending on how much they remember." Maybe they'd need separate houses, just to allow their relationship to remain what it's meant to be.
"That'll take years!" Regina protests, doing the math in her head. "I won't be able to live on my own for eight years, and Emma, Emma's not even two. You'll have her forever."
"I'm a dragon, dear."
"It's still a long time. You'll be her mom for sixteen years."
Mal rocks Emma against her chest, hoping she'll stay asleep. "If I need to wait for Emma, and all of you to grow again, I will be her mother for more than sixteen years. I will be 'mom' as long as I need to."
"Forever."
"Perhaps."
"But--" Regina struggles with that again. "We'd need school, and clothes, and we'd been teenagers and they're annoying, and you'd have to go to conferences and teach them how to ride bikes and we'd get sick and--"
"And if that ended up being something that happened, we would make it work. Ruby and I." Her heart doesn't question that Ruby would help, that they'd do this together, and that's another emotion she'll have to deal with. Something she'll explain to herself, somehow.
"You'd be my mother."
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
Mal laughs, wraps an arm around Regina and hugs her. "Yes, yes, absolutely." Cora hurt her enough. If she has to live again, this time, she'll have a proper childhood, full of magic and wonder, without the fear. As safe as a dragon and a werewolf can make it.
Regina buries her face in Mal's chest and she can barely hear her. "Okay."