OQFamilyWeek - Day 1: OQ finding out they'll be grandparents.
"Mom, dad… I'm expecting a child."
Regina stares socked as her beautiful and sweet daughter, Kate, share the news with her parents.
She realizes she shouldn't be so socked, though. Her daughter is happily married now; this was bound to happen sooner or later. Well, rather sooner than later, it seems.
"Are you sure about that?" Regina asks.
"I'm sure," Kate confirms as she locks her hands with her husband's, Neal, and smiling fondling at him. "I already did the test."
Regina hides her true feelings, and shows only excitement and enjoyment in front of her daughter. She gets up a hugs her, congratulating her and her husband for the child on the way. She looks back at Robin and sees him frowning.
"I cannot believe you two you'll make me a grandfather when I'm still so young." he complains, but everyone in the room can see he's joking.
"Dad, you're turning 59 next week, that's not so young", Kate reminds him.
"Still, I don't look old enough to be a grandfather."
He locks his eyes with his daughter's eyes, whose eyes have the same bright shade of blue as his, challenging her to disagree with him. His dark haired daughter smiles and rolls her eyes, an habit she definitely picked up from her mother. She usually looks a lot like her mother, but she looks even more like her when she does that.
"You know you're just playing around. Deep down you're excited. Come here and give me a hug."
The mask he pulled to look annoyed about all this breaks and he smiles, leaning in and giving her a big hug, turning to congratulate her husband as well right after.
They talk some more, Regina says that this occasion demands her to take Kate's baby album so they can all look how she looked like when she was a little baby. They laugh, Neal marvels at Kate's little chubby check from when she was younger, her little feet and her rose cheeks. Regina tells, with Robin's help, stories from when Kate was a baby, and when she finishes telling a story of when Kate saw the ocean for the first time (and she was paralyzed by how beautiful and huge it was), Neal says he's sorry but they have to leave because they still have to go to his parents to tell them the news.
After they leave, Robin turns to Regina and he wraps his arms around her from behind, running his hands up and down her arms.
"I saw you putting up a good and happy face," he says quietly, "Why you're not so thrilled about this?"
Regina smiles despite de subject, touched that even after all this time, Robin is always able to notice her mood, when she's just pretending or not.
"I just…" Regina sighs, leans in more to him for comfort. "I'm afraid, Robin. I didn't have a grandparent; I don't know how to be one."
Cora never talked much about her parents (no surprise there), less alone introduced Regina to them. Her dad, on the other hand, had nothing to hide but he didn't have a chance to introduce Regina to his parent. He did show pictures of his parents though, and told his daughter many stories about the strong women he had in his family.
Since she was a little girl, she was very aware of how proud her father was of his Latin side. "The diversity just within or own people, every country is so different and beautiful all at once. ", he said. He taught her pride cannot be limited to the kind of the food that we cook, or the multitude of languages we can speak. It is the incredible resiliency of our people when we face hardship and obstacles, the sense of community we can have regardless of the color of our skin, the rich diversity of culture that is unparalleled, and the genuine love that we can have for one another.
She never forgot any of that, and she still has with her the book of her father's family history. She grew to love her origins as much as her father did and she never feel ashamed when once in a while she lets her Latin side show.
"My love, you are a natural mother," he reasons with her. "Being a grandma is just being a mother twice. It'll be easy, you'll see."
"I didn't have a great example of a mother," she says as she disentangles herself from his arms and turns to look at him. "But at least I knew what I should not do. But being a grandmother… I have nothing I can compare to, nothing to guide me."
"You have the best thing you could ever use to guide you." he lifts his hands and brings it upon her beating heart. "You have the most resilient heart I've ever seen. Trust on your heart. Listen to it. Trust on your judgment."
She feels tears pricking at the corners of her eyes but she would not let them form. Not just yet.
"We have been together for a very long time now," he adds and she pays attention to every word, with a loving smile on her face. "And I haven't seen your heart fail you. Not even once. Believe it'll lead you in the right direction and let your worries flows away."
He hugs her then, bringing her body as closer to his as he can, and he strokes her back. She lets her tears fall, but its tears of joy. This hug is all about reassurance, showing her again just much he truly cares about her. It's a position is about openness and vulnerability.
She remembers when Henry was little and she had no one to turn to for advices, or the times when she saw Hook comforting Emma and Charming comforting Snow, but she didn't have no one to comfort her or to ease her pain after a traumatic event. She really believed she was meant to be alone forever. It was her curse. It was payment to the evil things she did in the past. She was going to have her son's love, but she was never going to have romantic love in her life.
Then Robin came and everything changed. Suddenly she wasn't alone anymore; suddenly she had someone who would hold her tight when the world around her was falling apart.
"Thank you for being here, Robin. It means more than you know" she smiles against shirt.
I hope you like it! See you tomorrow for day 2 ❤️❤️