::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Lovely Bones

::::::::::::::::::::::::::

That look is there again. Emma sees it in those eyes hiding behind a pair of thick glasses and the certain set of the mouth on the Doctor's face. She frowns deeply, as the corners of her mouth purse to a point enough to pinch her cheeks.

The look that says he knows more than he is letting on as he greets them and closes the door to the cold sterile room behind him. That he is about to say something that will make her guts tense and the hair on the back of her arms stand upright. He sits down on a black rolling stool that squeaks. The one Emma had been perched on before he entered the room. She had sat there minutes ago next to Regina while bouncing her knee up and down much too quickly like her heart beat as they waited.

How her wife was the epitome of calm and reassuring smiles was beyond Emma. Calm and collected through this whole thing—at least when other people were watching. Regina was not one to break down out in the open. Or to break open as she helped Emma break open behind their bedroom door. To be vulnerable is an exceptional thing. A special kind of tenderness just between them. In private and not often Regina let those walls come down too. Unlike the wall Emma was holding up now.

Emma focused her eyes on the floor. The Doctor's shoes are too shiny Emma decided, as if he purposely buffed them to perfection for their visit this morning. Regina's hand on her arm brings her back into focus. That touch always has that effect.

His fat finger touch the computer screen on the desk. Emma shivers as a digital file is clicked for their viewing. Her hands go from hugging her ribs through her red leather jacket, her armor, much too tightly to gently resting on her wife's shoulders.

Strong shoulders that carried their family all these years. Ones their son Henry had sat on when he was just a little boy now a collage freshman. Those arms too had held their son to nurse and soft hands Emma loved to hold. She liked those hands inside her too. Stroking her to places in her mind she never imagined she could go. Sometimes they were gently firm in a way Emma needed when she was feeling out of control. They made her feel safe. Made her feel whole and real. But lately their natural roles had shifted. Lately those arms and hands had trouble moving with the grace and fluidity used to. They were tired hands and arms that belong to an exhausted woman.

Then the pain had started to creep in and not the good kind that Emma learned could exist on her skin at her wife's finger tips. Little by little the bad pain crept into her wife's limbs and back and Emma had begun to worry. Regina had tisked her concerns, but took the offered massages and hot soaks in the tub Emma had prepared for her to help ease this new ache. Regina had described the pain as a burning sensation at first. A match struck at the base of her spine and then a rush of sparks that shot up her back and down her limbs in spasms. When this happened Regina began to sweat and pant and grunt. Then tense enough so that the cords in a neck stood out in a frightening way. Emma would crouch in her favorite place at her wife's feet, stroking the tops of stocking covered feet in a soothing fashion until it passed.

"Maybe we should go to the Doctor? This has been going on too long Regina."

"It's just a pinched nerve or something." Red lips would kiss her forehead and linger down the side of her cheek to husk in her ear in such a way that always brought Emma's nipples to attention. "I'll be fine dulce nina."

'Or something.' Emma thought in worry. But then the next day her wife would be fine again and sometimes days after a spasm attack.

The pain and this cycle between them came and went for a few months until it was suddenly too much. Too much pain and a struggle to breathe was what had landed them in the emergency room a few days ago. The pain was treated but not the cause. Then the tests were ordered and more and more of them kept coming and the one they were here to get the results of today was what was making Emma chew the inside of her cheeks as she stared at that computer screen waiting for the file to open fully. A sour metallic taste filled her mouth making it water in a way that made her nauseous.

Regina leaned back into her then, but not fully and oh so gently Emma knew least it hurt.

It used to never hurt to touch her wife. That caramel skin and muscles used to flow and ebb under her fingers. So responsive and always wanting more. Like Emma always wanted more of the taste of Regina in her mouth. But now they had to be careful in a way that made hugging her wife like hugging a delicate glass doll she expected to break. Emma leaned forward and kissed the top of Regina's head. Firm and long she rested her lips there. She could kiss there and it did not hurt.

The screen lit up as she looked up at the PET scan results. The silhouette of her wife's torso on the screen was covered with a scatter of red and yellow dots. Some seemed to twinkle brightly on their own and others clustered together in masses. Like tangled Christmas lights. Except there were too many of them in this picture. A growing fire of tangled lights in layers the doctor scrolled through with the click of a mouse. Emma had no plug to pull to put them out.

Words like aggressive, high grade, metastasized, and Chemotherapy were said. Emma's eyes began burning, pulling Regina back more firmly against her. The grunt from her wife said it was too much pressure and Emma stepped back automatically, but not back all the way for the way Regina's hands came up to cover her own. They squeezed.

And Emma squeezed back.

Then the C-word she had been dreading the idea of came roaring out of the Doctor's mouth.

Cancer. In the bone. In her wife's lovely bones and Emma locked her knees in place to keep standing. Regina began to ask questions to the Doctor. The hard and necessary questions that Emma was running from in her mind. Calm and collected Regina was speaking as if this was news they got every day, but a controlled tone that demanded honest answers. And Emma just stood there holding those two perfect hands in her own.

Later they walked out of that office slowly hand in hand. Emma pressed the button for the elevator doors to open and swallow them up. Inside and alone for a moment Regina turned and pressed into her chest. Emma tucked her wife up under her chin and ran her hand down and through dark hair as she murmured reassurances she was not sure would prove true.

At home, Regina copied the way Emma kicked off her shoes and dropped her things by the front door. A mess Regina never made and somehow her wife managed to make it a neat one next to her pile of stuff on the floor. A dark thought crossed her mind and Emma forced it out away from her, but not before Regina noticed it.

"Emma?"

A forced smile. "It's nothing."

"No it's something." Amber eyes searched hers. "Talk to me."

And Emma shook her head as the tears she had been pushing down all day pushed right back. Regina's eyes shifted and her pet name came from those red lips making it easier to consider that idea of talking.

"Come with me dulce nina." Sure and moving Regina led the way upstairs to their bedroom.

The carpet was soft under Emma's socked feet and the cool dark of the room, their nest, welcomed them from the heat of the day. The door closed and Emma slipped right to her knees on the floor at her wife's feet. Two hands rested on the crown of her head as knowing fingers began stroking through her strands. Tingles and a wave of calm began to coarse through Emma. Regina's touch was a balm to the sting words had slapped her soul with today. Emma leaned forward carefully into those hands. She felt Regina move one to cup her chin, lifting it up. Tear bright she let herself be led by the one who held her heart.

"What was that look downstairs for, hmm?" A thumb moved to rest on her bottom lip before it went to Emma's cheek. Rubbing there it coaxed in a firm and quiet way that expected an answer.

But the one Emma had on the tip of her tongue would make the idea running amok in her mind real. She hesitated. In her hesitation she was drawn up to stand and led to the bed. Slowly Regina sat down and back against stack of strategically positioned pillows as Emma stood by watching closely. A hand patted the empty space next to a lap and just as slowly and more carefully Emma snuggled into her wife's side, resting her head in a lap as she curled up along those legs. Regina's fingers stroked her hair and cheeks. It was there Emma's wall tumbles down. She was held as her silent tears began soaking a skirt.

"My Nina?"

"I'm sorry." Emma spit out between breaths and she turned her face in time to see a look of worry pass over Regina's features before the one she was used to in this headspace she was in returned. "Regina I'm so sorry."

A soft chuckle. "If you are that kind of sorry than we need to have a different kind of talk."

Emma wiped her cheek as a small smile crept in on her face for the one blooming above her at the reminder the special intimacy between them. Regina's hand patted her butt playfully and Emma ducked her chin hiding her growing grin. Then serious again. "I am though for what I thought downstairs and for how I feel about it." Emma tried again to say what she was feeling. They had made that promise to each other. A promise that was sacred especially as they were now. "I was looking at our stuff on the floor side by side and for a second I imagined what it would be like it if wasn't like that anymore. If you were—gone."

She couldn't say the word today's office visit had triggered. The real in a reality she was just now beginning to feel. It chewed the walls of her heart and Emma moved her hand to her chest in a fist to rub the tightness away. Regina's hand covered her own. Just like in the office earlier. Emma leaned down kissing those knuckles, each one her lips had memorized long ago. And she wanted the pleasure of memorizing them all over again. Again and again on loop.

"That's a very scary thought."

"Uh huh." Emma's eyes blurred all over again. Then a croak. "I'm sorry."

"Any why are you sorry for what you feel?"

Another hard question. Emma was tired of hard questions, but had promised to answer the ones from that mouth. She was quiet for a long minute and gained a few deep breaths. "Because you're the one going through this Regina. You're the one in pain and going through the tests and everything. This is about you."

"Sit up my Nina and look at me please."

A firm instruction Emma quickly heeded. On her knees and her eyes met her wife's. She was unveiled by those eyes layer by layer and then pulled close as her chin was taken. Emma she was drawn down to rest against her wife's chest as Regina's lips consumed her own. They tasted like a warm sense of knowing and of a promise. Full red lips sucked her bottom one gently and then teeth nipped possessively before her mouth was taken over. And gently she was released a minute later as their foreheads rested together. Regina began to remind her of the rest of what that promise between their lips meant.

"This is about us, not just me. We are going through this together and we will get through this together like we do everything else."

"But—"

A finger quickly hushed her and tapped her lips in such a reassuring way that brought a calm Emma needed. One only Regina could give her. "No buts. And you can have your feelings. They are not wrong. However we are a team. We are going to fight this just like we do everything that has ever come our way. We can do anything we set our minds to together."

"That's what I'm scared of. Us not being together." Emma let out a breath she was not aware she was holding as her lashes fluttered against Regina's cheek. "There's no me without you." She could hear Regina release one as well and she opened her eyes to find a rare wet kind of amber colored ones looking at her. The kind that were scraped raw at the corners, but shined bright with hope in the middle.

Emma hung onto that hope there as she tucked in under that chin and hung onto Regina's hand. A perfect hand that had such lovely bones. And Emma brought them up to her lips to kiss once more.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

A/N – Raw and unedited, but some of what had been going through my mind lately since the news. Thanks for reading.