A/N: this is my first one-shot that hasn't completely sucked, so I thought I'd share. Please review and tell me how I did, and enjoy!
Disclaimer: I unfortunately own nothing.
The storm raged outside, and Henry stood in the kitchen, watching the apple tree in the backyard thrash in the wind as his moms cleaned up after dinner. "Henry, time for bed, it's getting late!"
"Yes, mom. Thanks for dinner, it was great! And thanks for coming Emma." He offered both women a wide smile and tight hugs before bounding up the stairs to brush his teeth.
The two women worked for a few minutes in silence, Emma washing and Regina drying, before the brunette spoke, hoping to make casual conversation.
"So, Henry tells me you have quite an amazing voice." Emma blushed. "I'm alright, I guess. He was just being sweet."
Regina chuckled at this. "I'm sure you're just being modest. You know, he loves when I sing to him during a storm, because it helps him fall asleep, but my voice just isn't all that great, and it doesn't quite have that soothing effect I wish it did. Would you- would you maybe like to go up and sing to him? I can finish up here."
Emma smiled, elated at the chance to spend a few more moments with her son, and ran upstairs to find him lying on his bed, wide awake. "Emma, I can't sleep."
"I know kid, the storm's loud, but you have to try. You have school tomorrow!"
Henry looked embarrassed all of a sudden. "Will you sing to me?" he asked in a small voice.
Emma smiled. "Of course, kid. What would you like me to sing?"
"Anything. You pick."
Henry lied down facing the window, and the blonde began tracing soothing circles across his back as she sang.
"Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep, and then leave me alone. Don't try to wake me in the morning, cuz I will be gone. Don't feel bad for me, I want you to know, deep in the cell of my heart, I will feel so glad to go. Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep..."
Emma trailed off as she felt Henry's breathing even out beneath her hand, and she stood carefully, tiptoeing so as not to wake the boy again.
Once outside the boy's room, she shut the door quietly and turned to find Regina leaning just to the left of the entrance, looking embarrassed she had been caught listening. "That was- quite beautiful, Miss Swan."
"Oh, please, just call me Emma after hours."
Regina nodded. "Emma."
They walked downstairs, and Regina held up a glass container of her apple cider, motioning for Emma to sit down as she poured them each a glass. Once she handed the blonde her drink, she sat down next to her, taking a couple of small sips to relieve the tension in the room. "That song..." she finally began, "it's so sad. But so beautiful. Where did you learn to sing like that?"
Emma cleared her throat and blushed slightly. "I, uh, when I was in the system, I made friends with a girl, Sam, who suffered from severe depression. Even when she was feeling terrible, she still tried to make everyone feel better. I uses to have these terrible nightmares about trying to break out of that place, because there was a man there who- well, it's not really important what he did, but he was a monster."
"We wrote that song together, and she would sing it to me every night as a reminder that we'd all get out of there soon. A few days after her 15th birthday, she committed suicide. I was 13, and scared out of my mind that I had lost my best friend, and for a while I thought that that was what she meant, that was the way out of that hellhole we were trapped in."
Emma paused and pulled her knees up to her chest, putting her head against them and continued speaking, her voice muffled by her denim-clad legs. "It was a dark time for me. I kept telling myself that I would be strong for her, and all the other kids in the system. I taught myself to sing, and I began singing that song to the other girls, hoping to keep them from making the same mistake Sam did."
"Then I got out, fell in love with this guy - or, at least, I thought I had - and became a criminal because of him. We stole for a living, lived in our car, and before I knew it the 17-year-old me found herself in jail for crimes he committed before he met me, alone, abandoned, and pregnant with Henry. I knew that if I asked to keep him they would just put him into the system, and I just couldn't do that to my own kid, not after all I'd been through there. It's too brutal. No child should have to go through what I did. So I put him up for adoption, and I honestly think that was the only good decision I've ever made in my life, save for following him here and staying."
Regina stared at her sadly, her knuckles white from gripping the glass. She had always seen something broken inside Emma, but hearing all this finally helped her understand why the woman was the way she was: stubborn, independent, distrusting of people, and hard to reach. Much like herself, in fact.
"That man you were telling me about, the one in the foster system, did he hurt you, Emma?" She searched the woman's face for something, anything, praying that her assumptions weren't true. After a moment, Emma looked up at her, tears forming in her eyes.
"Yes. He- he beat me, raped me. He treated me like trash, starting from the time I was eight or nine, and I was too scared to stand up to him."
"Oh god, Emma."
"So from then on, I told myself I couldn't trust any man that came along. But once I got out, I was really on my own. At least in the system I had people around me for support, people who understood what I was going through. When I was finally released, I met Neal, Henry's biological father. We fell in love, I lived in a car with him, and he made me a promise one day. He told me to pick any point on a map, and that's where we'd go."
"I used to think that we would get married. Even before he promised me Tallahassee, I had this dream. I always thought that we would drive to some cute little shop out alongside the road and buy a T-shirt with a bowtie and suit for him, and I would wear my little white sundress. I always dreamed that we would go to some little church in the middle of nowhere and get married, nobody there, just him, me and the pastor. We didn't have much money then so he would just tie a little piece string around my finger and I would do the same for him, and when eventually got enough money, we could buy real rings, ones that would stay on our fingers forever."
"Then he promised me Tallahassee and I had all these visions of a big white wedding, but I mean, what teenage girl doesn't? And not one with a lot of people, either, just one with a real white dress, a real wedding cake, real rings. A part of me knew it would never happen, that he would never want to pay for all of that - we'd be working too hard already so we could buy our house - but I still wanted it. I still wished it would come true, even after he broke me."
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Emma smiled sadly. Looking into her eyes, Regina knew a part of her, the little girl who had her childhood stolen away, still wanted that dream to be a reality. "Oh Emma," Regina managed to stutter out, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Without thinking, Regina gathered the blonde into a hug, holding her close and stroking her hair. She felt the woman freeze between her arms, shocked at the contact the usually-emotionless mayor was making.
The brunette pulled back quickly, not wanting to push her boundaries. They found their faces close together, and Regina saw the sadness floating in those emerald-green eyes that were only inches from her own.
Soft lips brushed together, and Regina could feel hot tears from Emma's face running onto her own, and reached up to brush them away with her thumbs. She pulled back once again and asked, "Are you ok?"
Emma nodded, and instead of going back for another intimate moment, Emma simply rested her head on the mayor's shoulder, and Regina wrapped her arms around her, holding her close. Opening her mouth, she cringed slightly as the tune came out out-of-pitch. "Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep. I'm tired and I want to go to bed..."
She felt Emma sniff and smile beside her, shifting into a better position before joining in, her voice slightly broken from crying, but still beautiful. "Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep, and then leave me alone. Don't try to wake me in the morning, cuz I will be gone. Don't feel bad for me, I want you to know, deep in the cell of my heart, I will feel so glad to go..."
Regina placed a kiss on the blondes forehead and smiled. "See, I told you I can't sing."
Emma laughed. "You're not that bad" she said with a cheesy grin on her face, clearly lying.
"Um, do you want to maybe...stay here tonight? It's stormy out, and I don't want you to get caught out there if it's dangerous."
Emma smiled. "I'd like that very much."
The two women stood up, and Emma followed Regina up to the bedroom. They stripped down to tanktops and underwear on their respective sides of the bed before climbing under the covers and scooting close, not wanting to freeze in the large, cold house. Regina wrapped her arms around Emma, spooning her, and began humming the tune once again, rubbing her thumb in circles on the back of Emma's neck, just like Emma had done for Henry earlier, and watched as the woman's breathing became regulated and heavy with sleep.
Regina slept soundly that night, drifting off to the melody of the rain, her own humming, and the sound of the woman sleeping beside her, a pale body encircled in olive-toned arms, all their nightmares temporarily forgotten.