A/N: After abstaining from writing crack for approximately 71 days, 6 hours and 3 minutes, you-are-deceptively-complex pushed me off the wagon by asking me to write this, in response to a post by swanmillsfamilysingers on tumblr wondering how Storybrooke would handle birthdays and holidays with the Dark One.
This is kind of crack, but not entirely.
In hindsight, they probably should have figured things out when every form of broadcast media in Storybrooke was hijacked to play back-to-back episodes of My Super Sweet 16 for three days straight. However, they'd all somehow managed to miss the increasingly unsubtle hints until the magical equivalent of a giant anvil was dropped into the middle of the main street of Storybrooke.
David perched on the corner of Regina's desk and she was forced to resist the urge to throw a fireball at him. He was decidedly ornamental, much like his daughter, and maybe once upon a time she might have been willing to just sit there and appreciate the scenery. But now, Regina could only think of that spot as belonging to Emma, and letting David sit there felt like she was committing a betrayal, like she was giving up on Emma. She surreptitiously used her magic to tilt the desk slightly, and winced as he fell to the floor with a loud thud, along with a very large stack of paperwork. She really hadn't thought that through; it had taken her hours to get that paperwork done, and now she'd have to sort through it all again.
She'd tried to justify keeping Emma on as Sherriff after her evil transformation, if only so that she could continue to enjoy their weekly meetings/poorly-disguised flirtations. After all, the good burghers of Storybrooke were entirely comfortable with kind-of-reformed-evil occupying the Mayoral office, just as long as they had working electricity, running water, and roads that didn't have too many holes created by the latest monster-of-the-week. Apparently though, allowing the ultimate evil to have a badge, a gun and a set of handcuffs was a bridge too far and she'd been forced to find a replacement. The search had not been particularly difficult; good looks and bumbling incompetence had long been among the key selection criteria for Sherriff of Storybrooke, and so David had been the obvious choice.
Right now, he was failing spectacularly at persuading her that her presence was urgently required to investigate whatever the latest crisis was. She finally gave in when she remembered that she had the latest episode of How to Get Away With Murder recorded, and that the sooner she got rid of David, the sooner she could be watching it.
"So what do you think it is?"
Regina looked at the flaming monolith occupying the space that had once held Doc's new Miata and Storybrooke's only traffic light, before turning back to David. She sighed. "It's a rock. A really big one. Now, why am I here, again?"
David was eyeing the structure warily and gestured towards it. "It's clearly of magical origin and we need you to make sure that it doesn't pose a threat."
"And you couldn't have just tossed a Dwarf at it and waited to see what happened? I mean, that's what people usually do around here, isn't it? And will you look at that… there's one conveniently located just over there." She pointed to where Doc was sitting in the gutter, sobbing inconsolably.
"Normally we would, but the Dwarves have been unionised and we're not allowed to use them as crash test dummies anymore." He shrugged. "Apparently Mary Margaret signed a new workplace contract with them while she was Mayor and that was one of the conditions she agreed to."
Of course she had… "Well, I can tell you just by looking at it that Emma did this. Her magical fingerprints are all over it."
He started to ask her another question, but Regina tuned him out. She squinted at the rock; there was something odd about it. After a few moments, she realised that under the eldritch flames coursing over its surface, there was some sort of writing. She rolled her eyes as she realised what it said.
"What do you think we should do?" David had moved in closer and was now peering intently at the rock.
Regina sighed. "Here's an idea. Throw Emma a birthday party."
"What?" He cocked his head, looking for all the world like a confused golden retriever, so much like his daughter. Regina felt a pang at the momentary reminder of what they'd lost; the Emma they knew was still there in some ways, but she was harder, sharper. The core of optimism that Regina had at first found irritating and then curiously endearing was now buried deep under layers of cynicism and malevolence. The clumsiness, the goofiness, the sweetness, the things that made her quintessentially Emma… they'd all been burned away by the fires of evil and Regina missed them, missed her, even though she knew she had no right to.
She tamped down on her sentimental musings, snarking at David almost reflexively. "Sorry. I sometimes forget that they don't teach High Elvish at shepherd school." She waved a hand, magically translating the ancient text, and watched as comprehension slowly dawned on his face.
Regina pinched the bridge of her nose. All of this idiocy was bringing on a headache. She just wanted to be at home, enjoying a glass of wine and watching Famke Janssen and Viola Davis making out, and trying not to think about how much the latest round of road repairs would cost, or how many complaints she would receive in the meantime. She daydreamed for a moment about quitting the Mayoral office and moving to an island in the South Pacific. Somewhere with a swim-up bar and no outraged peasants… If she closed her eyes, she could almost taste the perfect three-olive martini. She so desperately wanted to hold onto this fantasy, but instead, she pulled out the dagger and summoned Emma.
The Dark One appeared in a puff of magic, rather closer to Regina than safe magical practice would suggest was sensible. It was strange; she seemed to be able to appear at a normal distance when anyone else summoned her. Not that Regina minded, exactly, apart from the slight possibility that they might both be turned inside out if Emma manifested any closer.
"Regina… you rang?"
Emma stepped closer, if that was even possible, her focus solely on Regina. She resisted the urge to take a small backward step; Emma was doing that disconcerting no-blink thing again. It made Regina's eyes hurt just thinking about it. It also sometimes had an effect not unlike a cobra hypnotising its prey, and her urge to step back was soon converted into a desire to lean forward. Just a little closer…
Emma blinked, finally, and the spell was broken. All of a sudden, her face split into a wide smile, and Regina was buoyed with a little hope, that her Emma, their Emma, was not lost forever. She felt a little smile of her own start to curve her lips, until she realised that Emma was looking past her, at the rock.
"Awesome! It's here, finally."
She sighed. "It is, indeed. But Emma, you couldn't have set up an Amazon wishlist like anyone else would?"
If it was possible for the Dark One to look sheepish, she did. "I was going to, but The One Ring was listed as permanently out of stock and I really want it."
"Can you at least move your gift registry out of the middle of the road? It's frightening the peasants."
Emma waved a hand dismissively. "Is that all you called me here for?" The rock reappeared outside the front of Granny's. "There. Everyone should be able to see it." She looked at her watch. "Well, if there's nothing else, I've got evil to do, and I can tell you, it sure won't do itself."
After Emma left, David said, "I'm calling dibs on the puppy."
Bastard. That was the cheapest, easiest item on the list. She frowned contemplatively; maybe she could convince Ruby and Granny to go halves with her on a Shrink Ray. If they didn't get in quick, they'd be stuck with one of the difficult or expensive gifts, like Antarctica, or a Xena: Warrior Princess movie.
Henry handed Regina a crumpled, ketchup-stained napkin.
She pursed her lips. "Henry, dear, you're old enough to throw out your own trash."
"It's not trash. This is Ma's invite list for the party." Somehow, Emma seemed to have appointed Henry as her party planning assistant and he was taking his role particularly seriously.
Regina skimmed through the list: Voldemort, The Joker, Lex Luthor, Adam Sandler, the Blue Fairy, the legal team from the MPAA… It was pretty much a who's who of evil.
She frowned as she got to the last name. "Donald Trump? I didn't realise he and Emma were friends."
Henry shrugged. "They met at an Anthony Robbins Unlimited Evil Power networking seminar a couple of months ago. I think he hooked her up with his hairdresser."
Regina winced. "Well, that solves one mystery." She really needed to have a word to Emma about lifting her hair game.
Henry pulled another couple of napkins out of his pockets. He frowned, peering intently at the messy handwriting that Regina could just see among all of the food stains.
"The planning is going really well. Ma's decided that she wants to make her grand entrance in a diamond-studded carriage drawn by eight unicorns. Ideas for entertainment so far are a jumping castle, a petting zoo, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and a selection of obscure Russian performance artists. She wants a Death Star birthday cake and she wants her birthday invitations to transform into cobras after they've been read."
"Henry, I don't understand why you're telling me this. I'm not the one organising this party."
He shrugged. "I tried telling Grandpa, and he just got this crazy look in his eyes and started asking me how much I thought a kidney would sell for on the open market."
Following her conversation with Henry, Regina was rather unsurprised when David showed up in her office a couple of days later with an enormous pile of completed paperwork.
"It's all up to date and I even triple-checked the spelling."
"I'll believe that when I see it." Regina eyed him suspiciously. He was leaning against the doorframe, fidgeting, and looking anywhere but at her. It was a mannerism that she knew all too well, one shared by both Emma and Henry. "Is there something else?"
He laughed. It came out more of a nervous high-pitched giggle. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare thirty-one million dollars lying around, would you?"
As it so happened, she did. She'd short-sold the fairy dust market at exactly the right time, and provided seed capital for Anton's new magic bean start-up company and been rewarded handsomely for it. She wasn't, however, about to let David off the hook that easily. "Thirty-one million is a lot of dollars."
"I know. But thirty-one is a lot of birthdays, and unicorns don't come cheap."
"Suppose I do have thirty-one million dollars hidden away under the mattress…" She didn't. Unfortunately, in spite of her instinctual distrust of the banking industry, she'd been forced to find a new home for all of those delightfully crisp Benjamins when her mattress had become too tall to climb onto without a ladder.
"Regina, this is kind of your fault too. All these missed birthdays we're making up for wouldn't have happened if not for your curse."
Well, he kind of had her there… "Fine. I'll draw up a cheque tomorrow. But just remember, it's a loan, not a gift."
She breathed a sigh of relief when he left. She had pretty much reached her limit of helping out the Charming family for this month. She found it quite bizarre, honestly; after decades of acrimony, suddenly she'd become their first port of call in a storm. Apparently though, she'd relaxed too soon, because less than an hour later, Mary Margaret was crying in her visitor chair.
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, instead holding out a box of tissues, which Mary Margaret took gratefully.
"Okay, dear, can you tell me what's wrong?"
Through messy, gulping sobs, Mary Margaret eventually managed to communicate that she was having trouble with Emma's cake. "I just… I just wanted to make Emma her first birthday cake." She blew her nose noisily before continuing. "I mean, it's what every mother wants, isn't it? To see the joy on their child's face at their first birthday party."
Regina sighed, and reached over to pat Mary Margaret on the back of her hand. "There there, dear. We'll figure this out, I promise."
Mary Margaret continued to sob. "I watched every episode of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade and I still can't figure out how to get the frosting right."
Mary Margaret thrust her phone at Regina; she tried to cover up her horrified reaction when she saw the absolute trainwreck of a cake that Mary Margaret had put together. It wasn't even like the Death Star was a particularly complex cake to make or decorate; it was nothing like the scale replica of the Palace of Versailles that she had made for Henry's first birthday. Regina sighed and fished a new box of tissues out of her desk drawer. It was going to be a long day.
The day of the party finally arrived, and Regina was bone tired. She'd stayed up all night doing the cake, after Mary Margaret had had another meltdown. But she figured it was all worth it when she saw Emma smiling and laughing with Henry. She made her way over to them, arriving just as Henry managed to convince Emma to put a party hat on (albeit a black one). She had just enough time to offer her a quick smile and a Happy Birthday, before Emma was swept up in a crowd of arriving guests.
After circulating among the guests for a while, and deciding that Emma's taste in friends had gone decidedly downhill since she'd turned evil, she made her way over to where David and Mary Margaret were standing, watching Emma with soft, gooey smiles and softer eyes.
"So it's all come together quite nicely," she said, before the breath was knocked out of her as Mary Margaret clamped onto her in an enthusiastic hug.
"Thank you, Regina. We couldn't have done this without you." Mary Margaret continued to cling to her as she spoke.
David winced as he watched Emma puncture the jumping castle with her stilettos. "Well there goes my security deposit."
Shrugging off Mary Margaret's embrace, Regina narrowed her eyes as she looked over at him. "You still have to pay me back, you know."
"Of course." He looked at her worriedly. "And do you think the petting zoo people will mind if we return a unicorn, a basilisk, two gryphons and a minotaur instead of a pony, three goats, a chicken and a kangaroo? I mean, they're all animals, right?"
"Right…" Her voice took on a slightly more threatening tone. "Remember, I may not have asked you to sign away your first-born, but I will collect on that debt." She was distracted by a flash of magic. "Speaking of your first-born, I think she's trying to play a game of statues with the Dwarves. Literally."
"If you touch the bottom, you have to kill the nearest boy!" Regina wasn't sure which one of Emma's imbecilic new evil posse called that out, but they all started chanting a moment later.
The chanting eventually died down and there was silence as Emma cut the cake. She insisted on using the Sith Lightsaber she'd received as a gift, which turned out to be a less than sensible option. Upon seeing the two halves of the table that Emma had sliced through after destroying the entire cake, the crowd was suddenly a flurry of activity. When the dust settled, Tom Clark, who'd been caught mid-sneeze, was the only person standing within 10 feet of Emma. Until he wasn't. Regina shielded her eyes from the intense burst of heat and light that had taken Tom's place, but she was still seeing spots a few seconds later. As her vision cleared, she saw Emma open her hand with a flourish to reveal a small, but flawless diamond.
As the crowd began to mill around Emma again, Regina slipped away. She couldn't stomach any more of this farce. She found a quiet spot out on the balcony and tried to collect her thoughts. She wanted to be happy for Emma. She really did. After being alone for so long, Emma was surrounded by friends, by people who seemed to understand her and share common ground. But Regina couldn't help but feel a certain sadness at this development, because it seemed that there wasn't any room for her. And when she looked more closely at her feelings, she realised that she missed the Emma Swan who'd fought to be her friend against all odds. She missed the tentative overtures, the softness disguised by firm callouses, the smile like the sun coming out. She missed that sense of potential that had somehow always existed between the two of them, that unexpected alchemy that somehow transformed them both into something more.
She was still brooding over this when she felt Emma's unmistakeable presence behind her, a few minutes later. Regina continued to stare out into the night, not turning to face Emma. "What are you doing here, Emma?"
"Making the most of my birthday."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but the party's inside." Regina tried not to let a hint of bitterness creep into her voice.
Emma sidled up to her, leaning on the railing next to her, their shoulders just barely brushing.
"So, I went to Voldemort's birthday last month, and I kind of wanted to top that." She shrugged. "And I totally did. Everyone's talking about how I raised the bar. They'll be talking about this party for years."
Regina offered her a tight smile, before looking away again. "I'm glad."
"But it kind of feels empty, you know. I've barely said two words to you or Mom or Dad all day, and the only reason I got to spend any time with Henry was because he was my unicorn carriage driver."
She finally turned to look at Emma properly. "Emma…" She started to speak, but Emma held up a hand to silence her.
"I haven't exactly had the greatest run of birthdays. The first twenty-seven were kind of shitty, really. And then, on my twenty-eighth birthday, Henry shows up and I don't know quite what to think, and then I met you and I just remember thinking that all my birthdays had come at once." She smiled and shook her head. "And then you were completely awful to me."
"I'm sorry."
"But that changed, and eventually I realised that I got pretty much everything I'd ever wished for. But then, my next birthday, I think I was somewhere in the Enchanted Forest, probably eating Chimera meatloaf and trying not to die. And the one after that, I was in New York and… and this is the first year I've had all of you together."
Looking at Emma, for the first time in a while, Regina felt a genuine sense of hope. If she ignored the clothes, the hair, the weird eyebrows, she could see Emma Swan, see a little bit of that characteristic softness again. The dark was there, certainly, but it was more like the dark of a storm than of unrelenting night. If they could just weather this for a little while longer, maybe the sun would come out again. She reached out, tentative at first, to take Emma's hand in her own, emboldened when Emma made no move to pull away. She stroked the ridges of Emma's knuckles with the pad of her thumb, and when Emma smiled, she answered her in kind. That was how Henry found them.
"Mom, Ma. There you are. Everyone's been looking for you." He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and frowned. "Pennywise is due to start in five minutes, and then we've got the gift bags to hand out. You'd better hurry up."
"Come here, kid. It's my birthday, and if I want to take a few minutes out, then that's my prerogative. And right now, I say that I want to hug my kid."
Emma extracted herself from Regina's hold and reached over to ruffle Henry's hair. "Come on, kid." She pulled him into a hug and then looked up at Regina gesturing at her to join them.
Regina closed her eyes and allowed herself to savour this moment. Her son and her… Emma.
They stayed that way for a while, before Emma looked at her watch. "I've got about two hours left of my birthday, and I think I'd rather spend it with you two and Mom and Dad."
When they headed back inside they were greeted by a near-empty room and a very puzzled-looking David and Mary Margaret.
David frowned. "What happened? Everyone was here a moment ago, and then… I don't know where the party went."
"It's okay, Dad. Everyone who matters is here."