So, I said I was going to probably start a new story, but I'm still not too sure about this one. I literally have so many half-written first chapters for stories, but I finished this one, so we'll give it a shot.

The next chapter for Haven't Met You Yet will be out soon, I promise :)

Chapter I - Changes

June 28, 2011

The house is dark when Emma stumbles in at one in the morning. She quietly kicks off her shoes and sets her keys down on the entry way table before tip toeing through the darkness. It's relatively silent throughout the house and Emma thanks god for that. The last thing she needed was a pissed off-

Flick

The light in the kitchen turns on and Emma's staring wide eyed at her fiancée, sitting at the kitchen table. Regina's arms are crossed and she's glaring daggers at the blonde who gulps so loudly, she swears it echoes off the walls.

"You're late, AGAIN." Regina grumbles as she stares down Emma. "By four hours."

"I'm sorry, babe." Emma slurs, clearly intoxicated. "The dinner thing ran like late."

"Are you drunk?" Regina scoffs, shaking her head.

Emma lets out a breathy laugh, as she slightly stumbles forward, balancing herself on the back of a chair. "Pfft. No."

"Right, and I'm the queen of England." Regina rolls her eyes. "I can't believe you thought that your co-workers and alcohol were more important than the results from my ultrasound. Which need I remind you, you were 'too busy to attend'."

"Regina, don't do this." Emma groans, her head pounding.

Regina raises an eyebrow at her and Emma mutters, "Don't be such an evil queen."

"I'm sorry, Swan. Did you have something you wanted to share with me?"

"I don't want to fight, Gina! I'm sorry, okay?" Emma whines. "Please don't be mad at me."

"I'm way past being mad at you, Emma."

"Babe, seriously? Come on! It's just the hormones! Can we please just-" Emma starts but is immediately cut off by Regina standing up and narrowing her eyes.

"JUST the hormones? You really think I'm mad at you because of pregnancy hormones? I'm mad at you because this was a meaningful visit and you once again decided that drinking with friends was more important than us, more important than our child!" Regina growls and Emma puts her hands up defensively.

"I said I was sorry! Damn! What more do you want from me!?" Emma exclaims, but Regina was way too disappointed with Emma to even think about accepting such a forced apology.

"Wow, okay. Glad to see where your priorities are." Regina says as she brushes past Emma, turning to look at her. "And I shouldn't have to expect anything out of you. You, as a soon-to-parent and spouse, shouldn't have to be told how to be just that."

"Don't do that. Don't fucking low blow me, Regina." Emma states sternly as she follows her fiancée into the hallway. "I am working my fucking ass off for you and our kid. And you're letting your hormones and emotions cloud your judgement."

"FOR GOD'S SAKE, EMMA. IT IS NOT THE HORMONES. IT'S YOU!" Regina screams. "You're acting like a fucking teenager with zero responsibilities. You're acting like my feelings don't matter. Well they do, and I didn't even get to share the news with you because you were out at a 'dinner thing' getting drunk with your work pals for 6 hours! You PROMISED to be home by 9 so I could tell you something that you, as a parent, would want to know, and you didn't even show!"

"And I said I was sorry!"

"Sorry doesn't cut it anymore, Emma! It's like this all the time! It's like you feel like you need to have fun and be free before you're tied down. You're always out, you always come home late. And I can't do it alone, Emma! I can't and I'm sick of it." Regina shakes her head before heading towards the staircase, feeling Emma's strong grip on her wrist. "Just leave me alone."

"Regina..." Emma starts to say, but Regina yanks her arm away and tells Emma to once again leave her alone. "Fine, if that's how you want to be."

Emma grabs her keys and storms out of the house. She gets in her car and peels out of the driveway before speeding down the street. She grips the steering wheel tightly as she continues blazing through the neighborhood streets.

"You're not responsible, Emma. You were late, again, Emma. You're never there for me, Emma! You're such a child!" Emma mocks, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

Emma feels her phone vibrate in her pocket and she pulls it out, seeing Regina calling her. She groans loudly before answering it, using her spare hand to steer the car. "What!?"

'Where are you going?'

"I'm leaving you alone, as requested." Emma scoffs as she turns a sharp corner, the tires screeching against the pavement.

'You're drunk, Emma. Just come home, you shouldn't be driving.'

"Oh, now you want me there?" Emma says in disbelief.

'Emma...' Silence. 'Please.'

Emma just sighs loudly as she waits for Regina to say something else. She turns on to another street and presses the gas pedal down, flooring her car at high speeds as she enters the highway ramp. She looks over her shoulder, making sure she was clear to merge when she hears Regina's voice again.

'Emma, seriously. It's not safe for you to be out there right now in the state that you're in.'

Emma chuckles dryly as she merges into a lane, not noticing how fast she was really going. Or that she was actually swerving. The road was wet from the rainfall and Emma's completely unaware that her tires were on the brink of hydroplaning.

"I'll be fine." Emma says, hanging up abruptly. She looks down at her speedometer and realizes that she was flying down the highway at 90mph. "Shit."

In a drunken instinct, she slams on her brakes. The wheels lock and her car starts drifting towards the median.

"Fuck. Fuck!" Emma screams as she tries to counter steer her car away from crashing. "Fu-"

Her car slams into the median, orange dust from the air bags filling her car as it flips over onto the other side of incoming traffic.

David is the first to get the call of the rollover accident on the highway. He immediately dispatches and safely hurries to the accident site, his heart dropping as he sees the totaled car. The car that he had gotten for his daughter on her 18th birthday.

"Emma." David breathes out as he hops out of his patrol car, running as fast as he could over towards the vehicle. The ambulance was already at the scene, cutting open Emma's car and trying to remove her body. He spots a civilian and rushes over to them to get a witness statement. "What happened?"

"I was driving on the highway when all of the sudden this car comes barreling over the median wall." The witness points. "The car was going really fast, they hit the wall about 50 feet down that way on the other side and flew all the way over here."

"Thank you." David says as he hands them paperwork to fill out. He then runs over to the car, examining the damage. The entire windshield was shattered, the front of the car completely crunched in. The driver's side of the car was on the ground as the car lay sideways.

He watches as the firefighters finally get the passenger side of the car open and pull his daughter out from the wreckage. The EMTs place her on a backboard and lift her onto the gurney.

"What's the status?"

"White, blonde, female. Around 25 or 30. Alive, but in critical condition as far as we can tell." The EMT states and David feels his heart drop into his stomach. He looks at Emma who was covered in blood. She had a visible laceration on her forehead and she lay limp like a rag doll on the gurney. "We'll have to get her information once her personal items are retrieved."

"That's my daughter, I can give you all of her information that you need, now."

"Okay." The EMT replies as he quickly grabs the paperwork.

"Emma Swan. Born October 22, 1988. Her blood type is AB positive and she has zero allergies to medication." David answers before taking another look at a very beat up Emma. "Please take care of her."

The EMT nods as he sets the clipboard down and continues hooking Emma up to an IV drip and the vitals monitor. David tears himself away from the ambulance and back to the vehicle. The other officers were already photographing the scene, placing numbered markers on the ground near certain items from the wreckage.

"Chief Swan?" A deputy says, clearing his throat. "The personal effects of the victim."

The deputy holds out Emma's cell phone and wallet and David takes them. "Thank you."

The ambulance throws its sirens on and pulls away from the accident site and David looks around the highway before turning back to his deputy.

"I need you to get any other witness statements. Process the photo evidence in. When the news comes, tell them the victim is still unidentified. I need to go." David commands and the deputy nods in understanding. David pats him on the shoulder before hopping back in his cruiser, following the ambulance to the hospital.

As he follows, he sighs loudly, reaching for his phone. He finds the person he needs to call before putting the phone on speaker. It rings a few times before the line connects.

'Hello?'

"I need you to meet me at the hospital."

'Wha- why?'

"Emma was in an accident."

They've been holed up in the hospital waiting room for hours. The sun was rising outside and everyone was just sitting with tears streaming down their faces.

When David arrived at the hospital, he was given the news; Emma would need surgery and was placed under a medically induced coma until further notice. She had punctured a lung, broken multiple ribs, and suffered severe head trauma and a compound fracture of her ulna. David had also received the news that her BAC was way above the legal limit and that they were lucky she was still alive.

So they played the waiting game. Emma could be in surgery for hours due to all of her injuries, and David and Mary-Margaret were praying their daughter was alright. Everyone was distraught, everyone except for Regina who sat in the corner as the guilt plagued her.

Not that Regina wasn't completely torn to pieces that her fiancée was almost killed. She definitely was, but she also felt like all of this was her fault and she couldn't help but blame herself for the situation Emma was currently in.

"Hey..." Mary-Margaret says as she sits down next to a sobbing Regina. Regina leans her head on MM's shoulder while Mary-Margaret holds her tight. "It's okay."

"It's- my- fault." Regina manages to get out in between sobs. "I- I- I let her leave."

"No, no. None of that." Mary-Margaret hushes while brushing her hand through Regina's hair. "Emma knows better than to drive drunk."

"She- she- left because of me, though." Regina cries. "It's my fault."

"It is not your fault." Mary-Margaret states. "Do you want to tell me exactly what happened?"

Regina nods as she tries to get her sobs and breathing evened out. She sniffles a few times before looking at her future mother-in-law. "We got in a fight. Emma promised to be home by 9 because I had news for her and she ended up getting drunk with her co-workers instead. She didn't show up until 1. I got so mad and upset, I just wanted some time alone instead of listening her spew out a million 'sorry's that she didn't mean. And so she left. I tried to get her to come back, but she just hung up on me."

"Oh, honey." Mary-Margaret tries consoling the brunette. "It'll be okay."

Regina wakes up the next morning to David gently tapping her shoulder. He tells her that Emma was out of surgery and could have visitors even though she was still unconscious. Regina follows him and Mary-Margaret into Emma's room.

Her heart drops as soon as she sees her fiancée laying there. There was a bandage wrapped around her head, cuts and bruises painted across her face. Her arm had been casted and it hung gently from the ceiling in an elevation harness.

Regina can feel tears rolling down her cheek as she walks over to the edge of the hospital bed, listening to all of the machines beep and work to keep Emma alive. She grabs a hold of Emma's pale hand, stroking her thumb over her knuckles as she silently cries.

"Do you remember when we hated each other?" Regina asks an unresponsive Emma. "You were that annoying college roommate I got stuck with my freshman year."

Regina chuckles and shakes her head. "And then somewhere after that first year, I remember thinking 'wow, she's not terrible, but still pretty bad.' And you always bugged me by asking me out and I always rejected you, thinking you were just doing it to annoy me. You were like that."

She lays her head down on the hospital bed as she continues holding onto Emma's hand. "And then one day, as a joke I said yes. You were so shocked and turned into a bumbling idiot. You told me you were kidding, but since I had agreed, you still decided to take me on a date."

David and Mary-Margaret sit and watch as Regina talks to Emma, their hearts breaking with each word she spoke.

"And so you did, and you actually put a lot of effort into it. I was so surprised that you were actually this really caring person because you always played it off like you gave zero fucks in the world. I remember kissing you for that first time and I just felt my whole world shift. We've been inseparable since."

Regina lifts her head and looks at Emma's hand, her thumb brushing over the tattoo on Emma's ring finger. "The day you proposed, I was absolutely ecstatic. We had been together for three and a half years and you gave me this really pretty ring. But then you told me, and I quote, 'This ring is just a symbol of how much I love you, but I want to do something to prove to you that I'll love you forever'. That's when you showed me the design for our tattoos. So simple, yet so meaningful. They became a part of us, a part of our love."

Regina sighs as she lays her head back down. "And then we got pregnant. We weren't expecting it, and I'm still having a hard time believing it. But there's no one else I'd rather have done this with than you."

She squeezes Emma's hand lightly, feeling the heavy onset of tears starting to form in her eyes. "I'm sorry I got so mad at you. I know that you were just trying to get that party phase you never really had in our college years out of your system. I didn't mean to push you away and cause you to leave drunk last night. I'm so sorry, Emma. But know this, I love you. I love you, and I can't wait for you to wake up so I can tell you the good news."

Regina can feel Emma's hand squeeze hers back and she gasps loudly, lifting her head to see Emma's eyes start to flutter open.

"Emma!?" Regina breathes out as she stands up and hovers over her fiancée.

"Mills?" Emma coughs through a sore throat.

The nickname caught Regina off guard. Emma hasn't called her Mills since they hated each other in college. She looks over at Emma's parents with a confused look on her face.

"Dude, did I get hit by a truck? And why are you here? What happened to 'we're not friends, Swan'?" Emma groans in pain.

"Shit." Regina mumbles when everything finally clicks. "Emma, do you know what year it is?"

"Uhm yeah, I do." Emma states 'matter-of fact'ly. "It's 2006."

So here's the first chapter. If you'd like for this story to continue, let me know!