A/N: Merry Christmas Rie! I hope you're feeling better!
Snow is not Regina Mills' forte.
Aside from sharing a name with her former arch nemesis, the fluffy white substance has a terrible tendency to get inside her wonderfully padded boots and freeze her ankles and toes into icicles with every other step she takes.
'That was a waste of seventy dollars,' she regarded bitterly as she once again paused on the street to stomp the building layer of slush off her fancy but inefficient footwear for the about the tenth time since she'd stepped out of her house.
Typically, a wave of fellow pedestrians swarmed around her like locusts, several nearly colliding with the suddenly stationary queen in their haste to slip past her toward their own intended destinations.
Regina allowed a slight grimace to worm past her usual mask of regal indifference, cheeks stinging with the bitter cold and breath clouding into frozen mist as she sighed in exasperation.
She was the first to admit leaving the apartment to wander about New York on Christmas day was not the wisest idea she'd had in her life, but, she supposed as she slid through the worst of the crowds with only a subtle nudge of magic, her excursion would be worth it.
As luck would have it, she only had two more blocks to go before she reached the apartment building she'd had to place a beacon spell on only three weeks earlier; she enjoyed the city life – Christmas shopping crowds not withstanding – but finding the place she now lived in was still notoriously difficult for someone who was used to riding in a carriage through the woodlands toward the huge stone castle just visible through the trees.
A waft of cold air followed her into the warm building, making her shiver. Sometimes she missed the Enchanted Forest's mild climate more than she thought possible. Even Storybrooke had it better than this place.
However, neither of those places had what she was looking forward to upstairs.
One suspiciously loud elevator ride later, she reached her new front door and opened it to be accosted by the scent of gingerbread and cinnamon.
"Mom!"
Regina felt a pleased smile light up her face as Henry, bedecked in perhaps the ugliest Christmas reindeer sweater she had ever seen, darted down the entry hall to wrap his arms around her and squeeze enthusiastically. "What's this?" she laughed, pulling back to push the hair out of his eyes. "I was gone for five minutes; don't tell me the others have bored you to tears already?"
"Nah, but we've put most of the house together! We were waiting for you to put the roof on!" Henry explained hurriedly, already tugging her eagerly toward the kitchen even as she discarded her scarf and coat, seemingly oblivious to the bag in her hand.
With a fond grin, she sent the unwrapped gift sailing into the living room, where the wrapping supplies all came to life in a sudden burst of magic to do the work their mistress was now too preoccupied to do.
Most other days, Regina would have stopped in the middle of the doorway upon finding Snow White and her Prince Charming mixing cookie batter in her kitchen, Rumplestiltskin and Belle just visible in the dining room flirting with tableware, but today all it did was create a slight hitch to one eyebrow as she slid in after her busy son.
"Hey Regina!" Snow called, her greeting echoed more quietly by her husband. "You made it just in time! The last bits just got done cooling!"
Regina raised the other eyebrow, but her lips curved upward when Henry beamed up at her. "You know I had a friend who lived in a gingerbread house, right?" she asked him.
"Except she wasn't a friend," pointed out Charming.
"And she ate people," added Rumplestiltskin helpfully, earning him Regina's ire-filled glare and a slap on the arm from Belle.
"Yeah, but we're going to eat this gingerbread house, so… win-win?" Henry shrugged.
Regina carefully lifted the gingerbread roof with a snort of amusement. "Your sense of justice is a bit skewed."
"He got it from you," said a warm voice, and Regina felt her smile widen as she carefully put the gingerbread roof in its place and turned to find Henry's other mother Emma, wearing an ugly-Santa sweater that perfectly matched Henry's and holding up a very welcome cup of hot cocoa.
"You sure?" she challenged, reaching forward to pluck the mug from the blonde's fingers with a grin. "I seem to recall you making some pretty questionable judgement calls more than once."
"True, but I'm pretty sure he picked that particular skill up from you long before I came back into the picture," the Savior pointed out with a smirk.
Regina regarded her with a shrewd glance as she sipped her cocoa, licking her upper lip to rid it of the whipped cream mustache she knew had appeared with purposeful slowness, only to pause in confusion. "Cinnamon?"
"Snow's family recipe," Emma said, shrugging nonchalantly as if she had not been tracking the movement of the other woman's tongue like a hawk. "It's tradition."
"Ah, I see. Tradition like this?" Regina asked, poofing the present she'd risked frozen toes for into her hand, neatly wrapped with a bow on top, just the way she'd wanted it.
"What is this?" Emma asked, half-suspicious, as if she expected some terrible surprise to leap out of the wrapping paper. To be fair, it wouldn't be the first time, though that had not been Regina's fault; she'd had no idea Henry had found that particular curse in her study!
Regina gave her an innocent shrug. "A housewarming gift."
Emma's dubiousness grew even more obvious. "A housewarming gift from someone else who lives in the same house?"
Now came the long practiced eye-roll. "It's just a little something to commemorate the first family Christmas I-we've had in a long time," Regina said, gesturing to Henry and herself with a bland wave of her hand, but Emma noticed the slip. She always did.
Smile softening at the other's sincerity, Emma stepped back out into the empty hallway as she began to peel open her gift, Regina reluctantly slipping after her as the loud chatter surrounding them became a backdrop to the sound of ripping paper.
The troublesome downside of wrapping paper was the need to dispose of it once it was out of the way, but that was great thing about living with a couple of sorceresses; one or the other could poof the irksome garbage away as quickly as it appeared. Technically, Emma could simply poof the paper and box holding her gift away simultaneously, but old habits die hard.
Once the paper was gone and the box open, she sifted through the last of the waxy paper to reveal the softly glinting silver ornament Regina had had specially commissioned three days earlier.
The radiant glow that lit up the blonde's face was worth all the annoying pedestrians and ice-cold slush dripping down her boots any day.
"You are the biggest sap I have ever met." Emma complained as her face slowly turned red, her joy suffused with misplaced embarrassment.
Regina personally took no offense, but she glared at the other anyway. "That cost three-hundred dollars and is made of pure silver. I don't care if it's sappy; it's going on the tree whether you like it or not!"
"I thought we agreed not to get expensive gifts!" Emma protested, carefully lifting the silver ornament from its box. Charmed to be light as a feather, the lovely decoration depicted a distant millhouse on a hill, with a swan lazily floating upon a lake just before it.
Swan-Mills. Mills-Swan. Whatever. Fairy tales were all about symbolism, so it was only natural to get such a thing for the first Christmas the family spent together.
"We did agree no expensive gifts," Regina acquiesced with a mischievous smirk. "But considering you got me a five carat diamond ring, I suppose we're even."
Emma's wide, horrified gaze abruptly met hers. "You knew about-?!"
"Next time you go ring shopping, don't bring Henry," Regina shrugged, only a bit regretful at the loss of the surprise. "He can't keep a secret like that to save his life."
"Henry!" Emma wailed, scandalized, spinning around to dart back into the kitchen.
Their son's answering yelp of apology was muffled by Belle's laugh and Charming's good-natured admonishment, and Snow's cry of "Be careful of the house!"
Regina laughed, full and loud, for the first time in quite a while.
She stood in the hall, surrounded by the scent of gingerbread and cinnamon and the sound of her crazed family yelling and laughing, and she smiled.
She really was home for Christmas this year.
A/N: Ugh. I could have done better on this, but I'm surrounded by nosy relatives and this is the best I could do on short notice. I hope you guys enjoyed, and have a very Merry Christmas!
~Persephone