A child's scream pierces the thick fog of slumber hovering over Regina.
Years of instinct land bare feet on plush carpet with the duvet thrown back, heedless of where it lands, her robe slipping across silk-clad shoulders as she stumbles from the bed. She uses the doorjamb to swing herself into the hallway, heading for her son's room.
His door is closed instead of cracked open, odd for him, but not a deterrent. She bursts into the room, calling, "Henry?"
"What?" Her son sits up in bed, and in the pale light of early morning she can see him bare chested as the covers fall away form him. "Mom?"
His voice is deep, too deep (and since when did he sleep with no shirt on?), but the screams continue and they're not coming from Henry's room. Roland, maybe? Then, a warm presence behind her, a large hand drifting across her back in passing as Robin murmurs, "Alexia," in her ear.
Who?
She follows him down the hallway, past Roland's room, to the spare bedroom. He slaps the light switch as he crosses the threshold, and Regina stops in the doorway behind him, one hand frozen on the doorknob, the other clutching the doorjamb as her knees go weak.
This is no longer the empty room she remembers. Now it's painted in soft yellows and greens. Toys litter the edges of the room, a clear path exposing white carpet leading to the bed where a small girl (she can't be more than three or four) sits in a swamp of blankets, clutching a brown and white sock monkey to her chest.
She looks exactly as Regina imagined lying in bed last night, tucked up against Robin, her secret still buried within her, presence unknown to all except her. Almost the same as she'd imagined, she realizes as she looks closer. The dimples tucked into the corners of her cheeks, bright blue eyes shining behind watery eyelashes, those are the same, but the mess of dark hair hanging to her shoulders was something she hadn't considered, should have considered given how stubborn the Mills genes are, and the jut of her chin as her cries taper into whimpers is all Regina.
Robin sits on the twin bed in front of her, rubbing his hands up and down her arms, wiping his thumbs across her cheeks to catch her tears, his voice low and steady as he speaks to her despite the faint crease of panic gathered around his eyes.
"You're ok, Lex, you're ok. I'm here. Mum's here." He brushes her bangs away from her forehead, glances back at Regina, and frowns when he sees she's still in the doorway. "Regina?"
Teary blue eyes find hers, and the child's warbled, "Mommy?" snaps her out of her paralysis, propelling her to the bed.
"Shh, I'm here," Regina says, and gathers the little girl to her chest, tucking her head beneath her chin and rocking her. "It's all right."
It's not all right, not even close, because she doesn't remember any of this. She'd only taken the damn test yesterday for God's sake. How has she forgotten four years? How could she forget her child's birth, first steps, first words, the first time she slept through the night? This must be a dream (has to be a dream), just her overtaxed imagination playing tricks on her the night after discovering an unexpected pregnancy. But she can feel the child's magic pulsing in agitated waves below her skin, rising up and calling to her own magic as she holds her close. No dream, no trick. She's holding her daughter. She's holding her daughter and crying with her.
Regina tears her eyes away from Alexia, Lex, and meets Robin's gaze. His head is cocked to the side, faint lines etched across his forehead. He knows something is wrong, she realizes, and a small bubble of relief rises inside her. Whatever is happening, they can figure it out.
Henry looms in the doorway, now dressed in a heather gray Yale tshirt and black plaid pajama pants. He yawns into the back of his hand and stretches. "Everything ok in here?" He's tall now, fills the doorway as he leans into the room with his hands braced against the wall in the hallway, and the last of his baby fat is gone, stretched across his new adult sized frame.
She's missed so much.
"We're fine. Just a nightmare," Robin says, but he shares a pointed look with her son that pops the delicate bubble of hope inside her ribcage.
"Another jump?"
Robin nods once, and their strange words and silent conversation ignite a rush of irritation, the urge to scream and yell and demand answers from her son and her soulmate, but Lex has begun to calm down, continues to sniffle against her shoulder as Regina smooths her hand over her sleep-tangled hair and murmurs comforting nonsense in her ear.
"We need to talk," Regina says.
"Yes, we do. Henry, why don't you take Lex downstairs and start breakfast? Maybe Roland will wake up when he smells the waffles cooking."
"Sure. Let's go," Henry says. He waves at his sister, but Lex's grip on her silken lapel remains unwavering at Henry's beckoning. He steps into the room, kneeling beside the bed and winking at Regina. "Hey, Lex, Mom's not going anywhere. I promise she'll be downstairs with us by the time we're done making chocolate chip waffles, ok?"
The toddler sits up a little straighter at the mention of chocolate, then leans back into Regina's embrace and asks, "You promise not to go away?"
Regina's breath catches in her chest. Her daughter fears her sudden absence, and deep down she knows it's her fault, something she's done that she can't remember, knows her actions have caused this pain on her daughter's face, but she can't promise to not do something she's forgotten. She pulls her closer for a brief squeeze, and then pushes her back, cups her chin with her hand, and looks her daughter straight in the eye. "We are family," she says. "And the one thing family never does is abandon each other."
This seems to satisfy her. She looks back to Robin, who smiles and gives an encouraging nod, telling her to go on downstairs with Henry. He'll make sure Regina doesn't miss breakfast.
"Come on, kid. I'll give you a piggyback ride," Henry says. He turns around and allows his sister to clamber onto his back, limbs wrapped around his torso, sock monkey slung over his shoulder to dangle against his chest. "Oof. Did you eat bricks for dinner last night?"
Lex giggles, protests, "No! Giddy up!" and then they're off, out the door and pounding down the stairs, delighted shrieks bouncing back to the end of the hallway.
"Roland sleeps through all of this?" Regina asks.
"Like the dead," Robin says, and rolls his eyes before scrubbing his face with his hand.
Regina's smile is fleeting, shimmering out of existence as Alexia and Henry's voices fade. "Curse, potion, or trauma?" She needs to know what happened so she can fix it.
"None of the above," Robin says. He folds his hands in his lap. "You're jumping through time."
She barks out a laugh. Time travel is impossible. Or at least improbable, now, after Emma and Hook's sojourn to the past years ago. "You can't be serious," she says, but then his face twists into the same pained expression he'd worn when he was explaining his decision to choose duty and honor over love, and the small throb of a headache pulses at the base of her skull.
"I'm afraid so. If I'd realized you'd jumped again I would have warned you before you saw Alexia."
The headache expands, reaching around the sides of her head to grip her temples in a vice. "Start from the beginning, please."
Robin takes a deep breath and sighs. Explains how the Dark One succeeded in cleaving himself from the dagger, ripping a hole in space and time (please ask Emma or Henry the particulars, he begs, as the physics still boggle him as much as the magic), and requiring Emma and Regina to save the town after the Dark One disappeared with his paramour.
"It was quite heroic, really," Robin says, rubbing his thumb along his jawline, staring at the floor. "There was a point where we all thought we were doomed. The town was being hit by extreme weather augmented by dark magic, and then the clock tower exploded and some kind of vortex opened up, similar to Zelena's time portal. You pushed Emma out of the way, and then... you were gone."
This is what she's done, this is the horrible deed that has her daughter fearing that she will turn around one day and her mother will not be there, that keeps her soulmate from looking her in the eye. It's too much. Her headache pounds an angry tattoo against her skull, and a newly familiar watery, sloshing sensation settles in her middle.
"But I'm here," she says. She swallows hard, tries to even out her breathing. "I didn't die."
"No, you didn't," Robin agrees, shaking his head, meeting her gaze, "But the next morning I woke up with you in bed next to me with no memory of what had happened. Or I should say that to your recollection, Emma was the one who'd disappeared into the portal, and that had happened two months ago from your perspective. And then four days later you'd jumped again, but this time from three years after the event."
The quivering feeling in her stomach won't be placated. Regina claps a hand to her mouth and bolts for the nearest bathroom. She can hear Robin calling her name over the hollow sound of her retching, and then his hand is warm and heavy on her back, rubbing soothing circles between her shoulder blades. When she's finished, has nothing left to give, she grips the side of the bowl with one hand and reaches forward with the other to hit the tab on the side of the tank.
Her headache remains insistent, but at least her stomach is appeased for the moment. She scoots back against the wall, pulls her knees to her chest and crosses her arms over her stomach, and oh, God, what if this—time travel—has done something to her and her... condition?
Robin's attention is focused on filling a small paper cup with water. Regina presses a hand low on her abdomen, and sighs in relief as she feels a tiny spark, like a static charge, respond to her magic.
"Here you go," Robin says, handing her the cup of water, and sitting next to her, mirroring her pose. "I'm sorry. You've never reacted like that or I'd have—"
"Don't worry about it," Regina says. She drains the cup and then crumples the waxy paper in her hand.
"Are you well?"
"Yes, I'm fine, I'm just..." She hasn't told her Robin yet, hasn't told anyone, doesn't want anyone to know because then it would be real, and she's not sure if she's ready for it to be real yet. Downstairs she can hear Henry telling Alexia to stir the batter extra careful while he pours in the chocolate chips. This is already more real than she can handle. "I'm pregnant," she whispers to her knees. "With Alexia, I think."
"Oh," he breathes. "You've never jumped from that time period before. Never while pregnant."
"That's probably a good thing. Either the time travel or the pregnancy isn't agreeing with me. I feel like I've had a building dropped on me."
Robin chuckles. "Well I can't attest to any of those scenarios personally, but I do remember you sleeping and vomiting your way through most of your first trimester. How far along are you?"
"I just found out yesterday. I haven't even told you yet," she admits. It's still strange to think about the tiny life quickening in her womb. She's had little time to process the news. They weren't planning on expanding their family, but they hadn't taken precautions against it either, under the assumption she couldn't have children.
"I know you're nervous," Robin says, "But I promise you, I was—I am the happiest man in this realm or any other once you work up the courage to tell me."
"Really?"
"Really," he says, leaning close, pressing his forehead against hers, and it's awkward with the way they're sitting on the floor of the bathroom, but familiar in a way that calms the anxiety buzzing in her body. "Come with me."
He leads her into their bedroom, closing the door behind her, and walks over to her nightstand, pulling a small black leather bound book from the drawer. "This is what you write in when you jump. It was Paige's idea. Saw it in some movie. It seems to help."
"Paige?" Regina asks, crossing her arms as she sits on the bed. "As in Jefferson's daughter?"
Robin clears his throat. "Also as in Henry's girlfriend."
"Girlfriend?" Her eyebrows reach for her hairline. "And how does Jefferson feel about that? How do I feel about that?"
"He loves his daughter, and you love your son. You're cordial in public. Not important right now, though. This," he says, placing his hand atop the book, "Might help you make sense of things."
Regina reaches for the book and flips to the first page. Her loopy scrawl fills each page, entries dated twice, presumably with the current date and the date of wherever, whenever she came from. Most of the notes are reminders for what is happening in this time period, thoughts jotted down from domestic issues ("Remember to send Henry's college care package tomorrow so he'll get it before finals") to possible solutions for the time jumping ("Have Emma check the soil composition below the ruins of the clock tower").
"This has been going on for years," she says under her breath as the pages flutter beneath her fingers.
"Two years for us," Robin says, sitting next to her on the bed.
"I just—I can't believe this is happening."
"Whenever you jump from before the accident, you say the same thing right after you find out."
"And when I jump from after?"
"You start listing the varied and increasingly disturbing ways you're going to make Gold pay for causing this mess."
She chuckles. That sounds like something she'd do, and a flare of annoyance shoots through her at Gold's carelessness. "I'm guessing you still have no idea what's causing different versions of myself to appear here."
Robin shifts so that he's facing her, his body perpendicular with hers. "Actually, we do have a theory. We think your future self, our current Regina, was sucked into an alternate universe and is trying to get back, but is having trouble crossing the lines between the realities, bumping other versions of herself into our timeline."
"What does that mean? Is she in my time now?"
He shakes his head, shrugging. "On the rare occasions you jump from the past, you're from my timeline, and those are the encouraging days because she's found the correct line, just the wrong time."
Regina sighs and closes the book. Later she'll read about the future, the littler inner workings of her life at this point in time that will allow her to function, but right now she just wants to go home to her bed, her Robin, her time. "How long will I be here?"
"I don't know. Sometimes you're here for a day, often longer."
"Oh, God," she says.
"Hey, hey," he says, scooting closer, sliding a hand along her shoulder to her neck, caressing the warm skin there before burying his fingers in her hair. "It's all right, Regina. The very fact that you're here says that you're close to getting home."
Regina nods, leans into his hand that's now massaging the back of her skull.
"In the meantime, though," he says. "Two of our lovely children are cooking us breakfast, and the third will be awake shortly. Fancy a bit of food?"
Despite the earlier episode with the toilet, she is a little hungry, could do a piece of fruit or some toast, but not waffles. Certainly not with chocolate chips in them. She wets her lips and nods.
He's eyeing her with a strange expression on his face, and she asks, "What?"
"You're beautiful," Robin says as he skates his thumb across her cheek.
"I'm a mess," she protests even as she leans into his touch again. He's not her Robin, but he is her soulmate, the one she trusts and loves, and right now she can't bring herself to care about anything else.
"You're beautiful," he repeats. "You're handling this marvelously, love. The first day is always the hardest."
She nods, pressing her lips together and looking down to her lap where he's taken her hand in his own.
"Regina?"
She looks back up at him, and the heat in his gaze, his teeth pressing into his lower lip, sends a gentle thrum through her stomach.
"I should very much like to kiss the mother of my child," he says, still moving his fingers against the back of her neck, feather light touches that continue to make her stomach flip for pleasant reasons.
She stutters out a laugh and shakes her head. "We're having a baby." She closes the distance between them and sinks into the warmth of his kiss. This, finally, this is familiar, this is home. She shifts closer to him on the bed, bringing her hands up to cradle his face, and alternates running her tongue across his lower lip and worrying the swollen flesh with her teeth. His fingers wind in her hair and then skim down the side of her neck and shoulders, restless, unable to settle in any one place, and oh, this is how she ended up taking that stupid test in the bathroom stall at her office yesterday.
Robin pulls away first, giving her lower lip a playful nip as he sits back. "Much as I'd like to continue this discussion, I'm sure the children are wondering where we are. Even Roland is bound to be awake by now."
Regina hums, eyes still closed, and she feels more than hears him laugh as he leans forward to press a light kiss to the tip of her nose. "If you insist," she says.
"I assure you, if I didn't, Alexia would. I'm surprised Henry's been able to keep her distracted as long as he has." He stands and holds his hand out for her. "Come on, love."
Regina accepts his help, and gives him one more peck on the lips before they head for the door. Before he can open it, though, she tugs on his arm, and he turns to face her with eyebrows furrowed.
"Alexia," Regina says. "She has my magic."
Robin's face clears, and his smile lights his face. "Yes, I know."
"It doesn't bother you?" She needs to clarify, needs to make sure he's ok with raising a daughter (she's having a girl, she's going to have a daughter, the thought is still humming in her veins like a narcotic) with magical powers that could sway toward either end of the spectrum.
"We're raising her beautifully, Regina," Robin says. He steps forward and nuzzles her nose with his for a moment. "In this universe and all the others I've seen, you've taught her well. You've taught her love."
"Ok," she says, leaning her forehead against his, hands gripping his biceps as she breathes deep for a few moments.
"It won't always be like this, love. We'll find a way to get you home."
She's not sure if he means her or her future counterpart, but it doesn't matter. He's made his vow. He's going to keep it. They will find a way to fix this problem.
"Mo-om! Roland's eating my waffle!"
Alexia's yell manages to slip under the closed door, and Regina winces. She's gotten the piercing voice from her as well.
"Duty calls," Robin says. "Shall we?" He holds his arm out to her, and she loops her hand through, clutching his bicep.
"Lead on, thief," she says, and they walk downstairs to meet their family together.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Please, leave me a review to let me know what you think. This can easily be turned into a series of one shots, so let me know if that's something you're interested in.