iv. exploration of communal motherhood (but it's not awkward)

"I don't know what to do." The voice is curt, harried, and sounds more like Mary Margaret Blanchard than Snow's been since the first curse had broken. "He's crying and crying and I thought I was a patient person, I thought I could do this but–" A long, shuddery gasp, the kind Regina's been longing for from Snow for decades. "You have to help me, Regina, because otherwise I'm going to put him down and run out of this fucking house and–!" She squeaks at her own profanity. "Please."

"Where's Emma?" She'd given the other woman memories of raising Henry, and though those memories are fading now that reality has hit again, she should be more than equipped to help her mother without thoughts of homicide- so, well, one step up from Regina.

Snow sighs. "Killian took her and Henry out on the Jolly Roger for the day. I don't want to disturb her. They're all so happy–"

Regina hangs up and gets her coat.

Snow is hovering by the door when she gets there, the baby still screaming in her arms, and Regina takes him from her, an old deja vu hitting as she does. "I don't get it. I've tried everything, I've changed him, I've fed him, I've wrapped him and unwrapped him and put him in his swing and he just won't stop! How do I know if he's sick? What if I…" She stops, staring wildly at Regina. "What did you do?"

The baby coos up at her, and he's got Emma's eyes and Henry's hair and thankfully looks nothing like his namesake. Regina curls her arms around him, holding him tighter to her chest. "You need to calm down," she says, and she can't quite remember a time when she's spoken this softly to Snow White but the baby is gurgling at her and she doesn't know how her mortal enemy has produced so many precious people. Maybe it's David's genes. He'd purportedly had a decent human being as a mother. "I had the same problem with Henry. He can sense that you're stressed and it's agitating him, too."

Snow stares at her pleadingly and Regina can see dark circles under her eyes and the way her hands are still shaking. "How am I supposed to calm down when he's crying all the time?"

She's going to regret this. "How well have you been sleeping at night?"

Snow shakes her head, half-pointing at the baby. "I don't know. A little?"

"Go take a nap," Regina orders. "I'll take him until Emma gets back." She's barely seen Emma since her birthday, just brief greetings in the street and the one dinner that Emma had come late to and left early from. It's not awkward. It's…busy. It'll be good to see her.

That's why she's staying, not to do Snow a favor, so she puts on her best Evil Queen voice and says, "You can trust me to take care of Leopold."

It's enough to freeze Snow halfway to her bed, and she turns around, her eyes wide. Regina raises her eyebrows, rocking the baby in her arms and waiting for Snow to take the bait. Instead, the younger woman sags. "Okay, Regina. You do that."

She must be exhausted. What a disappointment.

Leo snuffles a little and his eyes droop closed and Regina sinks down onto the couch, picking up a photo album and flipping through it. It's all Mary Margaret and Emma at the start, then Henry and David, and some of the later photos even have her in them. She glares at one of her asleep on her own couch in her own home with Henry passed out against her. It's unquestionably Emma's fault. "I used to be an evil sorceress," she informs Leo. "Whole villages would fall to their knees when I rode past. You'd do well to fear me." His lips part in a little bubbly burp and she sighs. "You're going to be just as bad as your sister, aren't you?"

They sit in content silence until there's the sound of voices outside and Regina peers out the window to watch her son and his companions make their way up to the house. Henry is running ahead, Emma shouting something after him, and Hook trails behind her. He says something and Emma shoves him a little, rolling her eyes and opening the door before Henry gets in. "You can stop talking about it, maybe?" she says, annoyed, and Regina's mood brightens in an instant.

"It was only brief flirtation, I swear to you!" Hook protests. "It never amounted to anything. There's no need for jealousy." Regina can hear the leer in his voice and Henry makes a face as he slips past them, his eyes brightening when he sees her. He waves silently, glancing significantly back at the doorway where the couple is still arguing.

"I'm not jealous." Emma sighs. "I don't care about whatever you and Regina did way back before I was born." There's an edge to her voice that belies other feelings on the topic, but Hook doesn't say anything and Regina tenses, unwilling to allow Hook's idiotic big mouth to cause friction between her and Emma.

Because there isn't friction now. Not at all. It's not awkward.

"I care," Emma finishes, stepping into the house. "About you talking about it in front of her son."

"As do I," Regina adds coolly, and both Hook and Emma startle. "Refrain from discussing me at all in front of my son or his mother. Ever again." She pastes a smile onto her face that isn't entirely false. "Good day, Henry?"

"Yeah!" He grins, showing off sunburnt skin and faint freckles that match the ones on his other mother's face. "Are we doing dinner here tonight?"

"No," Regina says, just as Emma says, "Yes." They stare at each other, smiling awkwardly- it's not awkward- and Emma comes to sit next to her, sliding in between Regina and Henry to smooth down Leo's little wisps of dark hair.

Hook says a goodbye and Emma says absently, "Yeah, thanks for today. I'll see you later?" and Henry jumps up to walk him out.

"Henry really does like him a lot," Emma murmurs, watching them go.

She sounds almost regretful, and Regina turns to give her a searching glance. "He also likes your mother. There's no accounting for his taste." She's hesitant when she plunges forward. "You sound like you're reconsidering."

"Reconsidering?" Emma shakes her head. Vigorously. "There's nothing to reconsider. Things are good. He's just an idiot."

"I could have told you that a year ago and saved you all this trouble." Leo stirs in her arms and she loosens her grip on his back, lowering him onto her lap. He yawns like Henry, too, his face scrunched up and his little limbs flailing out against her.

Emma presses her finger against his palm and he makes a fist around it. "Is it just me, or…" She leans against Regina, her chin on Regina's shoulder, and stares down at the baby. "He looks just like Henry, doesn't he?"

"He has your eyes," Regina blurts out and turns too soon, coming face-to-face with said eyes as they regard her silently. She tries looking away and fails miserably. "But otherwise he's quite adorable," she tries, and Emma grins at her, unfazed.

"Sometimes I forget that my memories are a lie and I think about you and Henry and it feels like this." She sucks in a breath, her chin still sharp against Regina's shoulder. "Like we both raised him. Like we kind of did it together."

Emma's thumb is on Leo's stomach now, stroking in little circles as he cycles his legs against her thigh. Regina doesn't move. "It's not real," she whispers. "It wasn't real." Leo gurgles and kicks and he looks so much like little Henry and Emma's so close and she says it again. "It isn't real."

"Hook kept suggesting a threesome," Emma says suddenly, and Regina jerks away from her.

"What?"

Leo lets out an angry cry and Emma lifts him from her lap and bobs up and down with him until he's soothed again. "That's what he was being an idiot about. He insisted that he'd be 'very interested' and that I shouldn't be afraid to broach the topic. Then he talked about your sexual chemistry for like ten minutes in front of Henry and I nearly threw him overboard."

She doesn't know how to react to that beyond delicately extricating herself from the couch and moving toward the kitchen, suddenly desperate to bake something. Maybe an apple turnover. "Why would he even say that? What is he trying to accomplish?"

But she knows, because she remembers the way he'd watched them on Emma's birthday and she remembers what Emma and she haven't talked about since. Robin copes by determinedly ignoring it and watching her a little too closely when she's around Emma. Hook apparently copes by shooting off his mouth and making Emma uncomfortable.

Maybe Whale still has the rest of that apple turnover. Do cursed pastries rot?

"If we wanted to sleep together, we could do it just fine without him," Emma says, and Regina whips around so quickly that she loses all her breath in an instant.

"It's still not funny, Emma. Your son is right here." She gestures to the door and discovers that it's open and Henry's standing just outside of it, staring at both of them with his face as screwed up as Leo's had been when he'd yawned.

"You're both so gross," he says disgustedly, throwing up his hands and moving past her to the kitchen.

Emma smirks. "I've already planned the wedding!" she calls after him. "You're the best man, you should be more supportive!"

Regina's head is aching and Emma Swan is impossible and she should have appreciated these past few days only seeing her on the street. "I'm going home," she informs them both. "Tell Snow to hire a babysitter if she can't handle her son again." She needs a long break from the Charmings and their hapless daughter, some peace and quiet and a place where she doesn't need to think too hard about…things.

Emma shrugs, seemingly either unbothered or unaware of how flustered Regina is. "If you insist. We still on for dinner?"

A long break. As long as she can last without Emma Swan in her life. At least two hours. "My house. You bring the wine."

v. fairy dust and fairytales (that never felt like them)

"So how did it happen?" Emma's leaning back against the bench, cocoa in hand. She's wearing the coat Regina had gotten her and it does draw out the green in her eyes in entirely distracting ways. Regina isn't staring. She's…appraising her purchase. Right.

She sips at her own cocoa and produces a smile and a hand for Roland from where he's dangling upside-down from the monkey bars and waving frantically. She'd been terrified the first time they'd gone to the park together and the way he'd ignored the steps and ladders in favor of shimmying up bars and swinging from structure to structure, but by now she's used to it. Little boys raised in the woods, honestly. Her own son sits happily atop the bars, watchful eyes on the boy below him. "How did what happen?"

Emma motions with her cup to Roland. "Him. His dad. I mean, I thought we were pretty much around each other all the time when we were fighting Zelena. And I never saw you two together much but then suddenly he's basically moving in with you and you're true loves and…" She shrugs. "I just…didn't know it was happening until I saw you two outside Granny's on the night after we banished Zelena back to Oz."

"Ah." She frowns, remembering that day all too well. She'd been on her way into the building when she'd heard cheering and catcalling and then the three of them had walked inside and Emma had been kissing Hook, right in the middle of Granny's. It hadn't taken more than a month after that before Emma had finally conceded to date the pirate. "I'd thought you were…busy that night."

"Yeah." When she turns, Emma's eyes are on her, her face too close and her lips pressed tightly together. "I guess I was."

There's a new strain in the air, tension Regina doesn't want to think about, and she wills herself to turn away from Emma before she gathers her thoughts again. "You know about the pixie dust. It was never a question for me that Robin was my soulmate."

Emma's brow furrows- with you, Regina, I always know when you're lying- and she shakes her head disbelievingly. "That's it? Some fairy dust tells you who to love and you love him? What if he was a homicidal maniac?" Blonde waves are cascading down her shoulders as she moves, her voice rising, and Regina takes a moment to process anything she's saying. "Would pixie dust tell you that?"

"Emma," she says patiently, dragging her eyes away from the hair tickling at Emma's neck under her coat. "I was a homicidal maniac, remember?" She untucks the hair from Emma's coat without thinking in an unconscious, almost motherly (not motherly at all) motion. And retracts her hand as soon as she realizes what she's doing. "Robin should have been the wary one."

Emma scowls, and she blurts out, "I just thought you were smarter than that," so quickly that Regina's eyebrows shoot up and she's startled instead of offended. Emma pales. "Wait. That came out…wrong. I just don't get how you'd just–"

She smirks without much bite. "Jump into a relationship?" Her hand is back on Emma, this time gentle on the blonde's gloved hands, and she can hear the exhalation as Emma relaxes. "Well, we talked about the Killian Jones method, but frankly I don't have the patience to be wooed for years with off-color remarks. Robin would be a pile of ash by now."

"Be nice." Emma nudges her and her cocoa splashes up the sides of her cup. "He was just…persistent."

"Yes, well, it seems to have paid off nicely. Good for him." It's coming out sharper than she intends. Old resentment is unspooling within her, bitterness she has no business feeling threatening to break free, and she ignores the way Emma won't look at her anymore and thinks about Robin. Kind, safe, easy Robin, who's a good man and loyal and loves her so much more than she'd ever dreamed anyone could. "I suppose…my, uh. My first love. Daniel."

It's a bit like rolling on sandpaper to say his name here, in this place where light is shining and her son is playing and Emma Swan is sitting beside her with her hand below Regina's fingers. "We were very much in love. It was simple and mundane and just like any other young love affair in the land. I'd never imagined that I'd be worth much more than that. I wasn't a princess. I wasn't the kind of girl who had magical legends written about her."

She'd been happy, though, happier than she'd ever thought she could be as a child. The threat of her mother had loomed over her, but she'd dreamed of a world with that same simplicity and never wanted more. "And magic, of course, when added to the equation of Daniel and me, left me alone and heartbroken and on a quest for vengeance against your mother."

She gazes thoughtfully at the playground in front of them. Roland is perched on his shoulders now and Henry is bouncing in circles while the smaller boy hangs on and shrieks with glee. "I suppose there's a part of me that had always longed for that magical tale, to be a princess who'd get that epic love story. I'm fortunate to get it with someone like Robin and not the imbecile your mother married," she adds, just to get a rise out of her suddenly quiet companion. David may be a bit of an idiot, but he's far too much like Emma for her to ever doubt why anyone would love him.

But Emma is absolutely silent, staring at her with undisguised distress in her eyes. "Emma?"

"You'd never imagined that you'd be worth more than that?" Emma echoes. "God, Regina, do you have any idea what–" She stops, chewing on her lower lip with so much fury that Regina worries it might swell up.

"That's all you managed to get from that?" She's half-joking, nudging at Emma so the other woman might calm down, and Emma ceases attacking her lip at last.

"Yeah," she says flatly. "I get it. Your reasons for being with Robin are just as half-assed as mine with Hook."

Well. That's a little offensive. "Because I wanted true love? For once? Emma, I can't walk around for years dreaming of things I can't have." Her eyes widen at her own words and now she's biting her lip, staring desperately into her cocoa instead of at the woman next to her.

"You want a story," Emma says, shaking her head. "You want some great legend so you force yourself to fall in love with a guy you just met because of some fucking tattoo? He didn't know you when you were…well, before the curse broke. He didn't know you after. He didn't see you try and how much you love Henry and how much you've sacrificed to try to be worthy of him."

She's so earnest that Regina's heart is threatening to break free of her rib cage andburst, just like that, leaving her with nothing other than Emma's face at this moment trapped within her for eternity. "He's never seen how you love and how strong you can be and how much goodness you've managed to find in yourself even after all these years. He doesn't know you like…like…"

Regina finishes the sentence with resignation, the words so automatic that her brain doesn't filter them before they emerge. "Like you do." She drops her hand from Emma's the moment her mind catches up to her mouth, and now her heart's pounding so hard that she can hear a steady pounding in her ears.

Emma's lips are parted, her eyes burning with something that Regina can recognize as fear; and Regina wants to take it all back, because Emma's jokes are just that– jokes, a product of her twisted sense of humor where she can pretend to plan a wedding with Regina and never think twice about it. And Regina can't joke. Not like that. Not about that.

With you, Regina, I always know when you're lying.

And now Emma's terrified, and rightly so, because Regina has said much too much and she forces a laugh a moment too late and Emma just stares at her and then says, "I should go. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said– I– I should go."

She's not the one who just accidentally confessed feelings that have no place in their- is it even a friendship? Are they friends? Is that what this is?- relationship, and sheshouldn't have to leave, but she's rising from the bench and fleeing from Regina anyway, walking away at a rapid pace like she's the one who should be embarrassed. It isn't fair, not to Emma. Emma doesn't need any more complications in her life, and she certainly doesn't need to be burdened with Regina's.

She breathes in long, shuddery gasps. Her eyes are hurting and the cocoa is scalding her throat and she should says something, call Emma, assure her that she'll never bring this up again and that things can go back to normal. But instead she watches the little patch of dark green and blonde until it vanishes down the next block and Henry comes to sit next to her without her noticing until he speaks. "Everything okay?" he asks, frowning. "Emma didn't even say goodbye."

"It's fine. We're fine." It comes out in a croak and her ever-perceptive son sighs and leans against her shoulder.

"I just want you guys to be happy. I'm happy." He smiles up at her and her heart cracks a little more. She can't do this to him, either, to create tension between his mothers and his whole convoluted family when they're finally making things work. "I like how things are now."

"I know you like Killian," Regina allows. She might not like Hook very much- and it's possible that's a recent development- but Henry does, and Emma does, and it's long past time she came to terms with it. Hanging on to these lingering…these lingering…

It's not doing anyone any favors.

"Yeah, I guess." Henry bumps her shoulder with his once before he gets up to join Roland again. He pauses a few feet away from her, turning back to eye her with an expression she can't gauge. "I like you more, though," he says, and bounds back over to Roland to play hide-and-seek.

vi. bad behavior (from two terrified women and an outlaw. the pirate's okay today and the kid didn't ask for any of this)

She's trying. She really is. Whatever she may have let slip at the park, it doesn't matter in the scheme of things because Emma is her friend and Henry is their son and she can't begin to imagine life without either of those constants anymore.

So she dashes off a quick text the next day, Dinner tonight? Might as well bring the pirate, because she is perfectly all right with Emma having a boyfriend and she is determined to let her know that before everything they have falls apart.

Emma is too prone to avoiding her problems and Regina will not allow herself to become one of them.

When Hook leads the way with a bottle of whiskey and Emma trailing behind him, not meeting Regina's eyes, she thinks it might be too late. "I've tried a new sweet 'n sour chicken recipe tonight," she offers. The last one had been too dry and Henry had made faces while Emma had lied to her face about how delicious it was and cleaned her whole plate to prove it.

She tamps down the fondness that threatens to spread across her face and Hook says, "Sounds scrumptious," and Emma doesn't say anything at all, just glowers at the floor and nods curtly.

Emma's mood carries over to the meal itself, where Regina pastes smiles on her face and Hook is on his best behavior and Henry is delighted to have all three of them present. He's taken to Hook faster than he'd taken to Robin, though Regina suspects that that's more the resentment of a child accustomed to being the center of his mother's world. He's still firmly in place there, but he's wary of Robin regardless.

But even Henry is noticing the storm cloud hovering over Emma, the way she doesn't talk but stares at Regina with a belligerence she hasn't seen since the curse had broken, and his timid attempts to engage Emma in conversation are met with one-word responses before she shifts back to glare at Regina again. "How's the chicken, Emma?" Regina tries.

"Fine."

"I didn't see you at Granny's this morning." A shrug. "What are you and Henry doing this weekend?"

"I'll figure something out."

And patience only goes so far. She has little of it for immaturity, and even less of it for sulking; and Emma is doing both in spades. Regina has far too much at stake this meal to watch Emma shut them all out and Henry's face fall. She isn't hosting the pirate tonight for Emma to act like a child.

So she says in her sweetest voice, "Emma, why don't you help me with dessert?" and yanks at Emma's arm so hard that the other woman twists in her seat to give her an irritated scowl. It's the most eye contact she's gotten all night, and Regina glares right back and pulls again, half dragging Emma toward the kitchen.

"What the hell, Regina?"

"Oh, don't you 'what the hell' me!" she snaps. She's a queen and she doesn't shovepeople, but she looms closer and closer to Emma until the other woman is back up against the counter and she can jab a finger at her chest. Emma has the unique ability to drive her to extreme levels of both affection and irritation, and tonight all the affection has been eclipsed by a distinct desire to let her magic free and transform Emma into something a bit less frustrating. Maybe a toad, just so she can watch Hook's hapless attempts to kiss Emma out of it. "If I'd wanted to cope with a moody child, then I'd have taken away Henry's xbox. Do try to act your age, Miss Swan, and if there's something that I've done to offend you, get that damned chip off your shoulder and talk."

It's the park, it has to be, and Emma's seen right through her attempts to shrug it off. Emma has little patience for artifice and even less for games, and while Regina excels at playing them, she's beginning to regret her maneuver tonight. She sighs. "Or…don't. I don't care. I just care that our son-" She jabs a thumb toward the dining room. "-was expecting a family dinner and instead you've been–"

Emma snaps forward, jerking forward so rapidly that Regina takes a step back. "Me? I'm the problem?" She shakes her head, disbelieving. "I'm not the one who invited fucking Hook here!"

It's the last complaint Regina had been expecting. "Hook? What happened to things going well?"

"They're fine," Emma growls. "What the hell are you playing at?"

She blinks. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"You! This!" Emma throws up her hands. "We have a…a thing here! And you're trying to screw it up because I said some dumb stuff at the park?" Her eyes are glowing with embers of a fire Regina still can't comprehend, and she's inanely struck by how stunning Emma is like this, blonde hair framing furious eyes like a sun gone supernova.

She swallows, forcing herself back to the moment and not the way that Emma's lips press together when she's angry. "You're upset that I'm making an effort to include this…man…you've decided is worth your while. I fail to see the problem."

Emma's clenching her teeth, twitching from side to side with her fists squeezed shut, and Regina is still equal parts bewildered and infuriated. She's trying. She's doing everything she can to preserve their friendship, even tolerating that damned pirate at her dining room table, and instead of thanking her, Emma is lashing out and irrational and the dessert is burning and nothing is happening as she'd planned. "Calm down," she orders. "I will not have-"

"Of course you won't. Because this is all about you and what you want, even if it was good before and it could be good again without all your fucking meddling," Emma grits out cryptically. "You know what? Fuck this." She's still aflame when she shoves past Regina, nearly toppling her back against the oven, and Regina's regaining her balance and opening her mouth to call back to Emma when the front door slams shut and Henry says, "Mom?"

"What?" she barks out, striding out into the dining room. Henry shrinks back and she winces. "I'm sorry, Henry. I didn't mean to–"

"What happened to Ma?" he interrupts her, and oh god, his eyes are accusing like they haven't been since before Neverland. She shrivels under his gaze, becoming nothing at all, and he sees her face fall and softens. "Why was she yelling at you?" he clarifies. His anger is sharp on her behalf and the realization of that impossibility nearly chokes her.

"I don't…I don't really know," she says honestly.

He frowns, exchanging a glance with Hook, who's watching them both with enough of a pout that Regina knows that he'd heard Emma's irrational bout of fury at his invite. "You should go after her," Henry decides. "I'm sure you guys will work it out." He chews on his lip. "You haven't fought like this since you were evil."

"I'm not going after her." She manages not to flinch too hard when he calls her evil, or to make a point that his new best friend gladly worked with her mother and had tried to kill his grandfather on multiple occasions. Though Rumple, to be fair, had had it coming. "I won't condone this…brattiness, even from Emma. If she wants to grow up and come back and apologize to you for ruining dinner, then she'll have to do it on her own."

Henry looks like he's got more to say but she holds up a hand, staving off his protests. "Let's have dessert," she decides, and forces the smile from earlier back onto her face.

It's become an alien feeling to be this irritated with Emma Swan and she copes with it by obsessively cleaning the whole dining room and kitchen after the meal. She scrubs the table until it shines and notes with annoyance the grubby fingerprints that Hook had left behind and with muted fondness the scuff marks on the inner leg of the table by Emma's regular seat. And then, of course, sudden despair.

Emma being angry with her is nearly as crippling as Henry's fury had once been for her. She nearly gets her coat twice, wondering if there's something- anything- she can do to win Emma's affection back, to erase this fight completely and start over knowing what has Emma so angry. But both times she doesn't make it anywhere near the door before she reminds herself that it's Emma who's the problem, who had ruined dinner and shouted at her and hadn't made sense at all.

She sits down with a book for the evening and turns pages and thinks only of Emma and burning eyes and the woman backed up against the counter close enough for them to breathe in sync, and her mind is wandering to places she normally refuses to visit when her phone rings. It's Robin's name on the screen and she starts guiltily, shifting her position as she answers. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end is slurred, half-unintelligible, and definitely not Robin's. "See, I can be friends with your boyfriend too," Emma mumbles triumphantly into the phone.

"Emma." She closes her eyes, at once relieved and furious again. "Where are you? What are you doing with Robin's phone?"

"Robin." Her voice is scornful even through the haziness of much too much to drink. "What kind of person is named after a bird? Not even a patri-patriotic one like an eagle. Maybe he is a bird."

"Oh, like Swan is much of an improvement?" Robin scoffs at the same volume from the other end. There's a loud buzz of noise in the background and he sounds equally inebriated. Emma must have showed him how to put his phone on speaker because she hadn't taught him much more than how to dial her number. "You're neither tall nor graceful." He laughs at himself and Emma groans with displeasure and Regina rolls her eyes through sudden panic.

"Wait. You two are drunk. Together?"

"Afraid of what I might say?" A mulish female voice. And no, Regina's not afraid what Emma might say as much as what Robin knows and won't discuss sober, what she can't afford to have out there between the two of them.

"Are you at the Rabbit Hole?" She waits for the dutiful acquiescence from them both before she slams her phone down and snatches up her car keys and runs out of the house as quickly as she can.

She nearly runs over one of the dwarves- Happy, she thinks, as he shakes his fist after her and shouts out curses after her that he wouldn't have dared say if he'd known who was driving- and makes it to the bar in record time, slamming on the brakes and double-parking in front of the entrance before she makes it inside.

Emma is slouched over a glass at the bar and Robin is slouched over in the same position beside her, matching with blond hair above green coats (She'd bought both of them, but Emma's is bright and Robin's is the muted color of forest) and when she peers through the crowd it looks as though they're… (She leans forward, frowning) …holding hands?

No. She rolls her eyes, disgusted with them both, and hangs back. She has no desire to get in the middle of some drunken arm wrestling. Robin's hand slams down on the bar and Emma laughs raucously. "Ha!" she crows, pulling her arm out of her coat and rolling up her sleeve to display it to their audience. "You can't match these muscles."

"That's nothing," Robin manages, his words all running together as he struggles to pull out his own bicep. "Look at these." He flexes and preens and Regina cannotbelieve that she cares so much about these two idiots. And also that Emma's upper arms seem to have gotten even more toned than they'd been in Neverland.

"You shoot arrows," Emma points out, squinting hard at him. "I have a gun." She tries to pull it out but instead grabs her wallet and waves that around instead. She cocks her head as she eyes it, then nods sharply and extracts a bill. "Keep them coming," she orders the bartender and Regina scowls. It's time to make her presence known, before–

Robin lets loose a deep belly laugh like Regina's never heard before. "I know how to handle sheriffs who try to steal my lady regardless of their weapon of choice," he says, and Regina freezes.

Emma's eyebrows jump up and down and she gulps down a glass of something golden brown and shudders. "This is your fault," she announces. "Seducing Regina with your perfect little son and your perfect little pixie dust and your perfect little fairytale." She swallows again, theatrical enough that Regina can see her throat shift with the movement. "Why don't you like me?" It comes out in a whine, pitched just high enough to be unpleasant. "You're gonna make Regina not like me again."

"As though Regina would ever stop liking you," Robin says gloomily, moving his glass so the liquid inside sloshes within it.

"She likes you more," Emma says in the exact same tone. "I bet you've even been in her bedroom."

Robin straightens and Regina grits her teeth, stepping forward. "Many times." He's nearly preening. She is never letting him drink again. Or letting him go anywhere near Emma Swan again. They seem to bring out the worst in each other.

Emma slouches lower until her chin hits the bar. "I don't even know what color her sheets are," she mutters. Regina's right behind them now, close enough that she thinks she can hear Emma but she must have been mistaken or Emma must be very, very drunk. "I don't get it. Regina has standards, okay? She'd never date a guy in flannel." She rests her head on the table, staring up at Robin with one flannel-sleeved arm propped up behind her. "Graham was way sexier than you and she didn't even like him. I think she killed him," she says, furrowing her brow.

Regina's been eavesdropping for too long, and she can feel old discomfort creeping through her, struggling to make itself known. She hastily slips between them before Emma can say anything more and Emma slides her head to the side to regard her blearily. "Did you kill Graham?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Regina counters, suddenly weary.

Emma shakes her head with vigorous bobbing from side to side that sends her hair flying into her glass. Robin sniggers.

"I'm glad you both think that my past crimes are hilarious in this state." She sighs. "But I'd rather just get you both home."

"Are you gonna take him back to your bedroom?" Emma demands. "Is this a bedroom night? His hair isn't even real blond, it's dirty blond. I bet he dyes it."

"Noted. Can you stand?" They both can, with varying degrees of success, and she doesn't miss Emma's triumphant gloating when Regina determines that Emma needs the most help walking and slides her arm around her waist as they make their way to the car. Drunk Emma is a mystery to her, more so than even sober Emma, and she doesn't dare entertain hopes that sober Emma would never follow through on.

Robin gets dropped off outside of the path to the cabin in the woods that he and his men have commandeered and then she steers them back past main street toward Emma's home in silence. She isn't sure if she's more furious or humiliated or flustered at this point at both of them, and she simmers in frenetic indecision as she drives.

Finally, she speaks, and it's neither as angry nor as perplexed as she means it to be. "I'm not going to dislike you regardless of how Robin feels." It's not what she'd meant to say, either. That had been a lecture about her liver and her dinner behavior and apparently her inability to get through a meal with Hook without being driven to drink. But instead she's talking about something else and Emma is a child who deserves no such reassurance except she does because Emma is everything.

"I don't like him," Emma says sleepily. Her head is resting against the front seat and she's gazing at Regina through lidded eyes. "I don't want to be friends with him."

"No one is forcing you to." She thinks about commenting on the irony that they're ridiculously similar in nearly every way, except Robin is perceptively prudent and Emma has about the subtlety of a raging elephant and the same confrontational behavior as one, too.

Which is why it's not a surprise when she says, "I don't want you to be friends with Hook."

What a tragedy. Really. "I'm beginning to understand that." She glances back at Emma and sees that her eyes are already closed, her breathing evening out. "Why is that?"

Emma shrugs, her eyes still shut. "It makes it real. It makes him family." She opens one eye to offer a Regina a baleful glare, as though demanding why haven't you figured this out?. "He doesn't get that."

She can't deny the way her heart sings at that, the way it shudders against her chest with indisputable relief. Good. Their family is theirs, hers and Emma's and Henry's alone, and Hook has no place in it. Even Robin has no place there, which is why he's never even invited himself over on the nights she has Emma come. She winces, suddenly understanding Emma's earlier moodiness for what it had been. Irrational, probably, and it galls at her even now that her overtures had been taken so badly. But not all unwarranted. Not entirely. "I see."

Emma swallows noisily. "I said all that stuff at the park and I scared you, right?" She glares again, intent and sharp, and Regina shivers under her gaze. She should deny it, should point out that it had been Regina herself who'd gone too far and admitted things she shouldn't have, but Emma's eyes are flashing and Regina can't argue with that fire, can only step back so she might not be scorched to ashes.

"I'm not sorry," Emma says, and Regina's left wondering what exactly had happened at the park that Emma has to not apologize for. All of it, she supposes. Maybe running off when Regina had nearly said enough to sabotage their friendship. "I'm not."

She curls her hands into shaking fists and Regina says "Okay," with no idea what she's agreeing to.