A/N: So I know some of you wanted to see more of the fun drunk Regina had, I decided to skip to the next morning with this chapter. Never fear though, you will still hear about her entertaining shenanigans next chapter when she gets to hear all about it from Emma (muahaha). Also this chapter introduces another subplot/layer to the plot. I guess I should also explain that this story is not really planned to be about the actual case Regina is working on, that is more of a side plot I guess that instigates Emma and Regina meeting. There will still be plot points relating to it all though. anyways this chapter is really long, but it was important to include early on in the story, so I hope you enjoy it :)
When Regina woke Saturday morning she had a pounding headache. She slowly sat up, looking groggily around her room, trying to remember what had happened the night before. She remembered her best friend Katherine and Katherine's boyfriend Frederick showing up at her door around 10:00 pm insisting that she get out of the house for once. She had been complaining to Katherine during her Friday lunch break about how the whole Killing Jones case had doubled her work load and how stressed out she was about the rigor which would probably continue for the rest of her internship. Katherine decided it would be best for her to de-stress, and what better way to do that after a long week than go out clubbing. The only problem was, while Katherine had always liked partying, Regina did not. She was a homebody, and often had too much work to do anyways. Unfortunately, she had somehow allowed Katherine to convince her this time, and had ended up at the Rabbit Hole. What ever had happened once the three had gotten to the Rabbit Hole however was completely lost on her.
She then noticed a glass of water and two aspirin set out on her nightstand. Assuming Katherine had left them for her, Regina took the pills gratefully, and slowly worked on getting out of bed. It was nearly noon by the time she had gotten out of the shower and made herself presentable for the day. She made her way downstairs to her kitchen to find some food, grabbing her purse from the hall table on the way. She fished out her cell phone to check for any new messages. The red notification light was blinking, four missed calls from Katherine. Regina's brow furrowed. They had just spent an entire evening together, why would Katherine be so desperate to get a hold of her this morning. Did something happen between her and Frederick? Noticing that there was a voice mail for each of the four missed calls, Regina dialed in to listen to them. The first message sounded normal enough:
"Hey Regina it's Katherine. Sorry we ditched you. We just got out of the movie though; it was really great you should have come! Anyways call me back when you get a chance."
The next message was a bit more troubling to Regina:
"Hey Regina, it's about 3 am. I'm just calling to check in and make sure you got home safely from the club. I'm assuming you did since you never called us to come get you after the movie, but just call back to let me know."
Regina was slightly confused. She highly doubted she would have stayed up past 3 am, but if she hadn't gone home with Katherine, then how had she gotten home? It was possible that she had taken a cab, but that did not explain who left her the water and aspirin. She was fairly certain someone else must have brought her home because if she couldn't remember what had happened then she had definitely been too drunk to function. She decided to move on to the next message:
"Hey, it's Katherine again, I'm just going to assume that you got home and have been asleep, because it's like 8am and you're still not answering your phone. Call me back as soon as you're up."
Then the next message she noticed was from only about half an hour ago when she would have been in the shower.
"Hey Regina, I know you had a crazy night last night, but its like 11:30 now so you should really be awake, and I'm starting to get seriously worried. We shouldn't have left you by yourself at the club. I'm sorry, we were drunk and not thinking and at the time you seemed fine with it. I'm getting pretty worried though, so if I don't hear from you in the next 20 minutes, I am coming over to your house to make sure you're there and not, I don't know, lying in a ditch somewhere."
Just as Regina finished listening to the last voice mail, her doorbell rang. Setting down the coffee that she had been sipping as she listened to Katherine's ever more frantic messages, Regina set off down the hall, pretty certain of who would be at the door.
"Katherine!" she greeted as she opened the door, for it was indeed Katherine standing there white faced and worried.
"Oh thank God," Katherine gasped," you are here and alive. Holy shit Regina, you have some explaining to do. Don't you know how to answer your phone?"
"I have explaining to do?" Regina exclaimed, "I think you have some explaining to do. You left me at the club, completely drunk off my ass, by myself? What the hell were you thinking?"
"I know I know I'm soooo sorry. You're the one who refused to come with us to the movie, and we were drunk and really wanted to go. Perfect judgment wasn't exactly happening. But you're ok right? I mean you got home, you didn't die."
"Yeah I'm fine" Regina sighed, "I honestly don't remember a single thing about last night though, and I have no idea how I got home. Are you sure you didn't come and get me?"
"Positive," Katherine insisted, " we were drunk, but not that drunk. I remember everything we did last night, and we definitely didn't see you again after we left for the movie. I'm sure you just took a cab or something."
"Yeah maybe" Regina mused, not sounding completely convinced. "The thing is, I really don't think I would have been capable of even walking by myself at that point. Plus when I woke up this morning, someone had left water and two aspirin on my nightstand. Unless I was somehow being a really forward thinking drunk, someone else was here with me when I came home last night."
"Oh my God. Do you think you had a one night stand?" Katherine asked aghast.
"That thought did cross my mind, but honestly I don't think so. I was still wearing all my cloths from last night when I woke up this morning. Plus my sheets still smell completely normal and like me. I can always tell a change in scent if someone else has been sleeping in my bed."
"Alright, well if you are sure, and you are ok then I guess we'll just call whoever it was your mystery savior," replied Katherine smiling. She pulled Regina into a hug, "I'm so glad you're ok. I will never force you to go clubbing with us again. And if you want to go out with us, I promise we won't ditch you next time."
"It's fine," muttered Regina, beginning to feel awkward and uncomfortable with the sudden physical contact. She generally avoided touching people as much as possible, and while she loved Katherine, she hated hugs.
"Well I have some errands to run so I can't stay and chat," quipped Katherine, picking up on Regina's stiffness and effectively ending the hug. "Have a good rest of your weekend, and don't let work get you down too much this week!"
"I'll try," Regina chuckled, "I can't promise anything though." She did know one thing for certain: she was going to forever be wondering who her mystery savior had been.
Ten minutes later Regina was in the car on her way to the Boys and Girls Club. She had started volunteering there as a tutor during the homework help hours of the previous school year, but she found she loved working with the kids so much that when summer vacation started, she volunteered to help run their summer activities camp. The camp was technically 5 days a week, but they kept a minimum staff available on Saturdays as well for the kids who had nowhere to go on the weekends. She had had to cut back her volunteer hours there from 4 days a week to just Saturdays and Tuesdays when she started working for Gold, but it was still extremely important to her to stay involved. Over the course of the last school year she had become pretty attached to a couple of the kids, and she felt responsible to be a consistent adult presence in their lives as she knew that many of them lacked good adult role models at home.
When she entered the small classroom, there were only about ten kids in attendance, and the morning volunteers were getting ready to sign out. One of the morning volunteers, a tall dark woman whom she recognized but couldn't name, approached her with the current role sheet.
"It's been a bit of a slow day," she said, "All these kids were scheduled for a full day so they should all be signing around 5. We've mostly just been doing arts and crafts, which seems to be keeping them occupied. They're working on making popsicle stick dream catchers right now, but I suspect they'll be wrapping that up in the next half hour so you can do what ever you feel like with them after that."
"Sounds great, thanks," Regina replied, smiling as she took the role sheet from the other woman. She noticed her afternoon supervising partner enter the classroom as well, and politely excused herself to fill her in. They were standing discussing what other activities they should plan when felt a large weight collide with her lower torso. She looked down as she tried to keep her balance to find a young dark haired boy hugging her.
"Hey Henry!" she exclaimed, affectionately ruffling his hair.
"I missed you Regina," he replied, speaking into her stomach as he was still hugging her tightly. Henry was 7 years old and was a regular attendee of the camps. She had met Henry her first day volunteering and had become extremely fond of the boy. He was definitely her favorite of all the kids she had worked with. He was sweet, kind, and extremely smart. When she had tutored during the school year, he had always asked her specifically for help on homework, although she realized fairly quickly that he never actually needed help with the work, he just wanted an excuse to have someone to talk to. While she loved him and thought he was a great kid, she had noticed he didn't seem to quite fit in with the other kids his age, and preferred to sit by himself reading instead of playing games with the other kids in his class.
When he finally pulled out of the hug, Regina crouched down to speak to him on his level.
"I've missed you too Henry," she said, giving him a once over to assess his well being. He had not come to camp at all the previous week she had heard, which was very abnormal for him, and it made her worry. "Why didn't you come to camp last week?" she inquired carefully.
"They wouldn't let me," he answered with an angry pout. This answer confused Regina a bit. She had thought maybe they were out of town or something. She knew that Henry was a foster child and had been living with his current foster family for a little over a year. His foster parents both worked and did not have any children of their own, so she assumed that he would have go to camp so they could go to work and not have to pay for expensive baby sitters or day care.
"Did your parents have vacation time? I bet it was nice to be able to stay home from camp for a few days to spend time with them."
Regina knew Henry wasn't the biggest fan of his foster parents, but she had hoped with time he would become more comfortable with his living situation and would eventually open up to having them as parents.
"No it wasn't! I hate them, they're evil!" he shouted stomping his foot. Regina sighed, she loved Henry, but hated when he was in one of his moods.
"Henry, I'm sure they aren't evil," she said calmly, "Do you know why they didn't let you go to camp last week?"
"They ARE evil!," he complained, "and they didn't let me go because I was grounded. And they still had to go to work so I didn't get to spend time with them even if I had wanted to."
"You know what I think you need?" Regina asked, deciding it was time to change the subject before Henry had a real temper tantrum.
"What?" Henry responded, looking at her suspiciously.
"You need a great big cheer you up hug, come here," she said pulling him back into her arms. After a couple minutes she pulled back, holding him at arms length.
"Feel better?" she asked.
"Yeah, thanks Regina!" he exclaimed, the excited happy glint back in his eyes, and before she could respond he was running off back across the room to his seat at the arts and crafts table. She watched him for a moment, thinking about the new information he had just given her. She wasn't sure why, but over the past few months she was getting exceedingly more worried about him, and she had this feeling in her gut that she couldn't shake, like she knew something was wrong but she didn't know what. She went about the rest of the day with her partner organizing activities and visiting with the other children, but she still couldn't get Henry out of the back of her mind. She kept turning over everything she knew about him in her mind, trying to figure out where this bad feeling was coming from. It wasn't until his foster mother came to sign him out at 5 pm that she suddenly realized what it was. She didn't trust Henry's foster parents. She had absolutely no foundation for this feeling of distrust, but she couldn't help think of her observations of Henry over the past few months. As Henry walked out of the classroom trudging along behind his foster mother, Regina suddenly had a realization. If both Henry's foster parents had been at work last week, but he had been grounded and not allowed to come to camp, then who had been supervising him at home? He was only seven years old, which was definitely not old enough to be left home alone for eight hours a day. Without second thought, she snatched up one of the example dream catchers from the craft table and hurried after Henry.
"Henry!" she called out across the parking lot. Both Henry and his foster mother turned around to look at her. She waved and gave Henry's foster mother a tight smile as she quickly made her way over to them.
"Henry forgot his dream catcher, and I was hoping to talk to him about something for a moment as well," she said smoothly to the foster mother.
"Fine," huffed the other woman, obviously in a hurry, "You can be in charge of getting him into his car seat then." She opened the driver door of her black SUV, seated herself in the car, and slammed the door shut in apparent frustration.
"uuhhh ok," Regina muttered, side glancing at the woman now grimacing angrily out of the car window.
"I didn't forget my dream catcher," Henry remarked, looking at her curiously. Regina just laughed; of course Henry was smart enough to realize what she was up to.
"I know, I just needed an excuse to talk to you for a minute. Can I ask you something?"
"Yea, but make it quick, she's gonna be mad if I make her late for dinner."
"Alright, I just was wondering, who was watching you when you were home last week? Because you're not really old enough to be home alone for so long."
"No one. I can be home alone, I'm good," Henry answered indignantly.
"So you were home alone? They just trust you aren't going to get hurt or make a mess around the house?"
"Well yea they knew I couldn't make a mess because I was locked in my room."
"You were locked in your room," Regina hissed, trying not to let her anger show, "all day long?"
"Umm yea, till they get home from work. It's ok though I have books to read so it's not like I was bored," Henry replied shrugging.
"But what if you had to go to the bathroom? Or got hungry? Did you get lunch?" Regina asked concerned.
"The first time it was tough, but I figured if the dog can stay inside all day without peeing I can too. And I never get lunch anyways except for at camp. They don't ever give me lunch money for school so I just never eat lunch."
"What?" Regina gasped, "They don't feed you?"
"Well I get dinner," Henry stated, sounding a little uncomfortable with the conversation.
"umm ok. Henry, maybe you shouldn't tell your foster mom we had this conversation ok?" Regina told him trying to stay calm.
"Yeah ok," he said sounding bored.
"Alright, well I guess I have to get you in your car seat then come on."
Regina was still fuming as she drove home. She had known something was off for months, but she had never gone to the social worker because she had no evidence and they definitely wouldn't take her seriously just because she "had a bad feeling", but now with the new information from Henry, she thought she could get the foster parents investigated for child neglect at least. She had thought about going to the social worker before when she noticed Henry seeming to get more and more unhappy, but she had always wondered if she was overreacting. Now though she knew she had real concerns. She resolved to make the phone call as soon as she got home.