Over the next few weeks, Killian was gone more often than not and Emma was at the palace or at the mansion almost every night.
On days that Regina had off or had very little to do in the office, she would watch Hope instead of Emma sending her to Ashley's daycare. Regina would hold her all throughout the day, and to say that she had grown attached to the blonde haired little girl was an understatement.
"Hey, Moms?" Henry called from the entryway to the living room. The two women were watching a movie. The blonde was sprawled out with her legs thrown over Regina's lap with Hope stretched out of her chest. One of Regina's hands was splayed over Emma's calf and was drawing small circles over the muscle.
Emma sat up, propping herself up on one elbow and held Hope with the other while she looked at her first born. Regina turned around also, her dress riding further up her thigh.
"What's up, kid?" Henry walked into the room, quite nervously, Regina noticed, and sat down on the chair opposite the couch. He wrung his hands in his lap, and looked down at them.
"I know Mom and I have talked about it before, but it got kind of overshadowed by what has happened recently," he choked out, looking up at his two mothers. They watched him with worried eyes and the circles that Regina was drawing on Emma's calves stopped.
"Henry whatever this is you can talk to us about it," Regina said softly. Henry smiled at her and nodded.
"I know. I just know how much you like having me close by and I know this is sort of a tough thing to talk about." Emma's heart dropped. He little boy was leaving her. He wanted to go places, to see the world, to get away from their town that had gotten so big.
"You want to leave," Regina squeaked out, her hand gripping Emma's calf as if if she were to let go she would fly away.
"I want to go to college, Mom. I want to get a degree in writing. I want people to read what I have to say." Emma nodded and looked to Regina who was staring back at her.
"Where were you thinking about going?" Emma's voice was calmer than she thought it was going to be. She felt her daughter wriggle around on top of her, so she held her tighter and kissed her head.
"Well, before school was let out, in February, I think, I applied to NYU. I got the acceptance letter in the mail in May." Emma was beaming with pride, her smile wide and brighter than Regina had ever seen.
"You applied and got accepted?" Regina whispered, her eyes glossing over as she watched her son twitch nervously in his chair.
"Yeah, Mom. A few days later you got crowned as the Good Queen and since then I just haven't found the right time," he mumbled.
"And you really want to go to New York? That is where you want to go?" Regina was sitting straight up now, her hands gripping onto Emma's claves tighter now.
"I really do, Mom. They have a wonderful creative writing program, and it is still close enough for when I want to come down for Christmas or Thanksgiving I can," he explained. Regina sighed.
"You would think that since I have had to do this once already it would be easier," Regina whispered into her hands that were now cupped over her face. Emma was sat up fully now and had Hope held in her left arm while the other was wrapped around Regina's shoulders. "I love you Henry, and I only want the best for you. New York is almost eight hours away. That is so far, Henry."
"I know, Mom. I know. But I want to see what life is like outside of Storybrooke or Camelo or Boston or the Enchanted Forest. I want to meet someone. I want to live my life like a normal guy." Regina nodded vigorously.
"No, of course. I get that. Whatever you want to do we can do." Her voice got softer as the sentence went on. "I just don't want my little prince to go anywhere."
The name hit hard in Regina's and Henry's chest. The name even made Emma want to feel emotional, but she knew that the only reason she even knew what that phrase meant was because of the memories that Regina had given her.
"I am not going to be gone forever. I am just going to be a few hours away. You can call and text whenever you want, and I will visit you as often as I can," he explained. He moved forward quickly, falling to his knees on the carpet and all but crawled over to his mothers. He grabbed one of Emma's hands and then held Regina's in the other.
"I know you don't want me to go. I know this is hard for the both of you. I would just like to have a life outside of Storybrooke. I want to be known as just Henry Mills. Not the Savior's son, not the Good Queen's son. Just Henry." Regina nodded her head, as did Emma. Emma tightened her hand on Henry's and raised it to her mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.
"You know we are okay with anything you want to do in life, Hen. You know we just want what is best for you, and if that is New York, then we will get you there anyway we can," she whispered, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. Beside her, Regina nodded and rubbed her free hand over Emma's calves, sending shivers through the blonde's body.
"Anything we can do to make you happy, we are going to do," Regina chimed in. Before she started talking again, she took a visibly deep breath and gave him a tight smile. "Henry, I am your mom. I am never going to be okay when you are away from me. You have been my little boy from the beginning, and I will always see you as just that, no matter how old you get."
Regina didn't know she was crying until there was a tear rolling down her cheek. Emma wanted to reach out and wrap an arm around her, to hug her with everything she had, but she knew she couldn't.
Henry, though, reached up and brushed the tear off her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
"I know, and I love you both with every ounce of my heart, but this is just something I want and need to do." Emma and Regina both nodded.
"We love you, too, Henry. More than you know," Emma soothed, while Regina nodded at her side.
"We always will," Regina added, and before they knew it, Henry was kissing them on their head and bounding back up the stairs to his room.
I took Henry less than two weeks to find an apartment in New York and have all of his stuff moved out, and a week after that he was gone. Late nights with a familiar glass of cider or whisky had become a regular to the two women that had grown fond of each other.
Emma stayed at the mansion almost on a regular basis now, as did Hope. The child even had her own roo, of sorts. Regina had bought a crib and a bassinet for by the bed for when Emma would work late and Regina volunteered to watch her.
"You know, I am starting to think she likes you more than she likes me," Emma teased as she walked through the front door of the large white house. Regina was stirring something that smelled heavenly in a pot with a sleeping Hope cradled in her free arm.
"Oh, she is just sleepy. She's had a busy day today," Regina cooed, bouncing the baby in her arms before she sat down the spoon she had been holding in her other hand.
Emma sat her keys and phone down on the kitchen island and made her way around the slab of marble where Regina was standing with her daughter in her hands. When she stood in front of the older woman she reached out a brushed a tuft of blonde hair away from the baby's pudgy face.
"What did you two do today?" Emma's words were soft as she gazed down at the child that she loved so wholly.
"Oh, we just sat through a few meetings, had Granny's for lunch, and came back home and took a nap." Regina wore a true, genuine smile that stretched her cheeks to the max. The corners of her eyes were scrunched up and her lips were stretched thin.
Emma looked up at Regina, and sure enough, she looked like she had just woken up from a nap. Her usually perfect hair was messy and the makeup she always had on her face was practically gone. Her legs were clad in long black tights and she wore a loose fitting t shirt that hung off her body like a curtain.
"Sounds like quite the eventful day. Much more eventful than mine, at least," Emma joked, her teeth digging into her bottom lip when she watched Regina raise a brow at her comment.
"You mean you didn't eat a copious amount of bear claws and skim through paperwork like you usually do?"
"The donut shop was closed," Emma snapped back in a teasing tone, raising her own manicured brow at the queen.
"Oh, what a shame, then," Regina teased, looking up at the other woman from beneath her eyelashes. "It's so sad that you couldn't scarf down an endless amount of donuts until you feel so full that you have to unbutton your pants and lay back in you chair like a neanderthal."
"Hey, I know when you walk into my office without notice you enjoy seeing me in my natural habitat, Regina, and don't even try to deny it." Regina rolled her eyes and took a small, almost threatening, step towards Emma. Her hot breath brushed against the higher planes of Emma's face, causing the younger woman to shiver.
"Your natural habitat, Miss Swan? Trust me, you are here every night, I am quite used to seeing you with a full belly, sprawled out on my couch."
Before Emma could answer, her phone was screaming at her from across the room where she had thrown it on the counter with her keys. The incessant buzzing made it vibrate across the counter, and if Emma hadn't known any better, she would have thought it would have ran to her so she would pick it up.
"You better get that," Regina whispered, stepping away from the blonde and walking back over to the stove. Hope shifted in her arms, and Regina so fluidly moved her so she cold rest her head on her shoulder that Emma would have thought that it was second nature to her.
Emma sighed and walked over to the island and picked up the phone, her face scrunching up when she saw her husband's name light up the screen. She reluctantly picked up the phone and slid the answer button to the right. She held up the phone to her ear.
"Hello?" She squeaked out. On the other end of the line she heard rustling and shuffling, and she maybe even heard a giggle far off in the background. A lump formed in the back of her throat but she swallowed it down and leaned against the counter.
"Swan?" He slurred into the phone. The shuffling behind him continued, but Emma chose to ignore it, forcing herself not to think of what he could really be doing when they weren't face to face.
"Yes, Killian?" A groan filled her ears, and she didn't know why it made sweat bead on the back of her neck.
"Where are you? Where is my daughter?" His words were slurred, and Emma knew he had wasted the day away drinking at the Rabbit Hole or somewhere else where he could find a cheap drink.
"I am at Regina's right now and Hope is with me. Why? Where are you?"
"I don't have to tell you everywhere I go, Emma. And why do you have to always be over there anyways?" He spit into the phone angrily.
Emma sighed, already put out by the conversation, and ran her hand over her practically makeup-less face and rested her head on her hand.
"Killian, I'm not going to answer any of your questions if you don't answer mine," she sighed out. She heard something slam on the other side of the line, causing her first reaction to be a jump. "The hell was that Killian?"
"Damnitt, Swan, stop asking so many bloody questions and just answer mine. Could you do something right for once and just be the good fucking wife you need to be? You know what, nevermind. I want you home in thirty minutes or I swear to all things above, Swan, you will regret ever coming to this shitty little town," he screamed into the phone, and before Emma could even get a breath out the line went dead.
Emma sat in silence, staring down at the shiny marble that reflected the light. Tears filled her eyes once, then dried back up, but when she felt Regina wrap her hand around her bicep she lost it completely.
Without a moment's hesitation Regina pulled Emma into her arms and held her close as humanly possible to her comforting body. When she saw Emma's face pale and then heard her go silent she instantly went and sat Hope down in her swing, turning it on so the baby would be happy while her mother was anything but.
"Shhh, calm down Emma," she whispered, rubbing her back in small circles. She didn't know what Killian said, she didn't know what bullshit she spewed into her friend's ear, but she knew that Emma wasn't one to cry over nothing.
Emma heaved into her chest, her hands fisting in the back of Regina's shirt. She knew that she was probably leaving mascara stains on the woman's shirt, but right then she didn't care. She just needed someone to hold her and be there for her, and that person was Regina.
Killian had never hit her. He had never so much has laid a finger on her in a wrong way, or their daughter. Sometimes, though, he would get in her face and yell, but she just knew that was something that everyone did from time to time. She was just used to it by now.
"What did he say, Emma?" Regina whispered, her head slightly turning to bury her face in Emma's nearly straightened curles. The younger woman sniffled into Regina's shoulder and sighed.
"There was noises in the back and he wouldn't… he wouldn't answer my questions and then he started shouting and then it sounded like he broke something or hit something." She didn't finish the rest of what she wanted to say because she didn't know how to. She didn't know how to tell Regina that he had threatened her in the worst way possible.
"Is there anything else?" She said softly, rubbing small circles on her back. A shiver racked through Emma's body.
You can trust her, Emma.
You can't, Emma, you can't trust everyone that you meet. You have been hurt too many times. She is just going to hurt you like the rest.
All of her thoughts were racing through her mind and she just wished they would stop or wished she could have a switch to turn them off. She wished she could just turn everything off for an hour of the day and forget who she was and where she was and forget the standards she had to uphold herself to.
"He just," she paused, "he said that if I wasn't home in half an hour that he would make me regret ever coming to Storybrooke," she whimpered out, her eyes filling with tears again.
Pure rage shot through Regina's body as Emma's words rang through her ears.
That fucking pig. I'll kiss that son of a bitch. I am going to kill that imbecile. How dare he talk to my Emma like that.
She isn't yours, Regina. She never had been and she never will be. She doesn't want you.
"Emma has he ever hit you?" The blonde shook her head quickly on her shoulder, her blonde hair tickling Regina's chin. The brunette let out a sigh of relief and held her tighter.
"He has never hit you or Hope of done anything, correct?" Emma sighed,
"He had never laid a threatening hand on either of us. Sometimes he yells and maybe gets too close, but he had never laid a hand on me or Hope, I promise. I wouldn't let him do that," she vowed, resting her chin on Regina's shoulder.
After a few more minutes of just holding her, Regina pulled away from her and dripped onto her shoulders. She had to slightly look up at her without her heels on, and a part of her wanted to reach up and wipe away the tear tracks from her cheeks.
"Emma, I don't want you going back to that house while he is there," she admitted. Emma closed her eyes and sighed.
"If I don't then he might come here and I don't know how much he has drank or what he has done or who he has been with. I would rather keep him far away from you. I don't want you getting dragged into this more than you already are."
Regina shook her head and reached up, running her thumb across the high plane of Emma's tear soaked cheek. She gave her a gentle smile and brushed her thumb over her cheek one last time.
"I don't care what you say, Emma. I will always be here no matter what. If he comes here then I will light his ass on fire. God only knows how many times I have been three seconds away from doing it before."
Emma only looked down and closed her eyes, her chest rising as she took in a deep breath.
"Look, just stay for dinner. If he shows up, then he shows up and we can deal with that. I just don't want you getting hurt, Emma. Please just stay here for tonight. It isn't like you haven't been here overnight before." Before Regina had even finished her sentence Emma was nodding, her eyes darting over to the baby that was growing fussy in her seat.
Regina watched as the woman picked her child up and held her close to her cest, cradling her head and pressing soft kisses to her forehead. Her heart continued to break for the woman. Was it because she couldn't be with her in the way she wanted to be, or becuase she was obviously being treated horribly by the person that was supposed to love her until their last breaths?