Regina strutted down the hall of the hospital like she owned the place. The people were smart enough to get out of her way. Doctor Whale was nowhere in sight so she went straight for his office.

The office was neat. A pile of current patient files sat on his desk. Regina read through the names, but none of them were of interest. She moved on to the metal cabinet in search of Junior's file. It would have been easier if she knew his surname. It took a little extra effort, but she found it.

There were no indications that warranted further testing. The file said he was perfectly healthy and developing normally.

She put the file back to begin her search for Sarahbella's. She encountered the same problem of not knowing what the hospital filed her under. She thought for a moment and it came to her. She found it right next to Emma's under 'Swan'. She paused to admire the name, finding she liked the way it fit.

The file read similar to Junior's, with nothing out of the ordinary.

She put the file back and slammed the drawer shut, growing frustrated. Junior and Sarah were her only leads. She didn't know what else to look for. She did know Whale was hiding something, and she wouldn't leave until she found it.

She opened and closed every drawer looking for anything that stood out. When that came up fruitless, she moved on to his computer. Her first guess for his password was Frankenstein, lo and behold she got in.

There was just more useless information; legitimate doctor work. She slammed her fist on the desk. A pile of papers fell over, and two of the desk's drawers slid open. She closed them and stared curiously at the last drawer that hadn't open. It had a built in lock, and didn't budge when she pulled on it.

That wasn't an obstacle. With a wave of her hand the lock turned and the drawer slid open, revealing more files.

There were five thin folders in total. She put them on the desk to investigate further. Each belonged to a different patient, Junior, Sarahbella, Alexandra, Baby Neal, and Emma.

The documents were mostly blood tests with illegible annotations. The parents were listed for each, and even contained blood tests for them. Only Sarah's file lacked that aspect. The space where her parents should have been listed remained blank.

What really stuck out to the mayor was Emma's high cholesterol, and a report of unknown antibodies that all five shared. Whale seemed to have looked for the antibodies in the parents, but the results had come back negative.

Regina found the information she was looking for, but had no idea what it meant, only that Whale's interest stemmed further than just Sarahbella and Junior.

She gathered up the folders and went off in search of the dirtbag she needed to interrogate.

"Whale, where is he?" She asked the nurse at the reception desk.

"With a patient." The nurse pointed to an examination room.

That patient, Regina discovered when she burst through the door, was Hook, and they were playing an entirely different type of doctor.

"Regina!" Whale shrieked. He pushed away from Hook who was sitting on the exam room table. His hands fumbled to button up his shirt.

"Come to join us, love?" Hook asked with a smile that he might have thought was charming. It sent a disgusted shiver through the mayor.

"Out." She ordered the pirate.

He sighed, but hopped off the table. "Would you mind keeping this between us?" He asked Regina. "I haven't had a chance to tell Swan I've moved on. She's going to be devastated."

Regina suspected he might be overreaching, but that wasn't of her concern. "Be gone."

"Come find me if you survive." He called back to Whale on his way out.

With Hook out of the way the mayor focused all her irritation on the doctor. She took threatening steps to invade his personal space. "Start talking."

"I met him in a bar! We've been seeing each other for months, and-"

"Please," She scoffed. "I'm not you're mother. I don't care about your horrible taste in men." She shoved the files into his chest. "Explain these." She backed away to give him enough space to look at them.

"I have a theory." Whale tried to rationalize with the ever angry mayor. "Look…" He put down the files on the exam table and opened them all up to the pages with parent information. "Excluding Sarahbella, do you see what they all have in common?"

"Parents?" She rolled her eyes. "How unique."

"Yes, but don't you see what their parents have?" He waited a beat before answering for her. "Love!"

"Love?"

"True Love!" His excitement grew. "These four where born of True Love, and I can say with almost certainty that Sarahbella must have been convinced the same way, with powerful, unyielding love. That's where the antibodies must come from." He hurried to turn all the pages to the information about the antibodies.

Surprise registered on Regina's face before she could stop it. "What do they do?"

"I don't know." Whale's face lit up with undeterred glee, "I've never seen anything like it. Isn't that amazing?"

"Why are you doing this?"

"For science." He said firmly.

Regina was applauded. "The same science that turned your brother, and the love of my life into monsters?"

It was a touchy subject for both of them. They took a pause to fortify themselves. "This is different, purely theoretical. "

"There is nothing theoretical about the marks you left on Junior's arms, or the anguish you put his mother through."

"She was the only one I could convince to come in regularly for fresh samples." He looked remorseful, but Regina couldn't be sure if it was for their suffering or for his research. "The antibodies, they don't exist anywhere else but in these five beings. If you would just allow me to run more tests on Sarahbella and-"

Regina forcefully pushed him up against the wall. His head bounced against a framed picture and broke the glass. It further shattered when it fell and hit the ground. "You're out of your mind if you think, for a second, you're going anywhere near her. This ends now."

He gulped, but fought to keep his cool. "You have to be at least a little bit curious. You are all always going on about how magnificent and powerful True Love is. Think of what we could discover!"

"At what cost!?" Regina yelled to get through to him. "Somehow I don't think you'd be satisfied with just blood samples. How far would you go Whale? How many of them would you be willing to sacrifice!?"

When Whale didn't respond, Regina had her answer.

The mayor swore to herself, for as long as she lived the true love babies would never be exploited. "They're people. Not your play things." She let him go and gathered up the files to take with her. "If you try this again, I swear there will be nothing left of your body to find. Stay the hell away from the children." She turned back half way out the door. "That includes Emma." She flicked her wrist and the door slammed shut behind her.

Regina stared at the empty holder where her toothbrush was supposed to be. She had already scrubbed her make-up away and changed into pajamas to get ready for bed, but her toothbrush was nowhere to be seen.

Her phone buzzed on the marble countertop. Emma's old mug shot appeared on the screen indicating a phone call. The mayor took a second to admire Emma's grumpy face before answering.

"Sheriff Swan, just the woman I need."

In New York, Emma was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by the mayor's declaration. "How can I be of service?" She said with a lopsided grin.

"It seems my toothbrush has gone missing."

The sheriff's face straightened and she did her best to keep the guilt from showing in her voice. "That's not really police business, ma'am."

Regina rolled her eyes as she dug through a drawer for a new toothbrush. "I just don't know where it could have gone."

Emma swallowed hard, not exactly proud of what she was going to say next. "Maybe Henry took it."

Regina shouldered the phone to be able to free her toothbrush from the package. "What on earth would he want with it?"

"Well his shoes were looking pretty clean."

She sighed as she put toothpaste on the toothbrush. "That boy…where is he?"

"He knocked out a few hours ago. I think he under estimated how exhausting packing is."

"Yes, well, he's never actually had to do it before."

Emma listened as she heard a familiar sound on the other end. "Are you brushing your teeth?"

Regina removed the toothbrush to answer. "If it offends you so much, try calling at a more reasonable hour." She went back to brushing.

Emma didn't know when Regina had become so comfortable with her, but she would be damned if she ever let them go back. It was hard to imagine the mayor wasn't always perfectly put together, ready to seize the day, and anyone in her way. Emma had to wonder…"What are you wearing?"

Regina's brushing stopped again, and Emma's eyes grew wide.

"I don't mean that in a creepy way…just in a… 'I wonder what the mayor wears to bed' way." Somehow that didn't make it any better. "I'm just going to stop talking now."

"You say the sweetest things."

They stayed in comfortable silence until Regina finished in the bathroom and climbed into her bed.

"So how was your day?" Emma hoped her words would stop betraying her.

"Eventful."

"Do I even want to know?"

"I assaulted Whale."

"Regina…"

"And I may have implied I would murder him."

"Seriously? I haven't even been gone a full day." Emma sighed. "What did he do?"

"That's your question?" The mayor asked surprised.

"That, and did he learn his lesson?"

Regina's free hand wandered up to her hair, where it found a lock to twirl around a finger as a smile spread across her face. It was nice to be trusted.

"Regina?"

She shook herself out of it, glad no one was around to witness her slip. "He was researching children born of True Love. It was mostly just blood testing, and Aurora's son took the brunt of it."

"That son of a bitch. That's why he kept bugging me about going in for a checkup."

"Did he ask you about Sarah?"

"Yeah…what does Sarah have to do with this?"

"In his testing, he discovered specific antibodies that only exist in products of true love. Sarah has them."

Emma sat up from her place on the floor surrounded by boxes. "But that means…"

"Yes, Sarah is a product of True Love."

"But...How?"

"Are you asking me to explain where babies come from?"

Emma rolled her eyes. She brought her knees up to rest an elbow on while she buried her free hand in her hair. "Then why does she have dark magic?"

"Because she was taught."

"So she has light and dark magic?" The DNA test was just a formality at this point. "Just like you…" Emma didn't need any more convincing.

"Not quite." Regina laughed it off. "She's more like you in the sense of being naturally good."

The self-deprecation was not lost on the sheriff. "You are good, Regina. I know that, everyone who really sees you knows that."

The brunette looked at her thriving bouquet of roses on her nightstand. Her fondness for the sheriff was becoming harder to ignore. The special idoit's asinine, incessant kindness and affection was going to be the end of them both. She looked away from the flowers and got back to the matter at hand. "As much as I loath to admit, Whale's research has given us the most insight we have about Sarah. What I can't fathom is what could have happened to her parents. If they are anything like yours, they should be running around town screaming 'I will find you'."

Emma would pay money to see Regina yell those words. "Maybe she's right where she's supposed to be." She said softly. "So Whale won't be a problem then?"

"No. I think I made it abundantly clear-"

"I'm going to need you to stop right there for reasons of plausible deniability."

Regina chuckled. "As you wish."

"How's Sarah?"

"She made a new friend today." Regina smiled. They laughed together as Regina told the tale of Sarahbella and Alexandra's adventures. Even when the girls turned into zombies and Emma should have been in trouble the laughter continued until the stories ended and Regina's tone turned gentle. "Emma…When are you coming home?"

"I don't know yet." She told her honestly. An evil grin grew when she saw an opportunity. "Miss me already?" Emma could almost feel Regina's eyes roll through the phone. "If you say yes I'll pack faster." She teased.

"Goodnight Miss Swan."

"Goodnight Regina."

Not a minute later, Emma's phone chimed with a new text message from the mayor. "Maybe." It gave Emma another reason to grin and another horrible idea.

Regina's phone buzzed in her hand with the response. She received a picture of a tired and confused Henry sitting in a box with his limbs hanging out. She didn't want to laugh at her son's expense, but she couldn't help the amused chuckle that escaped her.

"Wait here." Emma told Henry as she unbuckled her seatbelt in the truck. They were parked in the Boston PD parking lot. It was there last stop on the way back home.

"But I want to know too." Henry whined.

"And you will, just later."

Henry moved on to groaning. "Why can't I come?"

"You have to guard the truck." She gestured to their tarp covered belongings in the back. "Operation…Guard the truck."

"You're terrible at this."

"Whatever, Operation Maybe Baby." She ruffled his hair before finally stepping out. She leaned in through the open window. "I'll be ten minutes, tops."

"You know we're at a police station, right?" He leaned closer to her. "The truck doesn't need guarding."

"Oh yeah?" She pointed in the general direction out the passenger window. "Then what's that?" She hurried away as soon as his back was turned.

"Tell Dr. Isles I said hi!" He called after his unreasonable mother.

…

Maura was late. Emma never liked when Maura was late. It always meant something horrible happened that would break and change someone's life forever.

And here Emma was, fretting over what might be.

She didn't know what answer she wanted the results to say anymore. The insecurities had been eating away at her since the revelations of Sarah's existence. Her heart and her brain were at war. Logically she knew being born of True Love could only be a good thing, but her heart physically ached with the thought that Regina could love somebody so much, somebody else that wasn't-

At least she could rest easy knowing there was no chance of it being Robin, unless there was more time travel magic crap involved.

Emma decided she hated magic, while she resisted the urge to bang her head against the table in the Boston PD café.

The chair next to her was pulled out and Maura slid onto it. "Sorry I'm late." She set a manila folder in front of Emma. "Are you alright?" The doctor asked when Emma only frowned down at it.

The blonde looked up at her friend. "What does it say?"

Maura smiled brightly. "I know you said you weren't sure if they shared familial DNA, but I started with a parental test just as an elimination tactic. Henry's other mother, is in fact, biologically related to the child. The results yielded a probability of parentage at 99.99%."

Emma rested her elbows on the table to bury her face in her hands.

Dr. Isles was confused. "Is that not the result you were hoping for?"

Emma didn't respond.

"Is she not a fit mother?"

Emma snapped out of it. "She's a great mother. It just…It complicates things."

"You were meant to adopt her?"

Emma nodded. "I just don't know where this leaves me."

"You already share one child with her, why is this different?"

"Regina adopted Henry when he was a baby. We only share now because..."

"Henry is your biological son?" The always too smart doctor worked it out.

Emma nodded guiltily. "I had him when I was in prison."

Maura stared at her, before finally just shaking her head. "I don't know why I'm surprised. I never really knew you, did I?"

"I'm sorry." It was the millionth sorry she had given this woman, but a part of her felt like she owed her a million more.

Maura sighed. "One thing I do know about you, is you make things harder than they have to be. Just tell her the truth about how you feel, and what you want."

"What if what I want is impossible?"

The doctor smiled knowing just one more thing about the blonde. "Then I'm sure it's exactly what you'll get."

Emma gripped the manila folder and stood outside on the mansion's porch. Henry had gone inside fifteen minutes ago, but Emma couldn't get herself to move. She knew there was no more waiting. Regina needed to know, and as soon as Emma saw her she was going to tell.

The door opened and the mayor raised an eyebrow at the nervous blonde. "Are you going to stand there all day?"

Emma lifted her arm to hand Regina the papers.

She took them hesitantly. "What's this?" She didn't have to flip through it far to discover it was the results of a DNA test. "I don't understand."

Emma held her breath just to buy an extra second before their lives changed forever.

Regina looked at her with such worry until Emma couldn't take it anymore.

"It's Sarah…She's your daughter."

a/n fun fact: i rewrote a big portion of this just to get emma to ask regina what she was wearing.