A/N: Here's another chapter. I'm glad you're all enjoying it so far!
Dinner could have only been accurately described as a complete disaster. Anything less would have been sugar coating it. It all started with the damn filet mignon.
Henry had been served a chunk of the highly prepared steak and looked at it quizzically. It was covered in the most unusual sauce and seemed to be barely cooked. While he spent way too long strategizing how he was going to go about cutting it, a volley of sorts had begun between Emma and Cora.
"So Emma. When did you move to Storybrooke?"
"A couple of months ago, Henry found me in Boston and brought me back home"
Henry looked up from his steak and smiled at his birth mother. She finally understood, he thought to himself.
"I see. And then you met Regina?"
"Yeah-"
"And now you two are dating?"
"Yes." Emma gave up on trying to answer in anything more than one or two words. It seemed Cora was fishing for answers, and didn't care about the backstories.
"And what do you do in Storybrooke?"
"I'm the sheriff."
"How…fitting," Cora all but spat, "Regina, do you remember that handsome young man, Killian, that we met back in the Hamptons?"
Regina nodded sharply, obviously annoyed that her mother was bringing this up with Emma here.
"Well I invited him tonight. He should be getting here for dessert."
On the inside, Emma was gawking, was Regina's mother really trying to set her up while she was there? But on the outside, she remained passive, something she must have learned from Regina.
'Why would you invite him here?' Regina signed to Henry Sr. who whispered to Cora. The whole thing reminded Emma of the game telephone.
"He's a wonderful young man. And he comes from on of the best families too!" Cora was giddy at thought of how many socialite points she would gain if she united their two high standing families together.
'No. He's rude, arrogant, and wears too much leather.'
"Oh don't be silly, dear. He's coming, and that's final." Cora delicately put a piece of steak in her mouth and looked around as she chewed as if nothing was happening.
Emma fidgeted anxiously in her seat.
Henry Sr. glanced nervously at Regina.
Henry suddenly picked up his fork, having finally decided how to cut the steak.
'I will not stand for you dictating my life again. I'm with Emma. That's final.' Regina was signing so fiercely now Emma came to the conclusion that a tense enough silence could be a million more times intimidating than the loudest screaming.
"No, you listen to me young lady. You have had your fun, wasted your good years gallivanting around god knows where, with god knows who," Cora glanced at Emma, "but you're my daughter and you will come home where you belong."
Just as Cora finished screaming, shattering suddenly sounded next to Henry, who froze. He had gotten a little overzealous cutting the steak, causing a swipe of his knife to send the whole plate flying. A smear of the sauce lay on the floor and the chunk of steak rested on the foot of Winston, the butler.
Everyone turned towards Henry who looked so embarrassed Emma worried he might burst a blood vessel.
'We're going. If you want to stay Henry, Emma and I will come and pick you up later, but I can't stand to be here right now.'
Henry shook his head 'no' and followed his mothers out the dining room, needing to get out of there as well. Cora remained sitting at the dinner table, cutting her steak and placing small bites in her mouth.
"Wait," Henry Sr. called after them, struggling to keep up with the quick pace Regina had set. Emma grabbed Regina's arm right before they got to the front door after hearing the old man's call. Regina turned around.
'I'm sorry. I just-I need to leave.' Regina signed to her father, who looked more than understanding.
'Just before you leave. Your mother and I invited you here because we wanted to offer you something.'
'What is it?'
'Your mother read about these cochlear implants in a magazine. We want to get them for you. You would be able to hear.'
'Daddy, I can't. You know taking anything from her involves an almost legally binding contract. She'll make me come back to live here. She'll think she can control everything again.' Henry Sr. just nodded softly, admiring the way his little girl had grown up. Even if it was without his help.
He had always been a mere shadow behind Cora's controlling personality. He tried for years to step out from behind his wife and show his daughter all she meant to him, but here he was now, old and still cowardly.
At least his daughter had Emma. The girl seemed spunky enough for the both of them.
Regina reached out and hugged her father lovingly before walking out the door with Emma and Henry glued to her side.
Henry Sr. watched as the family walked down the driveway and back to their car.
He watched Emma's hand swing out from her normal walking trajectory to grab ahold of Regina's.
He watched as Regina ruffled her son's hair, pulling him into her side as he pretended, but didn't actually try, to escape from her grasp.
And he knew right then and there, his daughter had everything she needed to be happy.
He would be lucky if she ever came by again.
A week later, the mansion stood, quiet and dark, only a sliver of moon providing light from the night. Besides the occasional ice covered branch that would rap against the window, the only sound that could be heard in the house was the clicking of a keyboard and mouse.
Emma sat at the dining room table, her face lit up by the bright reflection from the laptop screen. She had been sitting there for a few hours scrolling through pages and pages of information on cochlear implants.
Ever since Henry Sr. had mentioned them, Emma had been extremely curious. She'd heard about hearing aids, but those only amplified sounds, Regina was deaf, with no sound to amplify. Cochlear implants on the other hand could help deaf people hear too.
At first she had only wanted to know the context of what he was talking about, but soon after she began to research the statistics, costs, biological logistics, technological advancements, rehabilitation, availability.
In that moment, Emma Swan might have been the most knowledgeable cochlear implant expert within a fifty mile radius. And with every page she read, she became more and more convinced that they were worth a shot.
The only thing holding her back from asking Regina about them was the woman's immediately off-put attitude towards them. She had shut the idea down within seconds.
And although it may have just been the fact that they had come as a package deal from her mother, something told Emma that there were other unspoken prejudices against them. She'd bring it up casually in the morning, she told herself.
Emma shut the laptop and returned to Regina's room, sliding in the bed slowly so not to wake the sleeping woman on the other side. She snuggled up close to Regina and closed her eyes, willing her brain to still for the brief time she would be sleeping tonight. But her brain would just not stop. It was whirling and whirling with everything had just learned and she needed to know if it was even an option for Regina.
She nudged Regina's arm softly, waiting for the tell tale break in the brunette's even and deep breaths. She nudged again, harder this time, but Regina remained still.
Emma nudged, and by nudged she meant shoved, Regina one last time. Regina shot up from her laying down position and immediately turned on the bedside lamp. She glared at Emma who cowered in the comforter with a sheepish look on her face.
'What's wrong?' Regina signed grumpily, having been woken up by what felt like a bull ramming into her arm.
'I just wanted to talk to you' Emma admitted as she began to pull the comforter down.
'At this early in the…' Regina looked at the clock next to her bed. 4:23. Oh, this better be good, 'morning?'
'Yeah.'
'Besides the fact that it's way too early, we can't exactly talk, dear. I don't know if you know this, but I'm deaf' No one ever said Regina's sarcasm disappeared when she was still half asleep.
'Well that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about…' Emma trailed off not really thinking about the alternate interpretations of what she had said.
Meanwhile, Regina was plunging into a vortex of unreasonable despair thinking that somehow Emma had realized her deafness was a problem in their relationship.
Something she couldn't get over.
Something that was dragging her down.
Something that she was going to leave Regina for.
'Regina?' Emma repeated to the brunette who was staring, but not really looking, at her. Regina saw Emma's hands move in her vision and snapped out of it.
'Sorry, what?'
'I wanted to talk to you about the cochlear implants your dad mentioned'
Relief washed over Regina's body and she felt the urge to hug the woman that never waivered when it came to her.
'What about them?'
'Have you ever thought about getting them? Emma asked innocently causing Regina to release a sigh next to her.
'My mother only wanted me to get them for me so she could say that I owed her.'
'But what about getting them for yourself?'
'They cost a lot of money Emma…'
'Yeah I know, like around $45,000.' Regina laughed, she knew the bed had felt a little cold when Emma had woken her up.
'I see you did some research'
Emma smiled shyly and shrugged.
'I just wanted to know about them.'
'I just can't justify spending that much money on something that I've lived with practically my whole life, when Henry has to go to college'
'Wait, you weren't born deaf?'
'No, I got a rare infection in my ear that made me lose all hearing as a child'
'How old?'
'I was five.'
Emma's overflowing brain whizzed as it recalled an article that said that adults who had grown up hearing sounds, speaking the language, were more likely to have a success story that adults who had been born deaf. Her scheming was interrupted by Regina, who was signing once again.
'And when you get them there's a chance they may not work, and you have to go to therapy, not to mention it's a whole surgical procedure that would mean you and Henry would have to take care of me for days, and with my job...'
Regina kept going on and on about how these implants would put a burden on everyone in her life. Emma stilled the woman's hands, which were still flitting around with excuses.
'I understand. Let's go to sleep now' Emma ran her fingers through Regina's silky hair and adjusted until she was lying back down on her pillow. Regina leaned over, kissed Emma on the forehead, and turned off the light.
Emma lay still in the dark before closing her eyes for he night. She had gotten all the information she needed.
P.S. It's my birthday today! YAY.
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