The decent and delicate thing to do here would be to pretend that they hadn't heard the shower turning off upstairs. Emma and Ruby both do that, the two of them moving around to other parts of the kitchen like they're trying to find knives to cut up vegetables that haven't yet been taken out of one of the massive paper bags. Snow, though, she looks up and then grins.
"Do you a have a house-guest?" she asks, both scandalized and delighted.
"I forgot to turn my water off when I left the bedroom."
Snow tilts her head. "Your hair isn't wet."
"I used magic."
"Your magic is bound."
"A magic blow dryer."
Ruby snorts and mutters something about how even she is better at this.
"So Robin?" Snow presses as she starts unpacking one of the bags.
"David, actually."
"Ewww," Emma groans. "Why do you keep going back to that?"
"Does the visual of me with your father repulse you, Miss Swan?" Regina asks, her eyebrow lazily lifted up in a way undeniably meant to antagonize Emma.
"The visual of my father naked repulses me, yes."
"And I don't like it," Snow admits, her tone more teasing than rebuke.
"Well, luckily for all of you ladies, I am not David," Robin says as he steps down the stairs, dressed in the clothes from the night before. He gives Regina an apologetic look and a shrug. "The roof was a bit too slick to climb down after last night's rainfall."
"And we weren't going away," Ruby notes before offering Robin a bagel that she pulls out of a bag that Regina hadn't previously noticed. A small kick in the middle of her belly reminds her that both she and the baby are hungry.
Thankfully, Ruby sees her eyes on the bag and doesn't make Regina ask, instead just passing it over to her and letting her remove two of the bagels before the former queen returns her attention to her once-again lover.
Who seems to realize that this is probably not somewhere he wants to be (it's plainly not somewhere that Regina wants to be, either, but she can't get out of it as easily as he can). "Well, as this is traditionally an event meant for all of you beautiful women, I suppose I should be going," he says with a soft smile.
"Coward," Regina grouses, her eyebrow cocked. Her hand slips out and she rubs at her belly, actively trying to settle the movements of her daughter.
His smile grows and then he leans over and presses his lips to hers. If she was about to say anything about the public display of affection (is it really public if its occurring within her own house?), the excited kick from inside of her stops her from doing it. This kid really and truly does love her daddy already.
"Enjoy yourselves," Robin says once he separates and she has no doubt that he's speaking both to her and to his daughter. He nods to the three women who are all watching them with varying looks of amusement and interest.
When he's gone, Regina turns back to the counter and starts preparing her bagels like nothing's happened. Like the Evil Queen hadn't just had a really tender moment with her lover in front of three of her former mortal enemies.
But she had and only Emma is willing to snort and let it go.
Snow wants to know everything which…no.
So Regina clears her throat, rubs her belly once again (the baby is still moving around excitedly) and says coolly, "So, when is this nightmare commencing?"
Because that will surely get Snow to change the subject.
It works like a charm.
Thank the gods for that, anyway.
Though, considering what's coming up next, she wonders absently if perhaps talking about her sex life with these three women would be preferable.
Talk about the lesser of two evils.
Problem is, she truly doesn't know which one is the lesser of them.
Regina doesn't know if she's more horrified by the fact that her house is full of people or the fact that she's tried to murder everyone in her house at least once. She'd very much been expecting Snow to be apologizing for the low turn-out, but apparently Snow is extremely persuasive. That or there are lot of women in this town just aching to see the Evil Queen being forced to play silly little games that involve an obnoxious amount of inane giggling.
There are balloons and streamers everywhere and gods if it doesn't look like some kind of party store exploded inside her house in a terrible way.
At least the chocolate buttercream cake (and the cupcakes that Granny had sent over) is fantastic. Well, the bits of it that Regina is able to sneak between Snow's silly games (thankfully, Emma had won the battle on when to cut it up, insisting that a constant flow of sugar could only be good for everyone).
But it doesn't make up for when Snow starts explaining how to play a game that essentially equates to placing cotton balls on Regina's head to see how many can actually fit up there. When Regina demands to know what the purpose of such a thing would be, Snow just laughs and says, "It's for fun."
There's this awful game that involves diapers full of melted chocolate and Regina's fully sure that this is some sick joke from Snow but it's mostly just gross and she spends the whole game wondering how it is that the girl that had been a step from the crown had ended up with the couth of a redneck.
Then there's the nursery rhymes music that is playing the whole time. It's like cheerful nails on a chalkboard and even Emma looks like she's going insane when the CD loops for the fifteenth time so that it can again play the song about some dog named Bingo. But Snow insists that it's mood music.
And baby girl? Much to Regina's chagrin, when the little one isn't fidgeting around in her belly like she can't get comfortable, she appears to love it.
Every time Regina starts to get grouchy (her temper snaps when Snow pulls out a string and starts rambling something about everyone guessing how big the bump is), the baby seems to throw out some extra "calm" vibes.
"My mother means well," Emma says when she comes up beside Regina as she watches Snow cleaning up one of the games, a cup of bright red punch in Emma's right hand. Regina immediately reaches for it and sniffs it.
"Yes, tell me that again later when you're not doctoring up the punch."
"It was either that or go destroy your CD player," Emma replies.
"Valid point. Tell me this is almost over," Regina pleads, her hand on her belly again. She's a bit sore today, but well, that's pregnancy and probably a little to do with her more than boisterous activities with Robin the previous evening.
Emma points over towards the table of gifts. "After you open those."
"You realize that everyone in this room hates me, right? In my kingdom, we utilized tasters and guards for things like this. To keep me from dying."
"No one is dying," Snow says as she comes back, grabbing Emma's cup as she passes by. "This isn't our kingdom, Regina. Try to have some faith."
"She's been doctoring her own drink, too, hasn't she?" Regina asks.
"She must be," Ruby muses as she comes up beside them. She reaches under her coat and extracts a flask, handing it over to Emma and shrugging at the openly wistful expression she sees on Regina's face. "But the sooner you get to opening up the gifts and oohing and aahing at all of them, the sooner everyone goes away and your handsome outlaw can come back and -"
"And we're going over here now," Emma interupts with a loud laugh before Regina can reply with some kind of acerbic response, a hand around her arm as she pushes the older woman towards the couch. "Whatever you were just about to say to her, just try to remember that she helped us do this for you."
"Which is exactly why she deserves whatever I was going to say to her."
"Admit it, you kind of like that people care about you enough for this."
"What I'll admit is that I don't know why they would. You know this is strange, Emma. I earned their hatred and people don't just forgive and forget."
"Maybe they haven't. Maybe they're just moving on. Like all of us have. Maybe it realy is okay to let the past go and realize that it all worked out for the best." She squeezes Regina's forearm and then moves away to go retrieve Snow.
"Moving on," Regina sighs, her eyes on the pile of gifts. "We shall see."
There are, in fact, no weapons of surprise death, maiming or even destruction to be found in the pile of baby gifts. Just a lot of dreadfully ugly things, alas.
The vast majority of the shower gifts are clothes that she wouldn't let even Snow wear even during the days when they'd actually mostly hated each other. They're ugly and really, does everyone from the Enchanted Forest lack even basic taste? Or are they all wearing blindfolds when they get dressed.
Suffice it to say, it takes every bit of Regina's political experience to smile and act grateful as she's holding up an atrocious onesie with yellow cows on it.
There's a blanket that looks like someone without fingers had knit it. It's also puke green and pink and has a bizarre winged creature in the middle of it.
Regina's fairly sure that the fairies had sent it over as a kind of spite gift.
Thankfully, there's also a few cute little stuffed animals and some of those baby's first this-or-that kind of toys and a couple books. Those can stay.
Emma gives her a red leather jacket that will fit baby girl when she's about two and it's just hideous (and Emma Swan) enough to make Regina laugh and nod her head in appreciation as Emma is grinning knowingly at her.
"Okay, just mine is left," Snow says and hands Regina a suspiciously small box (it's covered in garishly pink wrapping paper) , a bright smile on her lips.
Regina accepts it slowly, her hand again rubbing at her belly.
She can practically hear her daughter pleading her mother for calm.
But she is calm, she insists to herself.
This is okay.
Everything is okay.
She opens the box and looks inside.
The color drains from her face.
Everything isn't okay at all.
"Regina," she hears Snow call out after her, but then she's slamming the door behind her and fleeing from her own house as fast as she can manage.
Even baby girl and her super calming mojo can't make this better.
By the time Snow finds her at the office that they now share, she's hunched over on the sofa, her arm around her middle, her teeth grit in sharp pain.
"Should I call Doc?" Snow asks as she slowly approaches.
"I need you to go away."
"Regina, please -"
"Go. Away."
"Please. Talk to me."
Regina looks up at her, tears on her cheeks, her face pinched tight with pain and hurt. "If you never stopped hating me, then why all this pretending?"
"Hating you? I've never hated you."
"You could fool the hell out of me," Regina growls. "That's what that was, wasn't it? A reminder of what I took away from you and Emma? Your baby."
"No, Regina, no." Snow finishes her slow approach, sitting down next to Regina on the couch and then reaching out to gently rub her former stepmothers' back. She feels the older woman flinch beneath her fingertips, but she's clearly not feeling well enough to move away. "I didn't give you that gift as a way to hurt you; I gave you that as a way for us to start over."
"It belonged to Emma," Regina insists, wincing again, sharper this time.
"And she was okay with you having it. Because what happened that day, it's in the past. What happened wasn't what any of us wanted and I wish to God that I'd had the chance to raise my daughter myself, but all of us - we have Henry and Emma is happy now and David and I are happy and you have Robin and this little girl. I wouldn't give any of that back for anything in the world."
"You can't be serious."
"I am." Snow reaches under her coat and removes the unicorn mobile that had once been above the crib that would have belonged to baby Emma. "This should have been what helped Emma fall asleep every night when she was just a baby, but that's not what happened and if it had been, then you might never have remembered the amazing woman that you were before I broke my promise to you and we might not have ever had a chance to remember how much…maybe I would never have had a chance to remember how much I love you. And Emma, I wish she had never gone through the nightmare of what she did, but I love my daughter desperately. I love this Emma. The one she might have been, we'll never know, but I know this one and she is strong and beautiful and an amazing woman who is so full of love and compassion and the ability to forgive. I like to think that all of those things would have been possible in the Enchanted Forest as well, but I know that all of them are possible here and if she can accept that - if she can accept who she is - then maybe we can, too?"
"Emma was okay with this?" Regina asks, looking doubtful. Sure, she and Emma are good - better than good - these days, but there are still moments when Regina finds herself wondering how that could possibly be.
"David, too. You're our family, Regina. It's not just Henry and Robin who are looking forward to her; we are all looking forward to meeting her." Snow extends her palm, the mobile in it. The unicorns gleam brightly in the light of the office, clinking together as she presses them into Regina's hand.
"I have spent so much time trying not to think about the things I've done but if this situation with Robin has taught me anything, it's that I can't run from having hurt the people I care about. I blamed you for so long for what happened that day, but I took more from you than you ever took from me."
"I don't think it works like that," Snow says, her hands covering Regina's.
"Why are you so willing to forgive me? Why is everyone - Robin? Emma?"
"I like indoor plumbing," Snow says with a bright smile. "And I love my grandson desperately. There's nothing that would make me give him up."
"And Emma?"
"Understands better than either one of the useless nature of wishing that something was other than it is. We are who we are and I kind of like us."
"You really are a hopeless idiot."
"Hopeful."
Regina nods, unable to hide yet another wince. "Is all the cake gone?"
"There's still some left," Snow assures her. "How about we stop in to see Doc just to make sure everything is okay -" she gives Regina a hard look to prevent any argument and finds herself frowning when the older woman doesn't provide even a slight one - "And then we can head back to the house?"
"Not if everyone is still there. I really don't -"
"They're gone and anyone who says anything will answer to me."
"I don't need protection," Regina insist, pushing past the lump in her throat.
"Maybe not, but you have it anyway. From me, my husband and my daughter. So deal with it." She stands up and offers a hand to Regina. "You've protected me many a time whether you realize it or not. This is my turn to do the same."
"You have a different understanding of our history than I do."
"I prefer to think of it as a more positive view of things," she says cheerfully. "There was a time when I lost faith in you. In us. That will never happen again."
"If you and your obnoxious family -"
"The family you're part of," Snow replies with an overly sweet smile.
Regina gives her a look and then pushes on. "If you want to insist on forgiving someone that no sane person ever would, well, then who am I to stop you?"
With a roll of her eyes (it's the only way that she can hide the swirling emotions within her), she reaches out to take Snow's hand and stand up.
That's when she feels it.
That's when the pain that she's been feeling most of the day - annoying and aching for the most part - becomes explosive and she can feel both the fear from herself and the terrifying panic from the baby all at the same time.
"Regina," she hears Snow say, her voice alarmed and a bit scared. "No."
She thinks she hears something creak, maybe even break behind her but it's hard to focus on anything because she's falling to her knees and crying out in agony, her hand over her belly as the fear within her grows exponentially.
Metal twists and glass shatters and then Snow is throwing herself over Regina as flames erupt within the fireplace and the doorframe crumbles inwards.
"Stop," she hears Snow insist. Practically plead.
"I can't," Regina whispers, her teeth almost cracking beneath the pressure of how hard she's biting down to stop herself from screaming again. "I'm not doing this; she is. She's scared..Snow, it's too early. She's too early."
Snow looks up and around at the shattered and nearly caved-on office.
And wonders if she has enough hope and faith to get them through this.
Emma's racing out of Regina's house with Ruby close behind her when David's cruiser pulls up in front, a very pensive and clearly worried looking Robin Hood riding shotgun, his cell phone clutched tight in his hand. David calls out as they approach, "We just got a call-"
"City Hall is caving in. Yeah, I just got the same call from about fifteen different people," Emma finishes, pulling open the door and jumping into the backseat of the cruiser, Ruby quickly scooting in beside her. "I've been trying to call Mary Margaret, but -"
"Your mother is in there?" David asks, his eyes widening. "We thought it might be Regina because..." he trails off and looks over at Robin.
Who quietly says, "She's in there, isn't she?" Only it's not so much a question as a certainly made into a plea to be wrong.
"Yeah. They both are." Emma meets David's eyes."Mom went after got a bit intense here. It…it doesn't matter." She then leans forward and squeezes Robin's shoulder. "But what matters right now is that Regina isn't alone and she's going to be just fine. She is."
Robin swallows hard and nods.
Because if he says anything, he'll say that he can't lose his heart again.
He can't lose Regina again.
So he says nothing, just looks ahead and watches the road before him.
Snow's terrified; she's had two children of her own and she's lived in the woods and learned how to do things few princesses know how to do but delivering a magical baby in the middle of a panic attack because she's coming too early and her mother is freaking out as well, that's harder.
But Regina is doubled over and trying to hold back on screaming as she shudders in such terrible pain and Snow knows that even if help is on the way (she has to believe that it is) she's going to be the one delivering the baby. She knows she's going to be the first one to hold Regina's little girl.
Her eyes flicker over to the unicorn mobile that is still laying on its side on the couch and Snow thinks about how strange their lives truly are and then muses that there probably was no other way that this could have ever gone.
"Okay, Regina," she says. "I believe we're going to have a baby today."
"She's too early," Regina whispers again, tears on her face even as she struggles to pull herself together and get control back of this situation. It all hurts so much right now (she'd thought the pain she'd felt when Owen had tortured her had been awful, but this - the physical and the mental - is so much worse than that), but she's been through so much in her life and so even this won't reduce her to a puddle even if the fear brings her close.
The fear that all of this hope will have been for nothing and then when it's all over, she'll be staring at bloody sheets and empty arms once again.
But that's where Snow comes into this; that's where rainbows and unicorns that the Evil Queen had hissed in fury at begin to matter. Simple hope has become a necessity and it's all Regina has to help her believe that she won't lose everything all over again. It's Snow's soft smile and bright eyes that insist to her that when this night is done, she'll still have her baby girl.
Her daughter, her son, family, and her lover.
Her second chance.
She knows better but for once, Regina doesn't resist following Snow's lead.
Can't resist.
Won't resist.
Even though she can smell blood and she can feel the wetness against her pants and oh there's so much panic rolling through her, coming from her daughter in suffocating waves that seem to be getting and deeper and more intense.
Which says nothing of her own fear, of her own doubts.
The ones that she's fighting to push back and away.
"She is too early," Snow agrees her voice firm and confident, pulling Regina from her rapidly darkening thoughts. "But she's your little girl which means she's built tough and resilient. And she might be early but that's just because her mother is always late." Snow chuckles at her own joke and then (after Regina groans again - whether in pain or annoyance at the poor choice of mirth) she says, "Listen to me: you are the strongest woman that I have ever known, Regina; you and me, together we are going to bring your daughter into this world. So grab my hand and squeeze hard and let's do this."
Their eyes meet - frightened brown on worried but hopeful green - and then for the second time in ten minutes, Regina reaches out and grips Snow's hand.
TBC...