A/N: To everyone I've accidentally killed: Regina is on her way to bring you back. Not Dr Whale. Never Dr Whale.
So... this is the penultimate chapter. I know right: there are lots of unanswered questions! For that reason, I'm planning out a sequel - although I'll only post it if you guys want to read it. Those of you I've mentioned it to seemed to like the idea, but I just wanted to run it past all of you.
I know where it's going to go, but if there are any questions you desperately want answered/things you want to happen (although there will be no smut because sadly I cannot for the life of me write it...) then let me know (by PM or in your reviews) and I'll do my best to work them in. I can't promise, because if they don't fit with the direction I'm intending on taking it, they won't go in. But I will do my best!
Anyway, thank you as always. :)
x
Mary Margaret's eyes were glued to the paper in her hand. She could vaguely hear laughter behind her, but it didn't register in her mind as she read and re-read the letter over and over again. In it, Liv appeared to be telling her that she was their granddaughter; that somehow Emma and Regina had created a baby.
Dear *Mary Margaret and David,* *Snow and James,* Grandma and Grandpa,
Sorry… I didn't know what to call you. I know we haven't exactly had the whole, 'surprise! I'm your granddaughter' conversation – and I'm really hoping Ma and Mom have explained things to you by now or this is gonna be kinda awkward – but it's too late for all that. And to think you thought Mom was trying to seduce me…
I just wanted to thank you for taking me in and making me feel wanted for pretty much the first time ever. You were right, Grandpa, I was safe. It would have been so easy for you to just tolerate me, or even ask me to leave; you didn't know anything about me, except for what Ma told you. I could have been some kind of junkie thief for all you knew. But you still welcomed me into your home and your lives. You did more than you needed to and I am so grateful.
This whole… situation… it's not anyone's fault. Decisions get made and I'm OK. By the time you get this I'll be gone. But that's fine. Ma and Mom will get their chance at a happy ending and Henry will have his family intact. That's the best possible outcome, right?
Please give Mom a chance. I know she's done some really bad stuff and I know that you can't forgive her for trying to kill you or forcing you to decide to send Ma away when she was a baby. But now she knows how you felt, right? You have something in common and you can use that to build a better relationship.
I know it'll be hard to understand and you probably won't want to believe that Mom is Ma's true love. But she is; I'm the proof. They'll be together whatever you think or say. Don't lose the chance to be a family because you can't let go of the past.
If you don't want to do it for me, do it for Henry and Ma. Everyone deserves a chance at their happy ending and true love, right?
Sorry I couldn't say goodbye.
Liv x
P.S. I still have most of my wages and I fixed Ma's bug without spending any of it, so you can have the money to repay you for the clothes. x
Her husband was in a state of shock; Mary Margaret could tell he was trying to make connections in his mind and failing somewhat. For her part, she found the idea that Liv was her granddaughter easy to believe; it was obvious now she thought about it. From the moment she'd met her Mary Margaret had been drawn to the teenager. Liv seemed oddly familiar and now the raven-haired woman understood why. She even looked like Emma, the woman realised with surprise. She also, Mary Margaret had to concede, looked a lot like Regina.
Standing up shakily, still clutching the letter tightly, Mary Margaret moved to stand before her daughter and the brunette, glaring at them. The laughter had died down and both were looking sad again. Henry stood beside them, his head tilted slightly to the side as he stared.
"I'm sorry…" Mary Margaret started, her words sticking in her throat. She stopped and tried again. "Will someone please explain what is going on here?"
Emma looked up at her. "Mom… I know this is… crazy. But it's true… at least I'm assuming whatever Liv's written in the letter is true…" Slightly surprised, the blonde took the letter her mother wordlessly offered to her, eyes running over the writing quickly. She nodded. "It's true." Emma confirmed. "Regina is… I love her. So much. She's…"
Mary Margaret found that she didn't need to hear any more. The way the two women were looking at each other made it perfectly clear exactly how they felt about each other. It made her uncomfortable to witness but, somewhere inside her, she realised that Emma was truly happy and Mary Margaret relaxed a little. She didn't like the idea that it was Regina who had captured her daughter's heart and was making her so happy, but she knew that true love didn't always make sense and you couldn't plan for it.
"And Liv?"
This seemed to be a trickier subject to deal with. Both women sighed deeply, looking at each other for a moment before speaking. In the end, it was Henry who explained things before they had the chance.
"She's my sister… my actual sister. Except… she hasn't been born yet. She's from the future, but there was some… thing… and Mr Gold took her back in time so that she could be here before to…" He trailed off, looking to his mothers for answers.
Sensing a slight shift in the pixie-haired woman's demeanour towards her, Regina decided to attempt an explanation. "I know you won't want to hear this, but I do love your daughter. I fought against it for a long time, believe me. But apparently there are some things that even I can't control." The brunette smirked, feeling Emma squeeze her thigh gently. "Snow… you must have heard stories back in the Enchanted Forest of couples like us who managed to conceive children?"
"I have." Mary Margaret nodded weakly recalling a particular couple, Elizabeth and Anna, friends of hers who had found themselves in a similar situation. Her mind sifted through memories quickly and she frowned, remembering Elizabeth being left alone and pregnant after her wife disappeared, seemingly into thin air.
As though she guessed what the woman was thinking about, although she couldn't have known exactly, Regina nodded slowly. "The magic needed to create life comes at a price… as with all magic. Except the price for creating life is–"
"Death…" Suddenly Anna's disappearance made sense. Mary Margaret squeezed her eyes closed tightly.
"Quite." Regina agreed. "A creature from The Netherworld called Erebus came to claim a life connected to the magic; Liv, Emma or me. We thought we could… but Liv made the decision and… she went alone. We got there just in time, but… Liv wouldn't come away. She used the potion Gold gave her to open a portal back to The Netherworld and it sucked the creature in. Liv said that she had to go or he would keep coming back and then… she…"
Trailing off, Regina shook her head and buried her face in Emma's neck. The blonde ran her hands through her girlfriend's hair gently, pressing a kiss to her head. No one needed to hear the words to know what had happened.
"Is there a way to get her back?" David asked, making them all jump. He'd been so quiet that they'd forgotten he was there.
"We don't know." Emma admitted quietly. "Regina's going to look into it, but I…" Unconsciously she ran a hand gently over the woman's flat stomach, her thumb stroking it gently.
"You're pregnant?" Mary Margaret murmured, her eyes widening. "That's why it came now?"
They both nodded. The raven-haired woman looked a little pale, but kept her composure. Henry and David, however, stared in complete shock, their mouths falling open in identical comical expressions.
"Liv wants us to move forward." Mary Margaret reminded them after a couple of moments where the news sank in. "I think she's right. I think we need to put everything behind us and move on." She met Regina's eyes, seeing surprise in the dark eyes. "Can we at least try?"
"I'd like to." The brunette agreed with a small smile. "I'd really like to."
Emma, Regina and Henry left shortly after. It was a lot for everyone to get their heads around and despite their promises to try and work through their differences both Regina and Mary Margaret knew there was a lot of history there which would be incredibly difficult to forgive or forget. Henry was buzzing with excitement at the prospect of having his family the way he wanted it; both his moms and his grandparents getting on. There was just one person missing.
As the trio climbed out of Regina's car, Emma let out a small scream. At once Regina whirled around to see what had caused the reaction. Her mouth dropped open as her eyes fell on the cause of the sound. Ruby was leaning lazily against the sunshine yellow bug that Emma had been so devastated to loose after Liv's accident.
"It… it… how?" Emma stuttered, her eyes wide as she walked slowly towards the vehicle, putting her hand almost reverently on the hood.
Regina rolled her eyes at her girlfriend's behaviour but she, too, was stunned at the state of the car. It was perfect, in far better condition than she had ever seen it. Only Henry wasn't surprised by the transformation, a smug smile appearing on his face as he remembered how it had got that way.
Pushing herself off the vehicle, Ruby held out the keys to the blonde. "Liv asked me to pick it up from the junk yard. Wes didn't seem too keen to let it go… said something about 'that psycho girl'…"
"He means Liv." Henry informed them with a shrug, walking towards the bug as though drawn to it. His hand ran over the driver's door slowly. "She fixed it and he wanted to sell it, but she wouldn't let him. She got really mad."
"What d'you mean she fixed it?" Emma asked, remembering seeing the words written in the letter the teenager had left them. She hadn't paid much attention to the postscript before, but now she was incredibly curious.
"What d'you mean she got really mad?" Regina asked warily, focussing on that part of her son's words.
"She did this thing…" The boy started hesitantly. He didn't want to get his sister into trouble but, he realised, it wasn't as though they could tell her off now. "She like… held up her hand and he got pinned against the wall. It was like she was choking him. But she never touched him."
His moms exchanged a look, both vividly remembering when Regina had used that same move on Emma. The blonde gulped. "And the bug?"
"She… She put her hand on it and screwed up her face like she was concentrating really hard. Then it just sorta… fixed."
"Shit." Emma muttered, exchanging yet another look with the brunette. "I guess Gold was right about her being powerful then. I'm assuming you never taught her that stuff?"
"No…" Regina agreed, biting her lip.
Ruby glanced past them, obviously looking for the teenager. "Where is she, anyway? I guessed she wanted me to pick it up 'cos of the accident and everything. Granny wasn't best pleased that I went off and left her on her own in the diner."
"She… She's gone." Emma admitted slowly, leaning heavily against her car.
At the questioning glance from her friend, the Sheriff knew she'd have to explain everything. With a deep sigh, she nodded her head towards the house and the four of them went inside.
Months past. The news about Liv's death and her connection to the family was soon common knowledge; very little remained a secret in Storybrooke for long. No longer having any reason to hide anything, Emma and Henry moved into Regina's house properly. Slowly things seemed to feel almost normal. Mary Margaret and Regina remained true to their word and, to most people's surprise, the two entered into something that could easily be described as a friendship. There were frequent moments of tension when something from the past was brought up by one or other before they realised it wasn't the most tactful thing to say. Both women realised, however, that flying off the handle or retaliating would simply eradicate the past couple of months of progress.
As Regina's pregnancy continued and she got bigger and bigger, Emma found herself growing more and more grateful that it was the brunette who was going through it not her. She'd done the whole pregnancy thing once and Regina just seemed so much better at it; where Emma had cursed and grumbled, Regina seemed to treasure the experience. If Gold kept his promise to the teenager and they were able to have another baby, not that they'd discussed it, Emma was determined that it would be the brunette's job to carry the kid.
So far none of Regina's research had brought them any closer to finding a way to bring Liv back from The Netherworld. Slowly, reluctantly, Emma was beginning to think that Gold and the Blue Fairy were right in their adamance that there was no way to do it. Her girlfriend, on the other hand, refused to give up.
That was why, two days before the due date, Emma woke to find herself alone. Groaning, she rolled out of bed and padded downstairs. Sure enough, the light was on in Regina's study, glowing beneath the closed door. Walking inside, the blonde leant against the frame and watched her girlfriend for a moment. Regina was sitting on the couch, tucked underneath a blanket with a book abandoned beside her and her head resting on a cushion against the back of the seat. She had obviously fallen asleep during trawling through her books for answers.
"Gina… babe… wake up." Emma murmured, cupping the brunette's face gently and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Removing the blanket from around her and folding it quickly, Emma placed it on arm of the couch and hauled her girlfriend to her feet, helping her back to bed. "You need to sleep…"
"I can't. I need to–"
"No. You don't." The blonde argued firmly, practically pushing her up the stairs. "You need to get ready to have this baby. When… when everything's…" Emma found herself unable to voice what would happen to the baby once she'd been born. Instead she pressed another kiss into Regina's hair. "We'll have plenty of time to work on this afterwards."
With a deep sigh Regina gave in, much to Emma's relief. They usually argued bitterly over the fact that Emma believed she needed to stop working so hard on finding a way to get Liv back and rest more. Regina disagreed, adamant that she was absolutely fine and perfectly capable of reading books. Her most uttered phrase had become, 'I'm pregnant, not ill'. During more than one argument, Henry had taken the advice Liv had left him in her letter and locked them both in the study, or whatever room they were in, until they convinced him through the door that they weren't going to break up.
Apparently heeding her girlfriend's words, Regina had resisted the urge to trawl through her books again until after she'd given birth. Her resolve was tested the next night, however, as she woke suddenly and could have sworn that Liv was standing at the end of their bed. Regina knew instantly that something odd had happened. She could smell magic in the air; the metallic tang filled her senses. By the time she recovered from the shock and looked again the room was empty.
As soon as they watched Rumpelstiltskin disappear into a silvery haze, carrying their baby daughter out of their lives, the woman returned to her research. It was all that filled Regina's mind, worrying those around her as she shut herself away in the study as soon as they got home.
"Regina!" Emma snapped, striding into the room and standing with her hands on her hips, staring at the woman who was feverishly flicking through the heavy, old book on her desk. "Look at me!" When her demand went unheeded, the blonde strode around the desk and grasped Regina's chin in her hand, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Look at me."
"What?" The older woman snapped, her red-rimmed eyes painfully obvious in the dim light of the room.
"Don't shut yourself away. Not from me, not from Henry… hell, not from my parents. You're not the only one hurting, Regina. We're all in pain. We need you and you need us. We have to get through all this together. I'm supposed to be the Saviour, for Christ's sake, but I can't even save my own kid!"
The brunette wrenched her face from Emma's grasp. "You're the one who appears to have given up on Liv, Miss Swan. I refuse to do that."
"I haven't–"
"You promised me that no one was going to take the people I loved from me again. I told you not to make promises you couldn't keep." Regina reminded her.
"You still have me and Henry." Emma reminded her softly.
The coldness in the brunette's eyes vanished at once and she buried her face in her girlfriend's shoulder, wrapping Emma tightly in her arms and clinging on for dear life.