And wait they did. The beginning was easy enough, Snow hadn't exactly left instructions but Neal was only in pajama's before she'd gone to sleep and the thought she'd had before was genuine…she did need the practice, unless of course she planned on keeping her son by her side forever…

All things considered that seemed like a wonderful idea, but she couldn't allow that. No matter what she wanted it just wasn't feasible, she knew that at some point she would have to surrender her boy to someone who could watch him, someone who wasn't going to cut away his destiny…

She shook the thought away and spent the morning getting Neal ready for when Ashley came over to pick him up. She changed his diaper, found some clothes for him, and nearly sat down to wait for Ashley before Regina muttered "don't forget a diaper bag" from her place at the coffee machine. She'd been watching her wander around the apartment with interest, silently sipping her coffee, but this was the first time she'd actually had something to say. She nearly forgot she was there until she reminded her.

"A diaper bag…" she breathed. Right…she knew what those were, or Lacey did at least but she-

"If she's going to take him for as long as I think she is then he needs a diaper bag."

"Right so…just a couple of diapers-"

"More," Regina inserted.

She grabbed two more from the stash and Regina shook her head, she grabbed a third and Regina finally nodded. "Ah-ah!" she shrieked in triumph when she took her first step away from the changing table. But Regina was quick to spoil her victory when she stated "wipes too. And I'd pack an extra outfit just to be safe. And a hat to go with his jacket, it's getting cold."

She obeyed, but rolled her eyes as she did it. "He's going away for a few hours, it's not a day trip to Paris!"

"Boys are tricky, and messy, you need to prepare for every possible scenario."

"Five diapers for a few hours, what more could he need?"

"He could come down with diarrhea, if it comes out of his diaper he'll need clothes, and boys tend to do this thing when you try to change their diaper…well…I'll let you experience the joy of that first hand, but it always helps to have spares. I'd also put a few toys in there. At this age, they don't do much more than look and put them in their mouth but better a plastic set of keys than the real ones."

She sighed as she looked around for the extra items. It would have been easy to disregard Regina, the woman she always thought of was incredibly maternal towards Henry, a boy just about to be a teenager, but she had a hard time picturing her mothering a baby or a toddler. Though she supposed she had. They would be mothers of two sons, only…only she wasn't supposed to know that.

"Who told you I was having a boy?" she questioned suspiciously.

"No one, we're talking about Neal. But in all fairness I would tell you to pack extras no matter if it was a boy or a girl. Why? You can't possibly know what you are having already. Do you?!"

She rolled her eyes and offered a sigh as she tried to stuff Neal's diapers, toys, clothes, and wipes, single handedly into a cloth bag Snow had sitting by the changing table. "Hades sped up my pregnancy in the Underworld. Not a lot, but enough…"

"So Rumpelstiltskin gets another son…ironic," Regina smiled, in a way that made her want to slap it off of her. This wasn't ironic! Nothing about this was ironic, not when Rumple was considering doing something that would scar this child too!

"We're having a son!" she spat in her direction. "And it's not ironic! Or funny. And he's not his brother! He'll be his own person and Rumple-!"

There was a knock on the door that stopped her before she could draw another breath and go on. She glanced at the clock, then at Snow White asleep in the bed and realized that forty-five minutes had passed, Ashley was here for Neal. She quickly finished gathering up his belongings as Regina watched in silence, fixing herself more coffee before moving to the living room. She delivered the baby and his bag to a very surprised Ashley, who didn't really understand where Snow had gone. She tried to tell her there was no problem, that Snow was needed for something last minute and she volunteered to stay until Ashley came for Neal.

She watched as the young woman told her to follow her downstairs and she saw one woman pulling a green plastic wagon with three toddlers and she had a special stroller capable of holding four babies. Neal was the second to go into it. Ashley asked if drop off would be a problem or if she needed to hold onto Neal for a while longer. She replied that it wouldn't. She had no idea when Snow would wake up but someone would be here to receive him without a doubt.

Upstairs, Regina had moved to the table and was looking over stacks of books that hadn't been there when she'd gone downstairs. Further inspection of the books told her they were the ones they'd been using in the library, the ones Regina had brought. She must have summoned them.

"I just figured we should make ourselves useful," Regina muttered sounding absorbed in the book in front of her. She nodded and took the seat opposite her before pulling one of the books she was sure she'd already read toward her. "So…you want to talk about it?" Regina asked casually after a few seconds.

"Not particularly," she answered just as casually. She honestly didn't think there was anything that Regina could say that would make a difference. She was on her own to do the research for the Shears and the solution to the problem that Rumpelstiltskin had presented her with. With the help of the Evil Queen of course.

The Evil Queen…she'd known that those scissors were useful to Rumple…was it possible…

She glanced over at Regina, she was the one who kept saying that they needed to think out of the box because whatever Regina knew The Evil Queen did too. Did that work in reverse? Could the Evil Queen have learned about them here? In one of her books?

"Regina…would any of these books have anything about the Shears of Destiny in them?"

Regina looked up from the page she was reading. "What, the special scissors Emma had Hook throw into the sea?"

"That's them, only they're not in the sea anymore…The Evil Queen apparently traded them to Rumple."

"Rumple has them now?!" she blanched. She nodded and Regina let out a snort after a moment of consideration. "Well…I can't say I'm surprised. But what does he want with…" she glanced over at her and her eyes wandered to the table, as if she could see through to her belly and she shrugged with realization. "Right…that would be his style. Sorry, these are just books on spells and enchantments and curses, those won't show up in my books."

"What do you know about them?" she questioned.

"Probably no more than you do. They are capable of cutting away a person's future. Hook got them from Emma, who got them from Aladdin, who…probably stole them to be honest. From where I don't know, but he's supposed to be the best thief in Agrabah, which means he is probably the best in town now that Robin…"

For a moment, her abrupt halt in the middle of the sentence left her confused until the memory settled into her. Robin. He was dead.

It was so odd to her, probably because she'd been asleep when he died, but it was difficult for her to remember sometimes. It was like when she'd learned that one of her cousins she communicated with via letters had passed away from an illness. They hadn't seen each other often, and even though the news had been devastating, for months after her death she would find herself wondering if a new letter from her cousin would come before she remembered that she was gone and would never send another letter again. The depression would hit all over again with each realization and this was no different.

Robin was dead. They were not best friends, not like she was with Neal. But they were friends. He was a confidant, someone that she could turn to when she needed someone to talk to, someone selfless that would help if she needed it. She didn't know what she needed to make his death more real, if she needed to see a grave or hear the story…maybe all she needed was the look on Regina's face right now. Complete and utter heartbreak. She and Regina had a complicated relationship on the best of days. Their past was riddled with conflict and abuse. In a perfect world she would never have to see Regina again but she understood that they were too closely associated for something like that to happen. They were both vital when it came to the villains that they mutually fought against and their family was closely entwined…

She shivered and held in a gag.

Entwined. Rumpelstiltskin and the Evil Queen.

The very thought made her queasy. She was just as happy to get it out of her mind by looking up at the grief-stricken woman across from her.

"I'm sorry," she muttered quietly. "About Robin, I'm…I'm so sorry. He was…" she opened her mouth and shook her head, searching for just the right thing to say about a man that was so much she doubted one word would ever be enough to describe him!

"Yes…he was," Regina agreed unexpectedly, as if she could read her thoughts.

Regina's mind was busy. Her mind was busy. Together they fell into an easy silence paging once more through pages that she was certain they knew by heart. With each passing minute her optimism at this plan began to fade. Regina had said that the potion would last only a few hours at best. Every minute that David didn't move a muscle was a minute that her hope died and she knew Snow hadn't found him, or hadn't been able to wake him up. She allowed herself to be cautiously optimistic. If it didn't work to wake him, could this at least be a way for them to spend time together?

"I'm starting to think you're right," Regina muttered hours later as she stared out the window.

She looked expectedly over at Snow White and David, still unmoving from the place she'd left them. "I'm right?" she questioned confused.

"I'm starting to think this isn't a sleeping curse as we know it, but an invention of my counterpart. I'm starting to think the answer isn't going to be in a book…"

"Regina-"

There was a sudden gasp from the bedroom that made her heart pound with anticipation as she looked over at the couple, hoping to see two sets of eyes.

All she saw was the stirring body of Snow White.

David remained motionless.

"Snow!" Regina exclaimed moving closer to her. "What happened? What did you see?"

"You have to send me back!" the princess plead. "I couldn't search the whole forest, you have to let me go back."

"Did you find evidence he was there?!" she questioned eagerly.

"No…not this time, but I need more time to look, I didn't even get halfway through!" She and Regina exchanged glances. It would be one thing if she'd found some evidence of David, but nothing at all…

Despite the confidence that Snow White displayed it was clear she and Regina were at least thinking the same thing. This wasn't what they thought it was.

So...this is most certainly a filler chapter that serves more than a couple of purposes, but none that are major enough to call it an important chapter. I certainly liked the idea of Regina giving Belle a little advice about how to pack a baby because there would have been a time that Regina was in the same shoes as Belle. She never had children when Henry came, how was she supposed to know how to take care of a baby? I liked the idea of her giving hints, but also understanding that there were some things she'd have to discover on her own. I liked the idea of bringing up Robin, because Belle hasn't really had a lot of time to grieve him and frankly neither has Regina. Finally, I also wanted to go along with something the writers started so that it wasn't as random. I've said it once, and I'll say it again: the writers made Belle a moron this season. Though as I've reflected on that, it's the wrong term. They didn't so much much make her a moron as...well...the best word I can come up for it is castrate her. Odd when she's about to have a baby. In the past, Belle has always been able to find them answers on curses, spells, all kinds of magic. Her library has always been a key part of that. But for some reason in this season and even 5B every time she goes to do research all of a sudden she comes up empty. That was a really stupid decision on the part of the writers. So this chapter exists to follow that "we can't find anything" but also to show really that it's not her who has lost her abilities. This magic is just different and is going to require something different. There is one other reason for this chapter...but I'm going to keep that one to myself until we really get into 6x08.

Thank you, Grace5231973, Fox24, and Curly J for the comments you left me on the last chapter. Always happy to receive those. To answer the questions I'm sure will come: Yes, I have seen the deleted scenes. How do I feel about them? Mixed. Not happy, obviously they don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. But the good thing is that they actually help everything make a lot more sense. I finished the writing of 6x11 as we knew it weeks ago but left a big spot there because I had a feeling that scene at the cabin would be released. In the end, it was one of the major reasons for not posting two fictions this summer, because by now we'd be in the midst of the 6B fiction and I would have some major editing and writing to do. Why write what I was sure would be deleted? I know they're not warm fuzzy scenes, but trust me when I say that they really do help at least the storyline in 6x11. And you will easily see that in the next fiction...I hope. Peace and Happy Reading!