A/N: Alright. I have seen each and every one of your surprising reviews towards this unexpected pregnancy lol a little warning: This chapter is even more crazier so strap in, sit down if you aren't already, hold onto whatever you can. I may have stretched it a bit with the amount of time that has passed, but I promise you. The time for the most awaited reunion is nearing! ;) Don't give up on me with this story. More surprising characters are about to form apart of it.
Regina's nerves had gotten the better of her. She took the day off, along with Kathryn to do what needed to be done. No more time wasted. She was lucky and thankful that at least her dearest friend could be there for her in this time of need. Their hands joined together as they waited patiently in the waiting area of a Doctor's office.
"Ms. Mills." Her name was called out by a medical assistant, as Regina and Kathryn both went right in, followed by the doctor's office.
Waiting for the doctor always felt like a lifetime, especially when major news were to be delivered.
Regina looked over to Kathryn's leg as it was continuously shaking up and down in a rapid motion. "Kathryn." She called to her, "If you don't stop moving your leg, I will amputated myself."
"I'm sorry. I'm just nervous." Kathryn's leg stopped shaking, her head turning towards the door as Whale made his way inside his office. Thankfully, him and Regina maintained contact, and she didn't have to worry about the news getting out of his office. If there was anyone she could trust, she knew it could be him.
"So? What's the verdict?" Asked Kathryn, as Whale sat down behind his desk, his eyes focused on Regina.
A smile spread across his face, "Congratulations. You are two weeks pregnant."
Both pairs of eyes grew wide, as their mouths dropped open at the unexpected news.
Because this couldn't be possible. She absolutely could not be pregnant. Not from Robin.
This was meant to be a plan for her and Emma.
Whale's smile slowly left his lips at their shocked expressions, "I take it you didn't plan this?"
Kathryn made a sound that was between a chuckle and a chocked gasp, "This was far from planned, doc. I mean… how is this possible?"
Whale chuckled at Kathryn's lost expression, "Well… I didn't think I would have to give this speech. But when two people have sex-"
Kathryn shut her eyes. He was not about to give them the sex talk. Regina stepped in right after.
"I think what she means is… how is this beyond possible? I was told years ago, I couldn't possibly convince. I tried with my first husband for months and we never had any luck."
"You have proof of this?" Asked Whale, his eyebrows hitting his hairline in surprise.
Regina nodded, "Yes, I…" she dug inside her purse, retrieving an old form for when she had her physical to determine whether or not she could have children. "I brought it with me." She handed it to Whale as he studied it thoroughly.
Whale's eyes studied the form carefully, letting it drop on his desk as he sighed.
"What? What's wrong?" Asked Regina, not knowing what to expect anymore.
Whale's eyes met up with hers, "I'm sorry to have to say this to you but this form was tampered with."
"What?" Both women said in unison.
Whale placed the form before them to see, grabbing his pen from the breast pocket of his lab coat as he signaled the doctor's handwriting, " Look here on this doctor's signature. This is a male doctor. I know this because I happened to work with him years back." He moved to the file cabinet behind him, retrieving an old file as he placed it on his desk beside Regina's form. "Here is another form I filled out, which he signed. Compare these two signatures and you can clearly see a difference. The O has a line looping over to the A. I can guarantee you," He chuckled, "He never signed that way. I should know. I filled out many forms in that hospital, which he had to sign for. I mean, what are the odds?"
Regina's brows furrowed as she examined the documents herself. She knew plenty when it came to doctor's forms. Her eyes met with Whale's once again, "You are certain about this?"
Whale nodded, "Positive. I never forget a signature. Especially not this one."
Kathryn's hand rested on the brunette's forearm as she spoke next, "Regina… Didn't your mother pay for last night's dinner?"
Just by the look in Kathryn's eyes, Regina knew. The looping over other letters, that was something Cora unmistakably never failed to do. No matter what she wrote. Regina had seen her sign her name many times before to memorize the woman's loops.
"May I have a copy of this?" She asked Whale.
Regina stormed inside Robin's apartment that day, storming inside her mother's guest bedroom as Belle quickly left, noticing that it was about to get ugly.
"Regina, dear. I thought you weren't going to be back until later."
The brunette threw the papers right at her mother, her lip curling in anger. "Tell me why. Why would you tamper with something like this? Why lie to me about me not being able to convince when clearly," She pulled out the document from her doctor visit today, "This form here says I am two weeks pregnant."
Cora stood up from her chair, "Obviously, you're upset."
"Upset?" Regina's brows hit her hairline, "Oh, mother, I am more than upset right now. I am so upset, I may just commit a murder."
"Alright, Regina. Calm down, this behavior is beneath you."
"Tell me the truth!" The brunette shouted.
"You watch how you talk to your mother-!"
"Daniel and I tried so many times to have a baby! What did you do?!" Regina's shouts over powered Cora's this time. So much, that the woman sat back in her bed, her eyes wide in shock. She never imagined that Regina would dare to get this angry over something she considered to be unimportant.
"I may have… paid a doctor to make you believe that you were the one with the problem. But it was always him. And the reason I covered that up, was because I made it happen."
"What?" Regina's nostrils flared with anger, her hands directly on her hips.
Cora inhaled sharply, standing up from the bed as she replied, "That doctor may have helped me in giving him a medication which would make him an invalid. In exchange, I signed the form for him, so if there was ever a problem, I could directly solve it and make it look like someone wanted to make him look bad." She paused as Regina paced around the room, not wanting to look her mother in the eye at the moment, "I know you are upset, dear, but believe when I tell you that mother-"
"Mother knows best?" Regina jumped in, the vein in her forehead ready to pop.
"You were young and stupid when you married him, Regina. He was going to take you nowhere!" She shouted, "Do you want to know what would have happened had you ended up pregnant with that man's child? You would have been left to look after it yourself! Now is that the kind of life you really wished to have?" Cora asked.
"It was my life!" Shouted Regina, "Mine! I decided what happened with it. It was my choice to make, not yours."
"Your father-!"
"My father was happy no matter what I chose. Which is more than I can say for you." This time Regina's reply was filled with coldness.
"Oh, don't be overly dramatic, dear. What does it matter what happened? The past is the past, is it not? What should matter to you now is that you are finally pregnant and carrying the child of a good man."
Regina chuckled, her fingers coming up to rub at her temples. "A good man?" She wanted to shout it, tell her what type of good man Robin really was. But, what difference would it make? When her mother turned out to be just as low as Robin was. "I want you out of this apartment within the hour. I'm going to leave, because I simply can't look at you right now. But when I come back, you better not be here because mother, I swear to God and all that is holy that if you are. I will throw you out myself."
Cora's eyes grew wide, "Do you realize what you are saying right now? I am your mother."
"You should have thought of that before you fucked up my life." Regina made her way towards the door, stopping as she held it open, "I never want to see you again. And don't you try to contact Robin to convince me to talk to you, because you'll only be wasting your time."
Cora plopped onto the bed again, literally in shock at her daughter's outburst.
As Regina made her way out of the guest bedroom, she withdrew some money from her purse, handing it to Belle as she closed her hand around it, "Take this. Consider it a payment for all you've done for her. No matter what she says to you, you take this and you go far away. Go somewhere peaceful, where you'll feel right at home."
Belle's eyes followed the brunette as she made her way towards the front door, "I don't really know where that would be, ma'am."
Regina turned to face Belle one last time, a small smile on her lips as she knew about the perfect place. "Storybrooke."
As the door closed behind her, Regina released a breath she had been holding. Her hands cupping her stomach, taking in the feel of her baby, which was still as tiny as bean. Because this baby would be hers and hers alone. The circumstances of its upbringing might've not been ideal at all, or out of love, but it wasn't this baby's fault. For the first time in her life. Regina had found a little glimpse of happiness. A little glimpse of hope. She could be and would be a mother. And in that moment, she hoped and prayed it would be a boy. Like Emma always dreamed about.
"You threw her out?" Kathryn grinned, sitting at lunch before the brunette who had just finished telling her the whole ordeal the following day.
Regina chuckled, "I can't even believe myself. Maybe I was too harsh on her."
"Too harsh on her? The hell you were!" Kathryn chuckled, "I only wish I had been there. What did the asshole say?"
Regina shook her head, "He was happy just with the news of my pregnancy. He thinks I'm being unfair," She rolled her eyes, "To my mother. No surprise there."
Kathryn's hand rested on her best friend's, "You do realize what this means, don't you? Now that you are officially having a baby… Robin isn't letting you go."
The brunette sighed, "I know," she scoffed, "He wants us to get married now."
The blonde's eyes only grew wide.
"Yeah, he says he doesn't want our child growing up without his parents. But, he already has me with him. Marriage with Robin is out of the question."
"You know what I think you should do?" Asked Kathryn.
Regina shook her head, "Kathryn. There is not a fiber in me that wishes, wants to take off running to Storybrooke and ask for her forgiveness. But, do you really think she would forgive me knowing I am carrying Robin's child?"
"Alright, let me stop you there." Kathryn held out her hand, "First off, you said it yourself before, this is your child. Not his."
"Yes, its my child. But like it or not, I wouldn't be having this child if it wasn't for him." Regina looked around the cafeteria as her voice got a little loud. She whispered to Kathryn, "As far as bastards go, this is the one thing I see him completely happy over. And even though he doesn't deserve it, he still has me blackmailed, which I can't proof. If I so much as make a wrong move, anything that leads me to Emma," She paused, "He may not only hurt her, but now he can take away Henry too."
Kathryn's brows furrowed, "Henry?"
And it was then, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime ago, Regina smiled.
It was then Kathryn understood with her friend's look alone. Her hand giving hers a gentle squeeze, "Well, it's true you can't be getting upset or it'll affect the baby." She sighed, "I only pray that little Henry helps you believe how strong you really are in time. You'd have to be to let Emma go."
Regina found herself sitting in that familiar tree back in Germany. A bag of M&M's in hand as she separated the red ones. Her favorite. The tree, the surrounding of the park still all the same. The only difference was that now she wasn't alone. She had a small child, not more than six or seven years old as he pretended to look around for someone.
"I see you!" shouted Henry, looking at her with the most heart warming smile.
Emma ran right behind him, stepping from behind the tree where she had been hiding, a smile spread across her face as Regina saw her run towards the small boy, chasing after him, "I got you!" Her arms circled the kid's small form as they rolled around on the grass.
She stood up as the boy continued to play on his own, her eyes meeting Regina's as the brunette now walked up to her, surprised to even see her here. Both women looking older but still the same.
"You're here?" Regina's voice broke as she asked the blonde before her.
Emma nodded, a small smile tugging at her lips as she held onto the brunette's hands, "I'm sorry I'm late."
Regina didn't waste anymore time in throwing herself in the soldier's arms. Their lips crashing together in a much needed and long awaited kiss. Emma's hand resting on the back of the brunette's head as their kiss only deepened. Tongues dancing in each other's mouths with familiarity. Regina's hands tugging at the blonde's clothes, pulling her incredibly close.
Emma's eyes shot open, blinking in a rapid motion as she sat up in her bed. Her hands running through her blonde hair in frustration. She had been having that same damn dream on reply every single night. At least, it was a major difference from being back at war, dreaming about all the awful things she was ordered to do. But, why this dream? Why now when it's been years and it has taken her a long time to finally cope with the idea of not having Regina in her life. Although to her heart, that was a different story. Her body had numb itself to missing the brunette. Which, even in her dreams she looked just as beautiful as she always remembered her.
She sighed, reaching for the bottled water by her nightstand, taking a long, needed drink.
Six years. Six long years, almost seven and her body still ached for her first love's presence. It angered her sometimes that she never truly could get over Regina, constantly wondering what she would look like now. Would she look different? All the same? She had to be thirty-five by now.
The soldier shook her head, reaching for the notebook Ruby had gifted her with on her twenty first birthday. She sat by her desk, turning on the lamp to help her see as she wrote. She had been writing for a while now. She would chuckle every time she would think about it, that even Regina would laugh about and definitely have something to say about her poems.
Emma never imagined herself as a poet. She never thought to be good enough for poetry, but there she was. Writing poems about love and some about heartache. She actually started writing love poems since the day she had been gifted with her notebook, but when things ended between her and Regina. She decided to stop. Now it was a mixture of poems.
As the sun began to rise, Emma took a drive into the city of Boston. She had been driving there a lot more now since Ruby finally achieved her dream of moving into the big city. It was more of an encouragement once she met a woman she could finally be happy with. Which she would call Emma and tell her all about her new girlfriend, ranting away about her happiness. Which Emma was happy over. She deserved someone good in her life.
Ruby had called her up and convinced her to finally meet her girlfriend of two years, 'You never know, she may have a friend for you,' she teased over the phone when they talked. To which Emma simply chuckled, shaking her head as the idea of opening to love was not at all on her mind.
So, off she went. But before meeting up with Ruby in her apartment, she had somewhere else to go first.
Dr. Archie Hopper sat in his office, reading through the scratchy handwriting of Emma's poems. A smile spreading across his face as she had been following through his advice of writing down anything she felt every time she had a dream. He had been helping her with her PTSD for a while now and it seemed to be doing her some good.
The red, curly haired man adjusted his glasses as he nodded in approval, handing the notebook back to the blonde before him. "These are really good. That last one is has a lot of sadness. How do you feel after writing it down?"
Emma sighed, her body lying back on the stretched out couch. Her hands resting on her stomach as she focused up at the detailed ceiling, "Slightly better."
"Why slightly?" Asked Archie.
"Because I've been having the same recurring dream lately. So I do what you suggested, I write about it. About what it makes me feel but…" She paused, shaking her head, "No matter how much I write about it, I can't get it out of me."
"And, what do you see in this recurring dream?"
Emma shook her head, her eyes closing, "It doesn't matter."
"Emma. You brought it up, you're writing about it almost every night, it has to matter." Archie's eyes remained on the blonde, "This is a safe space. Nothing that you tell me will leave this room."
Emma sighed as she sat up right on the couch, "Alright." She paused, looking down at her hands as they remained in front of her, "Regina."
"She's the nurse whom you met in Germany?"
Emma nodded. "Am I crazy? I mean, it's been six years, how can I still be holding onto her?"
Archie adjusted in his seat, "I'm afraid only you can answer that."
"That's helpful." She glared at the man.
"It's been said that dreams are a representation of what people miss, what they want. Or wished they had." Said Archie.
"Now, tell me what you really believe, doc."
"I believe that dreams can also be a representation of an unfinished business one has to take care of."
Emma chuckled, "So… now you're going to suggest that I, what? Find Regina? Show up at her front door and what? Tell her that I forgive her?"
"Why not?"
For the first time in years, Emma laughed. Although it wasn't a happy laugh, it was still a laugh, "I'm sorry, doc. But that's not happening."
"It could help you. Put a lock on your past that torments you."
"Help me?" She scoffed, "How on earth does seeing the woman that hurt, lied and betrayed me help me? It'll only make me angry. Hurt me all over again."
"Expressing pain and anger are just as good as expressing happiness and love, Emma. You were nineteen when you first met her, compared to now. Things may be different." He placed his pen and notepad down on the side table, "Our time is up, but do think about what I said?"
Emma gave the man one last glare before leaving the room without uttering another word.
As she drove throughout the city, Archie's words sounded in her head. Look for Regina? After all this time? She'd have to be out of her mind. What would she even say? How would she even start? What if Robin was there? Then again, what if he wasn't? Would she invite her in?
Her knuckles turned white as the grip on her steering wheel tightened. Over the past six years, she had grown angry at Regina. Because the pain she had caused her killed her throughout time. And if Regina truly loved her, she would have looked for her. She would have found a way.
She sighed to herself, causing her tires to screech as she made an unexpected turn. Fuck it. What did she have to lose in looking for Regina? The worst that could happen was for her to tell her she never wanted to see her again.
As Emma stopped her car at what used to be the brunette's apartment, she hurried up the stairs. Her leg would be feeling that later. She pounded on the door of the brunette's old apartment, trying to catch her breath. She pounded again. Her brows furrowed as a lady answered the door.
"Yes?" Asked the lady, wondering why this crazy person was pounding at her door.
"Uh, I'm sorry, ma'am, is Regina here?" Asked Emma.
"Who?"
Emma blinked, "Regina Mills or Kathryn Midas. They live here."
The older woman shook her head, "I don't know anyone by that name, dear. You may want to ask the owner of the building. He's been here for years, maybe he knew them."
"Thank you." Emma nodded as the door closed on her.
She soon headed down to speak to the owner of the building, asking him the same question as he quickly provided her with an answer, shuffling through papers of old tenants.
"Here it is! I knew I had their new address written down on their lease. In case any of their old mail came in, you know." He showed her the address, pointing directly to it, "The place is only about twenty minutes away from here. You can't miss it."
"Thank you!" She rushed out of the building, driving to her next destination. Repeating the same steps as before as she rushed inside the building, pounding on the door of apartment 308B.
This time a man answered the door, "Who are you, what do you want?"
"Sorry. I was just wondering if I could speak to Regina."
He shook his head, "There's no one here by that name. Sorry."
Emma placed her hand on the door as it was about to close, "Wait! Please, it's important that I talk to her."
"Do you understand English? No one by that name lives here!" His voice raised an octave.
Emma pushed the door once again with force this time, "Kathryn Midas! Do you know of anyone by that name that used to live here?"
The man's brows furrowed, "That name a knew. She lived here before I moved in."
"Do you know where she might be?" Asked Emma.
The man chuckled, "Sorry, she moved to New York."
"New York?"
"Yeah. Last I knew, before she moved out of here she was living by herself for a good amount of years. She was living with someone, a friend, I think the owner said but she moved out shortly after they got this apartment. I'm sorry. That's all I know."
Emma swallowed the lump in her throat, "Thank you. I'm sorry to have troubled you." She turned away from the door as she made her way out of the apartment. New York. If Kathryn moved to New York then that must mean Regina must be there. There was no doubt about it. Kathryn would bent over backwards for Regina, she'd never leave her alone.
A chime was heard coming from the blonde's phone as Emma retrieved it from her jeans pocket, reading a text message from Ruby, asking where she was and if she was still showing up to her birthday dinner. Emma sighed as she quickly replied to the message, confirming that she would be showing up.
She mounted her car, as she headed out towards the bar where they were going to meet. Leaving the absurd idea of looking for Regina behind.
"Oh, there she is!" Ruby smiled as she moved away from the bar, rushing to hug her best friend. Her smile gone as she noticed the disappointed look on the blonde's face, "What's wrong, Em? You look like you could use a drink."
Emma sighed, "Yeah. I'd say I do. More than one, actually." She paused, as Ruby waited patiently for her to continue, "I went to look for her, Rubes. I went to look for Regina."
"What?" Ruby's eyes grew wide.
"Yeah." Emma chuckled, "It was so stupid. My therapist suggested I put a lock on my past that torments me by looking for the person that caused me the most pain and forgive her." She shook her head, "Crazy thing is, I felt like I was nineteen all over again."
"So… did you…?"
"No." Sadness took over the blonde's tone, "She no longer lives in Boston. She left."
"Shit. Em, I'm, I'm really sorry." Ruby hugged her best friend once again, walking with her towards the bar, "Come on. Let's get a drink, huh?"
Emma nodded, "Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't mean to ruin your birthday."
"You're not. But, hey, I was right. She has a friend for you." Ruby grinned.
"Ruby-"
"No." Ruby locked her arm around Emma, her other hand pulling her by her jacket, "Come on, you promised you would be here and meet them both if she brought a friend for you. I've met her, she's a nice girl." She smiled even through Emma's groan, her eyes locking onto her girlfriend, "Emma, this is Belle. Belle this is my best friend Emma."
Belle smiled brightly at Emma, her hand stretched out towards her in greeting, "Hi."
Emma smiled a sad smile, but it was her best smile she had given in years as she shook Belle's hand, "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Belle."