Chapter 16: Road back home.
"Everything looks fine back there", the blonde said, leaning over the driver's window where Regina was sitting. The brunette was igniting the engine so that Emma could check if everything were working correctly, "Please open the trunk. I need to see if my stuff is still in there".
Emma walked to the front of the car, thinking she only cared to find one of her belongings there. The rest did not matter in the least. The belonging she really cared about was something that had been with her throughout her entire life, and she couldn't conceive of losing.
After opening a few boxes in the trunk, she found it, her baby blanket. For some reason, she pulled it out and hugged it tightly as she had always done when she was a child and had been separated from it for a long span of time.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Regina asked, approaching her side, and suddenly she felt the need to hide the object she was hugging so tightly behind her back. However, the brunette noticed her action right away and snatched the blanket from her hands to inspect it."This is your mother's handwriting. She must have embroidered this before you were born. Emma, you don't need to hide it from me. I know you still don't believe in the curse or the enchanted forest, and this object must be very important to you because it is everything you have from your parents, so it is important to me too. Although I must admit, I should have forced your mother to get better embroidery classes as a child. This lacks in the perfection department, certainly not a blanket designed for a Princess".
"Would you have done it better?" Emma asked, taking the blanket from Regina's hands and placing it back in the trunk.
"If you were my child Emma, everything would have been majestic in your wardrobe and nursery, including your baby blankets and custom-made diapers", Regina smiled, thinking back to her dark castle and which would have been the perfect room to fit in a nursery.
"I didn't think a queen would sew custom-made diapers for her child", Emma laughs.
"We have servants for that, Emma, but your mother had dwarfs instead", Regina rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, let's get back to the part where you are not actually my mother. I'm really glad for that part", Emma said, observing how pain instantly settled down on Regina's features as the words left her lips and she shut the trunk.
"Yeah, of course, the Evil Queen doesn't sound much as mother material", Regina replied hastily, trying to blink away the few tears forming in her eyes before Emma could see them.
"If you asked five-year-old me, she would prefer the Evil Queen over Snow White any day", Emma shrugged, taking Regina's hand and walking her to the driver's door again. She pulled the handle in the seat to make it tilt forward and slide to the front, allowing space for someone to get in the backseat, "your majesty", She bowed a little, offering Regina to go in first.
"Why are we getting in the backseat?" The brunette asked warily, looking at the rather reduced space Emma wanted her to crawl in.
"We need to check it's safe to transport Henry", Emma replied innocently, and Regina quickly slid in because when it comes to Henry's safety, she was the first to jump into action.
"And if I asked YOU?" Regina asked when Emma followed her into the yellow bug.
"If you asked me what? Which mother would I pick nowadays?" Emma questioned, and Regina nodded her head in response.
"Snow White any day", Emma responds, watching tears welling up in Regina's eyes quicker than she could finish her sentence. "You see, your majesty, there are some things I would rather do with the Evil Queen that I couldn't do if she were my mother".
"Like what?" Regina did not think it through when she asked this because she wouldn't have drawn up the question like that if she had. Daring the blonde to name one thing that justified her preference for Snow White as a mother, even though she could find a million reasons herself. The pain talked instead of her.
"Like this", Emma said, pulling Regina closer by her hips and kissing her before the brunette could even register what was happening.
The kiss quickly escalated, and soon Regina was lying on her back over the seat, and Emma was leaning over her body. The blonde smiled when the brunette let out a moan and started sliding her hand up Regina's thigh.
"Emma, stop please", Regina talked, holding Emma's wrist in place so that she couldn't slide her hand further up under her dress, "I know you have needs, after getting out of jail, and I can help you with that, but if we are ever going to do this I won't have it in the backseat of your car".
"What do you mean you will help me with that? Help me as in fingering my needs away? Oh, don't worry, your majesty, I took care of those needs thinking of you in your hotel room some hours ago", Emma replied, pulling apart from the brunette, "your services are not required anymore, Ma'am!"
"Emma, you know I didn't mean it like that", Regina tries softly.
"No, I don't know that!" Emma exclaimed, "Roxanne must need to get to work. I'm going to pick up Henry, you pick up the luggage, and then we are leaving, Storybrooke awaits!", Is the last thing Emma said before jumping off the car.
...
The goodbyes were hard for Regina, mostly because she had never had so many people who truly cared for her in her life, not people that were willing to stop everything they were doing at the moment just to come and bid farewell to her. Most people she knew in her past would have come just to make sure she was leaving out of fear of the possibility of her staying, although not one of them would have wished her to come to visit again soon as these people had. To be fair, none of these people had their families murdered by her guards under her strict orders. She suspected that had everything to do with her Phoenix acquaintances not hating her yet, at least.
The fact that she was willingly moving back to the place where everyone hated and feared her, even being under a curse that made them forget everything she had done to wrong them in the past, was even more difficult to assimilate when she was accompanied by the very person that could make them remember. And even harder for her to conceive when said person was currently darting daggers at her every time their eyes met through the rearview mirror of her car.
Regina had a perfectly planned and efficient trip back home that consisted of four full days of driving and having short stays at motor inns on the road.
The first day was a fifteen-hour and a quarter ride from Phoenix to Oklahoma City, and since they left the hotel shortly after noon, they arrived at their first motor inn before the wee hours.
Regina drove the entire time, only talking to Emma when there was something concerning Henry or they had to make a stop at a diner to eat and warm some formula for the baby. Emma didn't break the silence either. At first, she was mad with Regina for saying all she felt were just intimacy needs from being recently released from jail. Although, it wasn't Emma's anger that prevented her from breaking the silence settling uncomfortably down between them. The main reason she remained silent was that as hours passed and she calmed down, Regina had had the complete opposite reaction. The brunette seemed to get more and more closed off as hours went by, so there was not a single meaningful conversation between them before or after they arrived at the inn they were going to rest in that night.
When Regina asked for a room with two beds at the front desk, Emma simply shrugged and watched her while she received the keys to their room. The room was dimly lit and had a slight smell of humidity when they first walked in. However, Emma still walked past the first bed, settled Henry's crib in the middle of both beds, and then proceeded to strip down until she was only wearing her t-shirt and underwear. She curled down in one of the beds, giving her back to the crib and the brunette now placing the fast asleep baby in it.
The second day started early enough for Emma to feel a throbbing pain in her temple when she woke up. She had not slept more than five hours when she felt Regina making a fuss around the room. Not even Henry had awoken when the brunette got up and headed for the little bathroom on the far end of the room with her clothes ready for the new day.
The plan for the day was a twelve hours trip from Oklahoma City to Indianapolis. Regina once again insisted on being the driver, but this time Emma tried to make small talk with the brunette, to which she got only one syllable answers or not answer at all. Emma now understood she had messed up by getting mad at the brunette. After listening to the brunette's words on repeat in her mind, she knew the only thing Regina was asking from her was that if they got to be together one day, it should be more special than just a shag in the backseat of a car and she agreed with Regina in that. The other part about jail, well, Emma didn't understand why the brunette had told her that but probably out of nervousness after being groped by the blonde unexpectedly, like a hungry predator.
They arrived at the second inn at night, shortly after the clock marked ten. Once again, Regina asked for a room with two beds, and Emma was in charge of setting the baby crib in the middle of the beds before Regina put the baby to sleep there. This time Emma didn't go to sleep right away. Instead, she told Regina she was going out for a walk and left the room. She needed to clear her mind and calm her heart which ached by the possibility of having lost the brunette before ever getting her in the first place.
By the time she walked back into the room, the lights were out, and Regina was asleep in one of the beds. She sat down in the corner of the brunette's bed.
"Gina, are you awake?", She whispered unsure of what kind of answer she wanted to receive. She got none, "You must know my life changed since the moment I first met you through that mirror. I know I've refused to believe that's the real way we met but deep inside, I know it is, against all logic. I know you appeared in my life as if by magic, and I'm grateful for that. Despite all the pain, I would never choose differently than meeting you once and again if I had the choice because that path took me to where I am and what I have now. It led me to this little family. You and Henry are all I've got, and losing you is what I'm more afraid of in the entire universe. Please don't leave me again. Just know that I would die if I had to be away from you again. I'm sorry, Gina, for my short temper and whatnot. Please forgive me".
The next morning Regina let her sleep in. When the blonde woke up, it was ten in the morning, and Regina and Henry were nowhere to be found, nor was the crib or Regina's luggage anywhere around the room. The only thing she could find was her own bag with her personal items. For a moment, she feared the worse, and she didn't care that she was only in her underwear and t-shirt when she sprinted out of the room like a crazy woman, ready to go find them to the end of the world if necessary.
"Good morning dear, you will soon find out that the bathroom door was on the other end of the room", Regina laughed when Emma slammed the door open and stepped out into the hall half-naked, looking her up and down while sitting on the railing in front of the room's door, with Henry sleeping comfortably and very secure in her arms, "I left your bag there so you can get ready for today's trip, the rest of our things are already in the car".
"I thought you left me", Emma said, and a blush instantly inked her cheeks a soft shade of pink.
"Never", Regina winked at her, "now hurry up, we still have two days journey before we arrive in Storybrooke".
The third day of the journey was an eleven-hour trip from Indianapolis to Scranton. Regina was driving again, but this time she was actually holding conversations with the blonde, they made longer stops along the way, and everything seemed back to normal. That was the reason why Emma lost her shit when Regina asked for another room with two beds when they arrived at the motor-inn that night. She snatched the key from Regina's hand and gave it back to the woman behind the counter.
"We only need a double bed, thank you, I want to cuddle with my girlfriend tonight", maybe it was the shock of Emma's words that rendered Regina speechless long enough for Emma to take the new key and start walking to the assigned room but the brunette followed her after she regained control over her legs, with Henry in her arms.
As Emma settled the crib in front of the bed, the silence in the room was deafening and felt even more uncomfortable than the previous two days of awkward silence they had just endured. However, when she finished setting the crib, Emma started to strip down as she had done their first day on the road and plopped herself on the bed, watching attentively as Regina put the sleeping baby on his crib and then pulled her pajama from her bag and headed for the bathroom.
Regina was torn between two choices. The first was walking to the bed without saying a word and just cuddling with the blonde girl, no questions asked. The second and the one she was fighting against with all her strength was asking the girl to explain what she meant with what she said to the woman out there. She didn't want to ask but also needed to know what the blonde meant when she had claimed to be her girlfriend. The brunette was pondering the two options when a light knocking sound pulled her out of her thoughts, and before she could answer, the blonde opened the door.
"You have been here ages Gina. Is it okay if I enter to brush my teeth?", Emma asked, but again didn't wait for an answer and just approached the sink and started brushing her teeth beside the brunette. Their eyes met in the mirror and never let go of each other until the blonde was finished, "I'm done, let's go", Emma smiled, offering her hand to the brunette, and the woman took it hesitantly before being dragged outside of the bathroom.
Regina got in bed first, followed by the blonde, who scooted close to her body until she hugged the brunette from behind. Their bodies fitted so perfectly that the brunette felt like she was melting in the strong arms of Emma Swan, and she knew from the first second that she wouldn't be able to ever sleep any other way than melting in her embrace, not that she was able to sleep a wink that night. Emma's words to the woman behind the counter echoed in her mind on repeat, and now that they were already cuddling, it was kind of too late to ask Emma what she meant by them. Shortly after they got in bed, she felt Emma go completely limp when she fell asleep and started snoring lightly in her ear. The blonde made the cutest of sounds while sleeping, but she also became a hugging machine. Like a koala bear, Emma started strangling her body with both her arm and leg. The blonde's light snoring was the only indication that she was still asleep, but the notion that Emma was half-naked and hugging her in such a way was only adding trouble to her already restless mind.
The next and final day of the journey was an eight-hour trip from Scranton to Storybrooke. Regina allowed Emma to drive for the first time in their entire road trip that day since she had not slept very well for the last three days, or even more if she counted their first night together in the hotel in Phoenix or the previous night when she was preparing to pick up Emma when she was being released. The brunette, however, remained awake for most of the trip and only fell asleep a few minutes before Emma stopped at a gas station to fill up the gas tank and buy some junk food that Regina would normally try to stop the blonde from eating but still always allowed her to buy from the convenience stores when they stopped anywhere, the brunette was so tired just drifted off in the passenger seat and did not even notice when the blonde parked the car near the gas pump or when she disappeared into the convenience store.
Emma seized the moment to make a call from the public phone outside of the station. She was planning something special for her and Regina, and being the broke girl she was after leaving jail, she really needed to call in some favors, not that she wasn't broke before jail anyways.