It was Monday night and a triple celebration for the four women. Firstly, it had been Ruby's birthday the previous Saturday night but she and Emma had flown out to California with the rest of the Storybrooke Slayers that day. They were facing the San Diego Slammers the following day, so there was no celebrations to be had. Now that they were back in Storybrooke and reunited with their partners, they had gone out for a meal and were now slouching on the sofas in Emma and Regina's lounge. Secondly, after beating the San Diego Slammers 3-1, they were sitting at the top of the league table, seven points ahead of their nearest competition, with a game in hand. The league was theirs to lose now and it was still early in the season. Thirdly, Regina had started her maternity leave after finishing her shift the evening before. She had been planning on working up until the last week of her pregnancy, but in the last couple of months, her baby bump had really made itself known and it was becoming a bit of a hazard for her to be working in a busy kitchen. Regina wasn't really celebrating not being able to work but Emma was. She could see how increasingly exhausted Regina had become in the final trimester of her pregnancy and wanted her to rest up for her own sake, as well as their daughter's.

"I can't believe that this time next month our little one is going to be here and I'll actually be able to hold her," Emma wistfully beams, as she rubs Regina's baby bump.

"I can't wait either. For one thing, I won't have to get up ten times in the night to pee," Regina jokes with a quirked lip.

"No, you'll just be up ten times every night to feed her and change her nappy," Ruby quips, a little bit tipsy. She and Kat were the only ones to drink at her birthday meal. Emma hadn't wanted to tempt fate in case there was any chance of Regina going into early labour and she wouldn't be able to assist her.

"At least I can help with that though," Emma adds with a sweet kiss to her lover's cheek.

"I can also help if you guys need a night off from little Mary Margaret," Kat passively aggressively offers, using the name that grates on Regina's nerves, still annoyed that she hadn't been told the name they were planning on giving their little girl.

Emma and Ruby both have to try their best not to laugh because neither of their girls will back down when it comes to this. Kat will keep calling the baby Mary Margaret in the hope of finally finding out the name they plan on giving her and Regina will stand her ground. What Kat doesn't know is that Regina really wants to tell her and was going to a month previously but she was just being stubborn because of the annoying name Kat kept using. A few weeks earlier, Regina had actually gotten Kat to believe for almost a week that they were going to call her Gertrude. Kat had been pissed but relieved when she found out Regina had been messing with her. After all, Gertrude was no name for a child born in the twenty first century.

"Don't start with this again, Kat," Regina warns with an eye roll.

"What? Don't offer you free baby sitting?" Kat asks with feigned innocence.

"You know what."

Kat cockily quirks an eyebrow over the rim of her martini glass as she takes a sip of the drink.

"Play nicely you two, we are meant to be celebrating." Ruby reminds them.

"Regina knows I'm joking… there is no way I'm babysitting for free," Kat jokes and then laughs at her own joke like it's the funniest thing ever.

The women keep chatting for a little longer, mainly about the baby but also a little about the wedding they have yet to start planning, until Regina declares she is going to bed.

"I'll come with you," Emma offers as she stands up and stretches out her back, her dress shirt lifting over the top of her fitted jeans, revealing a slither of her muscular flesh.

Regina was going to protest until she caught a glimpse of her lover's tight abs. "Only if you're sure."

Emma takes one look at the fairly tipsy lovebirds on the opposite couch, who had gone from giggling to making out in a matter of seconds. "I'm definitely sure."

"See you both in the morning," Regina says to her friends on the couch that are far too busy with each other to acknowledge her.

"We are going to need to get a new couch," Emma whispers to the brunette as she leads her out of the room by her hand.

Regina stifles a laugh as she waddles behind Emma, the extra baby weight making it difficult for her to walk as she normally would.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"You know, I was sure Emma wasn't going to go today."

"It did take a lot of persuading," Regina sighs heavily. "She is convinced I'm going to go into labour early and have the baby when she's not around."

"I think it would break her heart if you did. So, if you start having contractions you'd better cross your legs until she gets back," Kat laughs before throwing a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

"There is still another two weeks before my due date. She's such a worrier."

"You can't tell me it's not nice to have someone worry about you."

"I suppose so, in some ways." She muses. "I just don't like it that I know she will be on edge until she gets home. All of that worrying can't be good for her."

Emma's ears must have been burning because a text comes in from her as they speak. "Hey beautiful, how are both of my girls doing? We have just landed. I'll call you when I get to the hotel room. Love you both xxx"

"Judging by the dopey smile on your face that's from Emma?"

"Yes," she grins like a fool in love, as she holds up her phone to Kat, as if to prove it was Emma."

"Aww, that's sweet of her to ask. Tell her I'm doing fine," Kat laughs.

"Idiot," Regina mumbles, as she writes out a reply.

"We are both great. Just about to watch a movie with Kat. How was the journey? We love you too xxx."

"It was far too long. I've missed travelling with you. When Princess is finally with us, the three of us will all have to go away together."

"We will, darling. We can take her to all your away games and she can cheer her mother on."

"I can't wait for that! She can finally wear her Slayers strip!"

"Right, stop your sexting and get comfortable. I'm going to play the movie," Kat admonishes.

"You literally just read her text. We aren't sexting."

Kat turns her head and raises an eyebrow at her friend, knowing better than to believe the brunette.

Regina blushes and mumbles, "well, we aren't right now. Shut up and play the movie." Kat doesn't know it, but it was something they always did when they were apart for the night.

Less than half way through the movie Regina's phone starts to ring and a picture of her and her fiancée that she had saved under Emma's name flashes up on her screen. "Pause the movie," she requests, as she answers the call, not bothering to get up from the love seat because it was far too much effort this far into her pregnancy.

Kat does as asked and pauses the movie, but she doesn't make any effort to get up from her seat to give Regina some privacy.

"Hello, darling."

"Hey, beautiful. Are you and my little L…"

"Shhh shh shh. Kat is next to me and she is eavesdropping," she says with a glare towards her nosey friend. She has to quickly warn Emma when she realises that she was about to use the name that they had decided on for their baby girl.

"Oooh! I know what it begins with now!" Kat shouts as if finding out the first letter of the name of her future niece was some sort of a victory.

"Why don't you just tell her already, or at least her middle name?" Emma kindly suggests, knowing it had just become a battle of wills between the two women at this point.

"Yeah, Regina. Why don't you just tell me already?" Kat questions with a shit eating grin, thinking she now has Emma on her side.

"Because it's fun to torture you," Regina replies with a shit eating grin of her own.

"Just tell me!" Kat demands, full of frustration.

Regina ignores her and continues her conversation with Emma. "What time is the team meal?"

Kat huffs and leaves the room to go to the toilet.

"In about twenty minutes. I'll have to get ready in a bit, once Ruby has finished in the shower. Which movie are you watching?"

"That horror movie that you refused to watch the other night because you are a coward," Regina teases.

"I wasn't being a coward. The trailer just didn't look good," she tries to defend herself.

"Sure, whatever you say," Regina grins, even though Emma can't see her.

"I had better go now. Ruby has just finished in the bathroom. Enjoy the film. Love you both."

"We love you too. Enjoy the meal and say hi to Ruby from me."

"Will do. Why don't you just tell Kat? We both know you want to," she says in her tone that tells Regina she knows exactly what she's thinking.

"Of course I want to, but what if we decide to change her name once we meet her? It would upset Kat."

"We've discussed this. We won't be changing her middle name no matter what. It's your call. I really have to go now. Talk to you later, beautiful."

Just as they hang up Kat walks in with a cup of tea for each of them. "Here you go, camomile to help you sleep," she says as she places both of the cups on the table in front of them.

She smiles at her annoying but thoughtful friend. "Kathryn."

"Yeah?" The blonde answers as she picks up the remote control to start the movie again.

"No, Kathryn… Lena Kathryn. That's what we have decided to call her," Regina says with a smile as she lays a hand on her own belly.

"Are you shitting me right now?" Shock and surprise evident on her face and in her voice.

"Eloquent as ever," Regina mutters. "Lena's our first choice but that might change when we meet her. We might find something that suits her better, but we've decided that we are definitely having Kathryn as a middle name. We had toyed with the idea of having Kathryn as her first name, but we decided that it would probably get confusing. I knew your name had to be in there somewhere though. None of this would have happened without you."

"Without me? What do you mean? Emma is the one that saved us and actually, you didn't have to take me with you but you did."

"Kat, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have made it through the first year at Gold's. Do you remember that night?"

"The night you almost topped yourself with the tablets you'd stolen from a punter? Vaguely," she replies sarcastically with a clenched jaw. The good mood in the room had quickly dissipated with the mention of that night. After everything that had happened to Kat during her time at Gold's, that memory was the most miserable thing that stuck out above all else.

Ignoring Kat's change in mood, because she was fully aware of how deeply her actions had affected her friend that night, she continues. "You saved my life that night. I wouldn't have made it through that night without you, let alone every other night after that."

Xxxxxx FLASHBACK xxxxxx

Regina had been at Gold's for almost a year and she felt broken in every way it was possible for a human being to be broken.

She had just put on one of the few slutty dresses that had been bought for her by Gold and was now applying the makeup that had been bought for her in her shared room where she was being held captive and hidden away from the rest of the world, all in preparation for her to be sent out to a client so her body could be used in the most depraved way to earn Gold a few bucks. She hated looking at her reflection in the mirror as she applied the garish purple eye shadow to her eyelid, desperately fighting to hold back her tears of despair and misery.

"Hurry up, Slag, it's time to go," Neal shouts, as he knocks on the bedroom door, giving her enough of a fright to make her drop her brightly coloured eye shadow palette to the ground, the powders cracking and offensively marring the linoleum flooring.

"Shit," Regina mutters, as she uncomfortably squats down in her knee high pleather boots and tries to clear up the mess, scraping the powders into a small pile with her fingertips.

"What the hell is holding you up, you dumb bitch?" An impatient voice shouts from the other side of the door.

"I'm coming," she quickly shouts back as she pushes the powder pile under her bed, afraid of the repercussions if she made Neal wait any longer. She wipes her hands on her bedspread and grabs her handbag before leaving the room.

"Can you even tell the time, you damn waste of space?" Neal berates her, as she sullenly follows him to the car he will be taking her in to deliver her to the client, to effectively be raped.

After a twenty minute car ride of being insulted and taunted by Neal, Regina was glad to step out of the vehicle and be away from the despicable man, even if that meant she was about to be used by another despicable man.

She knocks on the door and plasters a smile on her face when he opens it. She had been to this house two or three times before and had a good idea what to expect from the next hour with him.

"Get in," he forcefully demands as he pulls her inside by her arm. "Go to the bedroom and take your clothes off. You know how I want to find you," he warns in a low tone.

Regina straightens up her spine and walks to the room she had unfortunately become familiar with over the last few weeks. She dutifully strips away the clothing from her body and positions herself in the way he likes: bent over at the waist, her upper body pressed against the bed, her backside high in the air and her legs spread. She shivers from the cool air against her body and the humiliation of the position she is in and the way her life has turned out. She tries to take her mind out of the situation, as she thinks of better times in her life, not that she has had many, but it doesn't seem to work at that moment. Neal's abuse had really gotten to her tonight and the best her mind could do was to help her hold back her tears of despair.

For the first time in months, she was fully present in her mind for every painful second and every torturous touch of her abuser's hands and body against her own. She sobbed into the bedspread below her face, not that he even noticed or cared as he chased his stolen pleasure.

When it was all over, he pushes Regina to the ground and tells her to get dressed and let herself out. She wipes her face with her hands and then gets up and starts to dress herself, taking her clothes from where she had neatly folded them on a side cupboard. She keeps her back to the ghastly man until he leaves the room to do whatever the hell it is he likes to do once he has abused a woman. She quickly runs to his en suite, her mind already made up about the direction she wants to take her life in. She locks the bathroom door behind herself and heads straight for the medicine cabinet, grabbing all the tablets she can find, not paying any attention to what they actually are as she shoves them into her handbag. She then leaves the house and waits for almost fifteen minutes in the bitter cold in only her very short sleeveless dress and six-inch heels, until Neal arrives to pick her up.

Being the bastard that he is, he turns on the air conditioning when he sees just how cold she is. He laughs when he sees her wrap her arms around herself in the rear-view mirror. His coat, scarf and gloves keeping him warm, as he drives her back to her prison. By the end of the journey even he was cold, but to him it was worth it when he watched her painfully shiver.

When she gets to her room, she doesn't even try to warm herself up. She just sits on the end of her bed and digs around in her purse with shaky hands until she manages to grab the several strips of pilfered tablets. She slowly pops them from their seal with difficulty because of how cold she is. When she has a fistful of the unknown pills she brings her hand to her lips and shoves them into her mouth, swallowing as many as she can, with a quite a bit of difficulty, without a drink to wash them down with.

It was less than ten minutes later when Kathryn walks into their shared room. To see Regina slumped on her bed, fully dressed and with a face full of makeup was surprising to say the least. Regina always liked to clean herself up before she went to sleep. It wasn't until she noticed the empty strips of tablets on the floor that she put two and two together and realised what Regina had done.

"No… no… Regina, please god no." she begs, as she kneels on the floor next to her friend and puts a hand around the back of her floppy head, immediately feeling how cold she is and assuming the worst. "What have you done?" She desperately asks her unresponsive friend. She tries slapping her face in harder and harder increments until she realises that it isn't going to work. She quickly climbs onto the bed behind her and rolls her onto her side until Regina's head is hanging over the side of the mattress. She grips her jaw with one hand and with the other she forces her index and middle finger down the brunettes throat until her friend involuntarily throws up around the intrusion. Kat doesn't remove her fingers until Regina has nothing left in her stomach and the brunette starts to come around and pulls away from the digits in her mouth.

"Regina… Regina… can you hear me? Talk to me!" She demands of her dazed friend. She slaps her cheeks again, trying to bring her back to consciousness.

Regina groans and mumbles, as she weakly pulls her head up from hanging over the side of the bed so she can lie in on the mattress. Kat grabs a pillow and shoves it under her head to give her some elevation.

"Do NOT roll on you back! I'm going to get you some water," Kat shouts in her face before running out of the room to get some water in the hope of helping out to flush out her friends system of any drugs that may still be lurking inside of her. She returns in under half a minute with a cup of water. She reaches around the back of Regina's head and presses the rim of the cup to her lips. "Open your mouth, drink this, you'll feel better." Regina weakly swallows the water that Kat is pouring into her, inadvertently making her choke until she coughs the liquid up on her own bed sheets.

"Shit. Sit up, Regina." She puts the cup on the side table between their beds and starts dragging her friend's limp body up the bed. "Come on, Regina," she grunts with exertion. She tries slapping her cheeks again until the brunette complies with the best of her abilities to Kat's repeated pleas to move up the bed, until she is sitting up against the headboard. Her head lolls from side to side and saliva dribbles from the corner of her mouth. Kat picks up the cup again and holds Regina's head up by her jaw. "Please, just take a small sip," she begs as tears begin to fall from her eyes. She does her best to steady her shaking hand as she slowly tips the cup to paler-than-usual lips. Regina feebly swallows the small amounts of liquid that Kat keeps slowly pouring into her mouth until she's drunk it all.

Kat grabs the cover off her own bed and moves so that she is sitting against the headboard, next to Regina. She snakes an arm around the brunettes back and holds her against her side. She puts the cover over Regina and tucks it around her body as best she can to try and warm her up. Regina's head falls against her friends quaking shoulders, as the blonde continues to cry and hold her.

After a couple of minutes, Kat notices that Regina's breathing has evened out. She's not sure if her friend is asleep or if she's passed out but she doesn't think it matters as long as she's breathing.

They both stay in that position until the morning, but unlike Regina, Kat doesn't get a moment of rest throughout the night. After the initial fear and adrenalin had passed, Kat was left with the gnawing feeling of guilt deep in her. Since Regina had arrived at Gold's, she had taken her under her wing and felt somewhat responsible for her. She kept wondering if she'd missed any signs that Regina was going to do something like this. The brunette was always miserable, but so were each and every one of the women there. Who wouldn't be? Their lives were a living hell.

When the rest of the women in the hellhole started getting up in the morning for breakfast, Kat decided to shake Regina awake. It took some effort to wake her but eventually she came around with a groan.

"Time to get up. I'm going to get us some breakfast and we are going to talk about what happened last night." Kat directs in a no nonsense voice that doesn't come naturally to her. She couldn't afford to pussy foot around what had happened the previous night if she wanted to get answers and be in a position to help the brunette going forward.

"I just want to sleep," Regina mumbles, as she moves to lie down on the bed.

"Don't you dare," Kat warns. "You are going to sit up and wait for me to get back with our breakfast."

Kat's tone startles Regina, as she rubs her tired eyes and wrinkles her nose at the smell in the room. Then it all comes rushing back. Everything from the night before hits her like a train… the punter, Neal, the freezing cold, the tablets and nothing else after that, but judging by the rancid smell filling the room and the fact that she's still alive, she guesses that there was more to the night than she remembers. She forces her tired eyes open and musters as much energy as she can to hold her head up as she surveys the room, feeling embarrassed when she spots the puddle of vomit on the floor.

Kat pulls her into a fierce hug when the brunette's body starts shaking and deep sobs burst forth from her throat. "It's okay. It's all going to be okay," Kat promises with total conviction even though she wasn't sure if she believes her own words. All she knows is that Regina needs someone to be her strength right now and half-hearted words just weren't going to cut it. "When you think you have nothing in this world just remember that you have me," the blonde says as soothingly as she can, her voice a world apart from only a few moments ago. They cling to each other until Regina's exhausted body can cry no more.

Kat pulls back a little and delicately lifts Regina's chin until she's looking into tear stained brown orbs that look duller than she ever remembers them looking. "Please stay sitting up. I'm going to quickly clean up then grab us some breakfast and we can have a chat, okay? You can go back to sleep after that if you want to."

Regina nods weakly and let's her head fall back against the headboard with a bit of a thump that makes her friend wince.

Kat does as she said she would and cleans up the puddle of vomit. She noticed the small pile of colourful powder under Regina's bed and makes a mental note to ask her friend about that at a more appropriate time. When she's cleaned up as best as she could with the limited cleaning items at her disposal, she scurries to the kitchen to get them both some breakfast. When she comes back, she places the tray of food on the rickety table between their beds and sits down next to Regina again.

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care," Kat replies, not too unkindly, "I want you to eat something. Have a drink first. Do you want coffee or water?

"Coffee."

"Here you go," she says as she passes her a mug of caffeine.

It takes almost half an hour until they finish their breakfast. Regina manages half a banana and a slice of toast. It wasn't as much as Kat had wanted her to eat, but it would have to do for now.

"Do I need to worry about this happening again?" Kat asks, after she finished questioning her friend about why she had done what she's done. The answer Regina had given her about having wanted to end her own life every single day since she gotten there had done nothing to comfort the blonde.

"I can't keep living like this. This isn't even living!" She shouts as she begins to sob again.

"I know but it will get better. I promise you it will get better one day."

"How can you say that? You've been stuck here even longer than I have. How can you still have hope?"

"Because the minute I give up hope is the minute I know there isn't any."

Even in her muddled brain, Regina can see the logic to that statement, but nothing in her life was logical. She was seventeen and trapped in a human trafficking ring. "How will we ever get out of this? We need a miracle."

"I don't know but we will. One day we will be living our perfect lives and all of this will just be a distant and unpleasant memory and we'll still be friends, you know."

"You're my friend?" Regina asks with bewilderment in her watery eyes.

"Of course I am," Kat replies with her eyebrows scrunched. "You don't think we're friends?" It was surprising to Kat that Regina hadn't considered them friends. They'd lived this life together for a year and spent all of their free time together.

"I've never really had a friend before."

"Well, like it or not, you have one now." Kat grabs the crumpled up cover from the bottom of the bed and moves herself until she is lying comfortably on the bed, encouraging Regina to do the same. She pulls the cover over both of them and holds around Regina, who is resting her head on Kat's shoulder again. "Tell me about the life you want when we do get out of here."

It took a bit more gentle encouragement from Kat, but Regina soon started to describe her fantasy life, before falling back to sleep, but not before promising the blonde that if she ever felt that lonely and desperate again, she would talk to her friend.

The next time Regina felt that way, and every time after that, Kat would pull back the covers on one of their beds and lie with her, as she asked Regina to describe her fantasy life of the future again, hoping that maybe Regina might start believing that being held captive in Gold's wasn't the end of her story.

Xxxxxx FLASHBACK xxxxxx

"It is strange how at first, despite how kind and protective you were of me, I never really saw you as a friend until that night. My mother had drilled it into me that I was never good enough for anyone to like, let alone befriend. But, Kat, you've never just been my friend, you're my family. You were the only family I had for a very long time and you always will be. I can think of no better honour for me and Emma than to pass your name onto the next generation of our family."

It wasn't lost on Kat that Regina was including her under the umbrella of 'our family'. Regina didn't see her and Kat as one family and then her and Emma as another; to Regina they were all one family together. The mood in the room switches again, to one of happiness and a comforting feeling of home and belonging. She moves from her own seat to join Regina in hers and encompasses her in a bear hug. "Lena's a shit name by the way," Kat mentions with a smile on her face.

"Shut up and play the movie, you idiot," Regina replies with a smile of her own.