Author's Note: First, let me just say, I like milk. Second, this chapter is not about opening a political or moral debate on nature vs choice, and I have no secret agenda. Lastly, I like Killian.
"My, my, Regina, you're looking a little haggard. Guilt eating you alive, Dear?"
Apple popped up around her mom, holding the neck of an expensive bottle of red in one hand, and three glasses in another. "Yes! Which is why we're here. I've got booze, and I already ordered Chinese food, which'll be here in about," she checked her watch as Maleficent stared, "Oh like fifteen minutes. So," she muscled her way into the house, "where should I put this stuff?"
Maleficent turned to look back at her, "This perky creature actually came from you?"
She smiled wistfully, a look that started her once friend, and then shook her head, "Apparently she was lucky enough not to inherit my personality."
"Geesh, you can say that again. OK, I'm just going to go set this up in the living room. You've got to have a corkscrew around here somewhere. It'll suck if I have to pay magic's price because you don't have a properly stocked liquor cabinet." Apple drifted off into the house, her voice dying out as she went.
"I like her," Maleficent smirked, swigging the door open all the way. "Well, are you coming in, or are you going to give me the satisfaction of slamming this door in your face?"
She scowled, but lifted her foot to step inside before thinking better of it. Resting her hand on the door stop she asked, "Can I assume the floorboards are spelled to do something nasty to me when I cross the threshold?"
"That depends, friend," Maleficent said sweetly, "how much do you like your feet?"
Rolling her eyes, she threw down a counter spell, feeling the magic in the house release. From deeper in the house, presumably the kitchen, her daughter cried out, "Hey now! No spells in the house! Don't make me break out my bow on you two!"
"Now she sounds like you."
"Haha, very funny. If you're done trying to kill me—"
"I haven't decided yet," Mel eyed her warily. "But," she stepped aside, "I am up for some company after being trapped in a cave for 30 years only to be murdered by the Savior and forced into an endless hell as a wraith."
"How generous," she said dryly, crossing the threshold and moving into the stolen house. "By the way, should I be expecting a call from our sheriff about Aurora's missing parents?"
Mel closed the door behind her, "Come now, Regina, I've been cleaning up your messes for years, you can take one for the team."
"Right," she said as Apple came back into the room.
"OK, found a corkscrew. By the way, there are two dead people at the bottom of the basement stairs, you might want to do something about them."
As she blanched, Mel scoffed, "They're not dead, just sleeping like the dead. A little curse I cooked up ages ago. I figured some rest would do them some good. Did you see the bags under Ona's eyes, she looked positively hideous."
"So this is your plan," she said turning on Maleficent, "Get right back up to your old tricks again?"
Mel shrugged, "Why mess with perfection?"
"Exactly!" Apple said, to her shock. She was still trying to figure out her daughter's propensity for good vs. evil. It seemed she, like her mother, skirted the line often.
"You approve?" Mel asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Of you making Mitchel's mom sweat, yeah, that I definitely approve of." A dark expression floated over Apple's face.
"Mitchel, Aurora's son, harmed you in some way," she asked, feeling her ire rise.
"Me?" Apple asked, "No, not me. Morganna, yes. And anyone who messes with my girl, gets the ax. Oh!" She turned towards Mel, "Listen, if you do have any axes in the house, don't burying them in mom's back, she's a little paranoid about it."
"Really?" Mel smiled devilishly.
She shook her head, "Don't be ridiculous—"
"Really," her daughter said emphatically, throwing her under the bus. When she glared, Apple glared right back.
"Who's side are you on?"
Rolling her eyes, her daughter sat on the white couch and began to pour the wine into the crystal glasses, "I'm on the side of the two of you becoming friends again, and that means being honest with each other. So will you two please just cut the crap, scream at each other a little—without magic—and then get on with the girl talk, because it's been too long since I had a drink and I could sure use one."
She reached for the glass just as Regina stepped forward and smacked her hand, "What are you doing? You're not 21!"
Looking at her as if she'd grown a third eye, her daughter blurted out, "But you let me drink back home!"
"Well," she said, taking the glass and handing it to Mel before picking up another for herself, "You're not home, you're in Storybrooke, so you can march yourself back into the kitchen and have some milk."
"Ugh!" She cried, throwing up her hands, "I hate milk! Why do parents always make you drink milk? That stuff is gross, and do you know what it is? I mean, what it REALLY is?! It's disgusting!" But she wound her way through the living room and back into the kitchen anyway.
"How very motherly of you," Mel supplied sardonically.
She gave her friend a look, "I might have had some practice."
"Ah that's right, the Savior's boy, what's his name again? Oh yes, Henry. Now where have I heard that name before—"
"Mel," she said, suddenly feeling sick, "don't—"
"Oh that's right! It's your father's name. Now," Mel put her finger to her mouth as she moved across the room to settle into a chair, "whatever happened to him?"
There were some wound from her old life that would never close. Of all her murder and mayhem, her father's death was the one that haunted her sleep. It was an act she couldn't run from, much like Rumple's son was for him, and she imagined she'd die seeing the love and betrayal on her father's face when her time finally came.
Warily, she sat down on the couch and turned to look out the window at the sunny day. This was the life she'd paid such a high price for. A beautiful son, who's love broke and reformed her daily; a new daughter who looked exactly like her, and seemed to skate the fine edges of morality in ways she never could and feared; a true love, who's touch she craved every night, but who apparently was destined to break her heart; and a step son, who's love for the people he cared about was tangible, but who's rage at the world was frighteningly close to her own.
In 48 hours she had acquired a glimpse into a future she hadn't expected, filled with as much pain as her past, but promised a joy she couldn't quite comprehend yet.
Pressure on her glass nearly had her dropping it, and if it hadn't been for Mel's hand on her own, she might have. Her once friend—only friend—was refilling her glass, her expression neutral. "Drink. You look like you could use it."
Her hand not holding the glass reached out and clasped Maleficent's wrist, causing their eyes to lock. "I couldn't reverse the spell. There was no magic in Storybrooke, at least not enough to make you human again. And then," she paused, knowing she had to say the words, "after magic did return, I thought you were dead. Emma said she'd killed you. By the time I learned you had become a wraith," she dropped Mel's eyes and looked away.
"I didn't know how to bring you back."
The wine bottle Mel had been pouring from hit her wrist and she looked up to see that same neutral expression as Mel passed her the bottle. The blond returned to her place in the single chair, and took a healthy swallow of her own wine.
"You visited."
And she had. In some of her darkest moments, after she'd forced Graham to become her lover, after Henry had returned dragging his 'real mother' home, when she'd lost Daniel yet again, she had descended into the depths of the mines and spoken her heart to a friend she thought couldn't hear or understand her. The fact Maleficent knew she'd been there at all was startling.
Mel saw her expression and scoffed, "You forget, Dear, I'm older than I look, much older. You think you're the first friend to screw me over? Hardly. I couldn't count the number of times Ursula has made me regret our friendship, if I counted every sucker on her eight meaty little tentacles. But," and she took a long drink from her glass, her eyes cast unseeing towards the far end of the room, "you were the last one I expected to betray me."
She didn't know what to say. The pain in her chest told her what she already knew, that as always, the opinions of her friend and mentor mattered to her. A just world would allow her to blame her actions on madness, but the truth was, revenge had been the most powerful force in her life, and only recently had she found the courage to let it go.
So she opened her mouth and confessed. "You were my only friend, Maleficent." Sharp blue eyes, cut across the room to dagger her own. "I regretted only two things about casting the curse, my father's death, and imprisoning you." She looked down at her glass. "It felt like the right thing to do at the time. You'd withheld the curse from me, delaying my revenge against Snow White until almost the moment the curse became useless." Courage forced her eyes to meet Mel's once again, "But it didn't take long for me to wish I'd done a lot of things differently."
"That's your apology," Mel asked dryly, and Regina held her friend's eye and nodded. After a moment, Maleficent scoffed and turned away.
Some noise by the entrance way into the room had her looking up, and she saw her daughter standing with a soda can, a smile on her face as she looked at her "Auntie Mel", before she glanced at her mother and gave her a brighter smile, and a wink.
"Fine," Maleficent suddenly said, standing and crossing the room once again to stand before her. "It was a pathetic apology, but I suppose you haven't had a lot of practice. Very well, I accept your apology. Now, stop being a terrible mother, and pour your clever daughter a drink. After all, milk is disgusting."
Killian stood on the bow of the Jolly Roger. The hatred on his son's face, on the faces of those his son called friends, swirled in his mind, mingling together with the look on Henry's face when he'd accused him of hurting Emma.
He replayed scenario after scenario in his mind. What could have pushed him so far as to nearly murder his own son?
From the time he'd been a lad he'd dreamed of a family of his own. The decision to leave Bae behind with his father when Milah had come aboard his ship, had been her own, and he was man enough to admit he'd wanted to bed her more than play the role of doting father at the time.
But regret had eaten at him in the years that had passed, until he came upon the boy in Neverland, and had done everything he could to protect him without drawing Pan's attention.
More than once though, he'd watched Henry, seeing Bae in his little gestures, and longed for a true connection that could only come between father and son, or brothers.
He'd named his son after his brother.
The ache in his chest was so profound it forced him to lean against the rail, staring out into the empty sea before him.
"For once," he turned to see Emma stepping onto the deck, "You look like that coat actually does weight 50 lbs."
Normally he would have smiled, but his heart was too heavy for the action. Instead, he reached out his hand to her, and felt warmed by her smaller body pressed against his. "Killian," she began, "We don't know all the facts yet, and until we do, you can't beat yourself up over something we don't even understand."
"We don't have to understand it, Swan, because it's inexcusable. I hurt our son, and if it's to be believed, I nearly killed him. He's a good boy, you can see it in him. A bit more than Dandy, but a good boy none the less."
"Dandy?" Emma pulled back, confused by the term.
For a moment he struggled to find a clean way of getting his meaning across, finally settling on, "You understand, prefers the company of blokes to broads."
"Gay. Yeah, he's definitely gay." She smiled, caught in a memory.
"Well he did seem happy, but that's not what I meant—"
She laughed, patting his chest, "No, no, it's an earth thing. Gay means men that sleep with other men."
He pulled back confused, "How does 'gay' translate into that?"
She shrugged, "No idea, it just does."
He sighed and then nodded his head. "Well then you're right, he is definitely gay. 'Cept he's taken up with the Crocodile's daughter as well. What's the local tongue for that?"
Emma gave her own sigh, "Bi. As in bisexual. You know sleeps with—"
"Yeah, I think I get the picture." His hand tightened against her waist, drawing her closer to him as the wind picked up off the Port side.
Her voice was hesitant and she'd stiffened in his arms due to more than just the chill. "Does, that bother you?"
He looked down at her, "The fact that our boy manages to find a bed in every port and doesn't give a wit about who he shares it with," he chuckled, and then sobered. "Maybe, a little. I'm a seaman Swan, and there are rules on the subject you simply don't break. But I was one man on a ship of men caught in a land filled with children and Indians. If my crew made the most of what they had, they kept it quiet, and didn't need me getting into the middle of it."
She pulled back, her eyes troubled, and he felt the stirrings of concern. "But it bothers you. You wouldn't want our son to be gay."
He turned to lean against the railing and threw out his hand, "Well I don't think he bothered to ask for my opinion, do you? Seems he saw what he wanted and went after it."
"No, no," she shook her head, stepping away from him, and suddenly he was more than a little concerned, "You have a problem with our son being gay."
His brow furrowed, "Well don't you?"
"No!" She cried, her face taking on a look of dawning horror. "No, I don't care at all! I mean he's happy, he looks happy! And Roland seems to take really good care of him, and Anna seems pretty devoted to him, so why would I care if he was sleeping with a guy or a girl?"
He shook his head and stepped away from the railing. His heart crashing into his chest when Emma pulled away from him, but he took a quick step forward to capture her arm. "Don't misunderstand me Emma, it's not the life I would have chosen for him, and I probably would have taken him straight to Tortuga and bought him three nights of the best whores on the island," she stiffened in his grip but he continued, "but if that's who he chooses to keep time with—"
"Killian, it's not a choice! Science has proven it's not a choice at all. We're either born straight or we're born gay. Our son was born gay."
He shook his head again, "Swan, a Dandy Boy through and through, wouldn't be taking the Crocodile's daughter in his bed as well. It's obviously nothing scientific, he just happens to like a rather, disturbing activity that I can't wrap my mind around."
Suddenly Emma jerked out of his grip, and her glare was darker than he'd ever seen it. "Disturbing? Our son is in a loving, committed relationship with two people that seem to adore him, and all you can say is it's disturbing?"
"Now, Swan, don't twist my words around." He chose to take a step back and give her some space, knowing Emma well enough that trapping her wouldn't do either one of them any good during their first parental argument. "All I'm saying is, I don't understand the appeal of two men going at it. But if that's what he wants, well I'm not going to stop him. He's a grown man, and can make his own choices."
"It's not a choice!"
He growled, "Luv, your pretty little science is more than a little lost on me. All I know is if Liam wants to make time with Regina's son, then that's his choice, but this business about the Crocodile's daughter reeks of a Rumplestiltskin plot."
The stillness that overtook Emma gave him more concern than her earlier outburst. "What? What did I say now?"
She furrowed her brow, "They called you a bigot. Apple and Neal, that's what they called you."
"Right, and it was more than a little offensive I assure you."
She shook her head, her hand going to her mouth in a gesture he'd never seen her perform and worried his heart. "Luv?"
"That has to be it, that must be what happened between you and Liam."
"What?" He asked, and then pressed at her pained look, "What are you thinking, Emma?"
In denial, her head moved back and forth, and to his horror tears sparkled in her eyes, "He's gay, Killian. You must have nearly killed him because he told you he was gay."