Several eons ago, ANG asked for a Cupcake with Regina /Sid. Erm, this didn't go quite according to plan. But it does have both Regina and Sid in it! The title comes from the only green bakery product I can think of...
Summary: Regina is getting on her colleagues' nerves a little more than usual.
Key Lime Pie
It was a perfectly ordinary Thursday morning at Guildhall Law. The birds were singing, the sun was shining, and Regina was shouting at anyone who happened to pass. Mainly Marina, who was almost always within shouting distance. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
What was out of the ordinary was the aforementioned red-headed secretary storming into Gold's office without so much as a pre-emptory tap on the door, pointing at the floor and screaming.
"I cannot work for that woman a second longer! She is a vicious harpy and I have had enough! I quit! I'm leaving before I stab her with a fish fork!"
"Because obviously, you carry fish forks around with you all the time," Gold muttered without taking his attention from his papers. He let Marina give another howl of frustration and stamp her foot before he put down his pen and looked up at her.
"Excellent. I'm glad you've got all that off your chest. May I ask why you chose me to vent at?"
"Because I wouldn't give Her Majesty and Slimey Sid the satisfaction, Jeff's in court, Dawn's at lunch and I couldn't be arsed to go up another flight of stairs to see Killian."
"Right. So now that you've decided to hand in your notice, are you going to enlighten me concerning the circumstances which led to your sudden resignation?"
"Her!" Marina exploded, jabbing her finger towards the floor again. "She's just so, so, so, well, you know!"
Gold leaned back in his chair slightly. It was rare for Marina to lose her cool; not often did the cliché of fiery redheads apply to her. She was frequently cynical and sarcastic, and she made no secret of the fact that she would prefer working for any of the solicitors over Regina (with the exception perhaps of Killian, who had a tendency to address her ample chest rather than her face). But to see her truly riled, truly frustrated, was uncommon enough that Gold wondered precisely what had passed between the two women.
"All right," he said levelly, indicating for Marina to take the chair opposite his desk. The senior secretary declined in favour of pacing up and down the room, occasionally paused to smack one of Gold's filing cabinets with great force.
"Miss Tempest, I understand that you're angry, but could you please desist from abusing my office? And if you continue to distract me from my actual paying work, I might have to start charging you. I believe you're aware of my hourly rate."
Marina stopped hitting the grey metal and muttered an apology to the cabinet, but soon resumed her pacing. Beneath them, Regina had started yelling again, this time at Sid, who had no doubt come to find out what the previous catastrophe had been caused by. Presently, Alice put her head around the door, looking incredibly frazzled. Gold could blame her; she was doing two people's work at once since Ashley was still on holiday.
"Look," she began, "I don't know what Her Majesty thinks she's playing at, but you've got old Mr Middleton coming in to finalise his Will at half past two, and if we're not careful she'll give him a heart attack. You know how messy it can be if people die suddenly and intestate in their solicitor's reception."
Gold sighed and left his office, making his way down to the bottom floor of the building and the source of the cacophony that could no doubt now be heard in every room.
Cara Mallory was standing outside the door that lead to Regina and Marina's offices, her arms folded and an amused expression on her face. She checked her watch.
"My train leaves in half an hour," she said. "So far, my three hour meeting with Sid's lasted a grand total of twenty-seven minutes when you take out all the interruptions." She jerked her head towards the door. "I'm glad you lot usually come to see me in chambers. Is it always like this?"
Gold nodded.
"Pretty much." He listened to the argument for a few seconds. "I wouldn't worry, my dear," he added, turning back to Cara. "Regina probably just has a serious case of the green-eyed monster because Sid's currently spending more time with you than with her."
Cara rolled her eyes.
"She's a brilliant lawyer," she said. "I'll give her that, however grudgingly. The news that Regina Mills is suing them in small claims court sends most people running for the hills without fail. Why in God's name is she so incredibly insecure that she feels the need to crush everyone in her path to make her feel better? I studied with her and I don't understand."
Gold sighed. "If we only knew, Miss Mallory."
He knocked on the door and entered without waiting for an invitation, knowing that neither of the current occupants would have heard him.
"What?" Regina roared as she saw him come in.
"I've nothing against you letting out your anger, Regina, in fact, it is always encouraged to talk about your feelings rather than keeping them bottled up. But keep it down," Gold said. "I've got a client with a nervous disposition in ten minutes."
Regina gave an exclamation of anger and frustration and threw the papers that she had been gesticulating with in the vague direction of her desk, sending them scattering to the four winds.
"And where the hell is Marina?" she added.
"She's punching my filing cabinets," Gold said conversationally. "She handed in her notice."
"What?" Regina roared. "No, don't you do it, you'll get it wrong," she snapped at Sidney, who had begun to pick up the papers. She strode to the door of her office and wrenched it open, yelling up the stairs. "Marina! Get down here! I need you!"
"You do realise that cleaning up after your tantrums isn't actually part of Marina's job description, however much she might go above and beyond the call of duty for you as it is."
"Shut up and get out!" Regina screamed. "I don't need you telling me... I don't want you to..." She tailed off. "I am a perfectly capable and rational -" here Gold snorted "-human being!"
"Regina, love..." Sidney began.
"Don't you 'Regina, love' me!"
Gold decided that there was no use in beating about the bush any longer.
"Ms Mills, you are a pain in the arse to work with at the best of times but today our eardrums are suffering under your rage a little more than is usually tolerable and Marina, who has the infinitesimal patience of a saint, has handed in her resignation. Do you see where I am coming from, or am I going to have to tape your mouth shut for an hour? Has anything particular happened to incur your wrath today or did you just get out of the wrong side of Sid's bed?"
Fighting snark with snark appeared to have worked, and Regina stood still and silent for a moment, her mouth gaping like a fish.
"Excellent, peace in our time," Gold said. He left them to meet Mr Middleton just as he stepped into reception. Marina had thankfully left his office without too many visible dents in it; and Gold surmised that she was hiding out in Jefferson's room until she had cooled down.
The next hour passed with blessed quiet from the offices on the floor below, but Gold's peace of mind was to be shortlived when he opened his office door to see Mr Middleton out and found Regina standing on the other side of it, her mouth pressed together in a thin line.
"We need to talk," she said through gritted teeth.
Gold raised one eyebrow.
"Really? I've said all I have to say."
Regina sighed and rested her forehead on Gold's doorframe.
"It's my mother," she ground out. "She's coming to stay."
"And this has caused the world to implode dramatically and take your already short temper into the negative figures." Gold mused politely.
"You don't understand. My. Mother. Is. Coming. To. Stay."
"It's hardly the end of the world."
Regina snorted. "You've never met my mother."
"I have actually."
Regina looked up at him sharply.
"Collins v Masterson, Southampton Magistrates Court, 1995," Gold continued. "Yes, I've met your mother."
Regina continued to regard him warily. "Who won?"
"I did, of course."
"How on earth did you manage that?" Regina asked.
"Your unswerving faith in my ability to do my job is most flattering," Gold said drily.
"Gold, I know my mother. She's a heartless witch when she's suing someone. In fact, she's a heartless witch most of the time."
"Precisely. You just have to know how to handle her correctly."
Regina raised an eyebrow. "Does accidently pushing her into a cheval mirror count as handling her correctly?"
"That depends. Who came off worse from that particular altercation?"
"The mirror," Regina grumbled, "and it cost a fortune to get it repaired. My mother is remarkably resilient."
"In that case, destroying bedroom furniture is probably not the best way to go about surviving a visit from mummy dearest."
Regina sighed.
"She's just so… Nothing's good enough. She wants me to be better than she was but I'm taking too long about it. Do you ever have this problem?"
"Given that both my parents are dead, not currently, no."
Regina huffed and fixed him with a pointed look.
"Did you ever have this problem?"
"My father was a shipbuilder and my mother was a housewife. I was doing better than them when I took my Highers."
"Ugh. Christ, I never thought I'd be jealous of you."
"There's no need to sound quite so revolted at the prospect," Gold said. Regina ignored him and sat down on Ashley's vacant desk with a heartfelt sigh.
"Did Marina really hand in her notice?"
"I don't think she meant it," Gold said, settling himself in the desk chair. "She'd just had enough of you being unreasonable."
"I am not unreasonable!"
Gold didn't reply, and fell to pondering how much of Regina's personality could be attributed to her mother. As Cara had said, there was an insecurity behind that prickly exterior, a constant craving need for love, approval and respect, all three of which she demanded in such a myriad of different ways that the ultimate end result was that of a neurotic control freak on a power trip. Was it her mother's influence that had shaped her like that? How much was Regina herself?
"Did you ever want to be anything else?" he asked presently. Regina turned her head towards him sharply.
"Pardon?"
"Did you always want to be a lawyer?" Gold rephrased his question. "Was it always your passion or did you ever want to be anything else?"
"I knew I was going to do this job for as long as I can remember," Regina said coolly.
"That wasn't what I asked. You're sidestepping the question. I didn't ask if you knew. I asked if you wanted. That you were destined to follow in Mummy Dearest's footsteps was never in any doubt. She is, as you said yourself, a remarkably resilient woman."
Regina was silent for a long time.
"Showjumping," she said eventually. "I wanted to be a professional showjumper. Mother stopped my riding lessons when I was sixteen. I needed to focus on my education."
"Do you regret it?" Gold asked.
"What? Of course not." Regina snorted. "What do you care anyway? Why are we even having this conversation?"
"You started it, Ms Mills. I believe you were the one who came to me, and given that this is such a rare occurrence I assumed you wanted to get something off your chest and your usual confidant wouldn't do. I am turning into quite the agony aunt today. I should start a column in the Express and Echo."
Regina just gave him a withering look and left the room, but the conversation – disguised as a battle of wits as it had been – seemed to have done her good. It was clear to Gold that his colleague's feelings towards and concerning her mother were incredibly confused, but maybe she was starting to see a clear path. He got up from Ashley's desk and was about to go back into his own office when another voice arrested his attention.
"So what's up with Her Majesty?"
Marina was peering out of the doorway of Jefferson's room. Gold had been correct in his assumption that she'd been hiding out in there.
"PMT," Gold said cheerfully. "Pre-Mother Tension. I think she'll be all right now but please, do feel free to come up here and take apart some filing cabinets should it all get too much. Just as long as they're not mine."
Marina rolled her eyes and followed her employer down the stairs, leaving Gold to his work and a hopefully quieter afternoon…
Note: "PMT – Pre-Mother Tension" is a line from Berlin Berlin, a German sitcom.