AN: This chapter is still just after "Queen of Hearts" time-line wise, but there are spoilers for "The Miller's Daughter" and a couple for "Welcome to Storybrooke". Also kapuis asked for Rumple: Be careful what you wish for, Dearie.

Also Sexy Savior Shower Scene!

Chapter IV

Every Modern Convenience

"Congratulations, you've just reunited mother and son, maybe one day they'll even invite you for dinner."

His words were salt on Regina's open and bloody wounds. They both knew that would never happen. That dinner would never come and even if it did, Regina wouldn't be around to enjoy it. It had been a truly foolish move, Gold mused, but once Regina put her mind to something there was no way to stop her. It was a quality of hers that he had used to his advantage before. To be honest he had looked forward to using her power and desperate need for love and happiness again. Regina was like a loaded gun, he would just need to point her in the direction he wished and pull the trigger. It had worked before, spectacularly, and he had no doubt he could have pushed her to the edge of the precipice at least one more time. It was a pity she was either dead or dying. The energy she had absorbed at the well had been too potent, too powerful and too poisonous to survive. The fact that she hadn't immediately crumpled into a smoking corpse spoke to how much power and potential his former apprentice had in her. It would eat through her quickly though, from the inside out. She had, to be crude, injected battery acid into her bloodstream. It would froth in her brain, burn through her limbs and attack her heart. It would be a cruel and painful death. A cruel death for a cruel woman, the townsfolk would say. No one, not even the boy she'd raised as her son for ten years, would mourn the fallen queen or be thankful for her sacrifice. On the contrary, there would probably be a celebration of some sort. There might even be fireworks. Wasn't it terribly ironic, that Regina had sacrificed her life to allow the two women she hated more than anything to return to Storybrooke to their perfect family and their happy ending? It was almost poetic, in a morbid way of course.

He would have to be the one to collect her body, before the mob pounced on it, and put her in the Mills Mausoleum. He would lay her casket, black onyx and gold he decided, beside her father's in the crypt. Should he dress her cold corpse as The Evil Queen, corsets, jewels and dark, dramatic makeup? Or the Mayor of Storybrooke: Designer suit, understated makeup with a picture of Henry clutched in her stiff fingers? He smirked at the choices and wondered how each would play out. Henry and Regina, loving father and daughter, would lie in theif coffins side by side for eternity. It would be a tragic and dark image laid out for the one person who would mourn for them; for Cora.

Ah Cora, he absently mindedly ran his fingers across the decorative swirls on his cane's silver handle, the Queen of Hearts herself had descended on Storybrooke with little fanfare or attention. He had noticed. How could he miss the shudder of power when the ship came into the usually calm and silent harbor? Did Jones really think he wouldn't recognize The Jolly Roger? Then again it was equally laughable to think that Cora thought he couldn't see through her cloaking spell. He had taught the woman magic, after all. She would be devastated to find her daughter dead. Devastated, furious and searching for vengeance. Cora's endless supply of cold and calculated blood lust was what drove her magic. She was, quite literally, heartless and that was what made her so dangerous. She was a very different woman then the one he had struck a deal with years before. The passionate miller's daughter, who smelled of straw and cheap marketplace perfume, had become a powerful sorceress and the supposedly mad queen of Wonderland. He thought of the spinning wheel that had so recently been used to curse David Nolan to sleep. It was hard, very hard, to spin straw to gold without thinking of the heat of Cora's skin under his fingers. The way she had kissed him. Then she had been gone. Just like Milah. Just like Baelfire. His hand clenched around the handle of his cane again. Cora was trouble, far worse than her daughter could imagine being.

Without her heart she had no weaknesses, not love for her daughter or even self-preservation, just a desire for power. Regina, at least, had love. He had used her love for the stable boy. Then he had dangled the idea of happiness in front of her and she had chased that. Regina did so want her happy ending. Now there was Henry to consider. As Regina's only child, thanks to him of course, Cora would be very interested in him. Young Henry Mills, could prove to be very valuable in the coming days.

His thoughts were interrupted by the tinkling of bells that signaled someone was entering the shop. Hadn't he put the closed sign up? He was sure he had. He'd had enough of Storybrooke's intrepid citizens today. He limped out of his backroom, "The sign says I'm clo-Belle." Everything, his face, his voice, and even his thoughts softened at the sight of the woman.

She smiled at him, "Rumple."

The light from the closing door gave a halo effect to dark hair that curled at her shoulders. She was angelic, with her crystal blue eyes and quick and easy smile.

"I heard there was some sort of dust-up by the well. I wanted to make sure you're all right."

Just like that, with a few simple words, he dismissed his plotting.

"Well, my dear, let me make us some tea and I will tell you about it."

The impromptu party had ended quickly and on a sour note after the tense gypsy conversation and Emma had taken the opportunity to excuse herself and Henry. They walked down the streets of Storybrooke hand in hand. Henry was probably a little too old to hold hands with her, but she was so happy to be back with him that she probably wouldn't have let go even if he'd begged.

Was this how Regina felt when she was with Henry?

The thought was so startling that Emma stumbled as she walked. She had been a real mother to Henry for what seemed like all of five minutes. Regina had been there for years. She'd taken care of Henry when Emma had been too young, too wild and too hurt and stupid to step up and be a parent. What had Regina told her? She had changed every diaper, soothed every fever and endured every tantrum." The way the woman's voice had hitched on the word tantrum told Emma that Henry had probably thrown more than a few.

Then Emma had blown into town and taken him away.

"Mom Mom Mom! Emma!" Henry tugged on her arm hard enough to catch her attention.

She jerked to attention, "Yeah, Kid?"

Henry looked up at her, concern flashing in his hazel eyes, "Are you okay? I called your name like four times."

She hadn't heard him. "Yeah, sorry, I must be more tired than I thought. What did you wanna ask me?"

"Do you think she's really okay?"

She blinked, momentarily confused, "Who?"

Henry rolled his eyes, "My mo-Regina. Aurora said that she collapsed in the middle of the road."

In all the commotion about Cora and Hook and nameless Gypsies she hadn't even thought about Regina's reported collapse. For some reason that made her feel ashamed of herself. Even more ashamed of herself than before. She didn't like the feeling.

"I-uh, I don't know."

Henry frowned, "It looked like it hurt allot."

Emma paused again, what had happened at the well before she'd climbed out of it? "What did?"

Henry blinked, "The magic. She sucked up all this green magic from the well. Mr. Gold and Mom thought that Cora would come through and Mom was scared but I begged her to trust me because I knew you and Grams were coming through. It looked like it hurt allot. She fell down against a tree. Do you think that's why she collapsed?"

Well she wasn't a doctor or a magician, but considering what Henry told her, yeah it was probably what had caused Regina to collapse. She tried to figure out what to say as they walked.

"I'll go check on her tomorrow after I drop you off at school."

Emma hadn't realized what she was going to say until it was already out of her mouth. Henry smiled up at her, satisfied with that answer. So apparently she was going to check on Regina tomorrow. Joy and rapture.

In the few minutes it took to get back to the apartment she shared with Mary Mar-Snow, whatever, Henry had already planned out half of her next week. They were going to the stables to meet his horse and there was the school family dance, and the science fair was coming up too. It was all so domestic-a page out of Mommy Magazine. This whole Mother thing was just as overwhelming as being a fairy tale princess, if not more so. She wasn't ready for any of this. Henry ran ahead of her, into the building and down the hall to unlock the door, which was great because she had no idea where her keys were.

The first things she saw the couch, comfy and soft, she almost wept for joy. She fell on it, face first, and didn't want to move. She breathed in deep, expecting to catch the whiff of lavender and vanilla that Mary Margret's place always smelled of. She, instead, smelled the smoky, grimy filth of a body and clothes that had been worn for far too long. She reeked. She pulled the collar of her leather jacket and sniffed it. It smelled so awful that she almost gagged. She shrugged out of it and tossed it in the general vicinity of the trash can. There was no saving the garment. She lifted her head up to find that Henry had disappeared. To retrieve his book she assumed, and with that thought she shoved herself up off the couch.

She walked into the bathroom and stared, just stared. She almost felt a tear come to her eye. It was so pretty and clean and she was so dirty-she was a very dirty girl. She closed the door behind her and walked towards her goal without blinking, it was almost a trance. She was filthy and she smelled like a garbage truck and she hadn't had a proper shower in far far too long.

"I'm a dirty girl but that's how you like me." Emma loved, seriously loved, modern plumbing. She was never going to take it for granted again. Hell, she wasn't even sure she was going to leave this bathroom again. She pushed the plastic shower curtain aside. It wasn't the prettiest thing in the world. the tub and shower were old and its pipes shuddered and squeaked and there was a crack down the porclin side of the tub but the water would be hot and plentiful. She turned the tap on full and ran her hands under the stream of clean water.

"Oh my God, you're so hot."

Emma peeled off her tank top and jeans and dropped them to the floor. Her underwear, which was beyond saving at this point, fell to the floor beside her clothes and she stepped into the stream.

"And wet."

The water pounded down on her neck and shoulders. It slicked her tangled mop of curls to her scalp and Emma let out a moan.

"That feels so good."

The water was just a little too hot for comfort, but felt amazing. She blindly reached for the nearest bottle of body wash. She flipped the top up and poured the soap directly into her hands. Her eyelids, heavy as lead, slammed closed and her mouth curved

Apples, of course. Why had they even had this bottle? She didn't remember. She rubbed the shower gel across her flat stomach and breasts. Her hands rubbed the soap across her stiff shoulders and down her arms.

The shower now smelled like Regina.

Images of the other woman, the Evil Queen, the Bitchy Mayor, the adoptive mother of her son flashed behind her closed eyelids. A woman with dark eyes full of secrets and sadness who had destroyed a world in search of happiness. Her voice, hot and rough like whiskey sounded in her ears. She always called her Miss Swan. She had heard it called in the frigid yet professional mayor voice and the bitter voice of a terrified mother. What would it sound like in the bedroom? Would Regina call her Miss Swan when she climaxed? Would her voice sweeten with her pleasure or would it become deeper and rougher with passion?

Her skin would taste like "the best apple cider she'd ever tasted" and would feel like silk under her fingers. Emma knew that despite the woman's olive toned skin, she would bruise easily. Love bites on her shoulder and thighs, scratches down her back, and lips swollen from kissing. She would have to wear long sleeves to hide the bruises on her wrists from Emma's handcuffs.

"Emma."

The queen, gloriously naked, would buck underneath Emma, begging for her release.

"Emma!"

She would lift the impeccably dressed mayor onto the desk she ruled the City Hall from and lift the woman's skirt.

"EMMA!"

She had saved the woman's life twice, once from Gold's fire and once from the soul sucker. Regina would thank her with a hot and eager mouth maybe on her knees looking up at Emma. She would quietly call her "my savior" before kissing her way down Emma's body.

"EMMA!"

Mary Margret-Snow's voice followed by loud insistent banging on the bathroom door snapped Emma out of her daze. She jerked and came very close to slipping in the shower. She grabbed the curtain to stop herself and winced when she heard one of the curtain rings rip through the plastic curtain.

"JUST A MINUITE I'M ALMOST DONE!" Emma had been stading with her head down, one hand braced on the slick tile wall of the shower and the other hand had been sliding down her body towards-

"You better not have used all the hot water!"

Emma winced again. The shower had turned ice cold, but she hadn't even noticed. The cold was nice, refreshing even. Honestly she needed the cold now more then the heat. She could feel her pulse settling and the buzzing heat that had settled in her belly and between her legs started to slowly dissipate. She reached for the shampoo bottle with a somewhat less shaky hand.

Five minutes later she walked out of the shower wrapped in the fuzzy white terrycloth robe that Mary Margaret had insisted on buying her several months before.

She sheepishly apologized for using all the hot water before hurrying to her room to put on pajama bottoms and a fresh, clean and bleached tank top. She padded back out to the living room and settled down on the couch with Henry to watch TV. She could not think about what had just happened. Her brain was too tired and she was too emotionally spent to think about that. Henry, overjoyed that she was back, popped his new favorite DVD into the player and they settled in to watch.

She started to doze off about five minutes into The Avengers. She was trying to pay attention, but quickly lost it when the brunette second in command, who snapped orders like Regina, came on screen.

Okay, so where had the sexual thoughts of Regina come from? It wasn't as if she was attracted to the woman. She was bossy, bitchy, had a stick up her ass and she was literally evil. She was also beautiful, brunette and broken. Those were her holy trinity: the things that always attracted Emma to trouble, like a moth to a flame.

She fell asleep somewhere between Capitan America beating up a punching bag and Samuel Jackson saying something totally badass.

Henry had already seen The Avengers about sixteen times, so wasn't disappointed when Mary Margret turned it off so Emma could sleep on the couch undisturbed. He helped David tuck an afghan around his sleeping mother and smiled a little bit. He was so glad she was home. He did worry a little, though, when she started mumbling in her sleep. He didn't want her to have bad dreams. All the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, though, when he clearly heard the sleeping blonde whisper "Regina" in her sleep.

They had only been reunited for a few hours and the Evil Queen was already trying to hurt his family again.

She felt weak in a way she hadn't in years. She had no physical or emotional strength left in her. She could stand, if she leaned against her apple tree, but walking had simply been too much. Had she been alone, she would not have made it.

Thankfully, she was not alone. Esmeralda helped her walk to the backdoor. The kitchen was clean, but that was not why Esmeralda gasped when she helped Regina into it. The Romani woman did not have the benefits of the curse on her side. Regina had awoken in town just like everyone else and the curse had filled in the blanks. She had instinctively known what an electric stove was and how to use a faucet. This was an entirely different world for Esmeralda.

"I know it's different. Very different."

That, Regina knew, was the understatement of the year.

Despite the strong arms helping to hold her up, her knees started to wobble again.

"We need to get you into bed."

She scowled at Esmeralda. She did not want to go to bed. She hadn't seen this woman in so many years. Long, hard, bitter years full of loneliness and evil deeds. She wanted to talk to her, explain how she had turned from a chubby-cheeked ten year old into an evil queen and then into an outcast ex-mayor. She wanted to ask where she had been. Find out how the woman had come to Storybrooke. She wanted to thank her for saving her life. When everything in her tastefully yet functional decorated kitchen suddenly doubled, she decided that sitting down for a minute might be a good idea.

"There's a couch in the den, the room just through here. We can sit down and talk a minute."

Regina has no idea what is going through her beloved nursemaid's head. Was she overwhelmed by the world she has found herself in? Was she disgusted by what her Little Nightingale had become? Did Esmeralda know that she'd killed Daddy to get this empty mansion in a town full of people that hated her?

They get to the den, slowly but surely, and Regina sank onto the fainting couch with a sigh. Esmeralda sits in the nearby overstuffed chair.

Regina had so many things she wanted to say, questions she wanted to ask. She's so tired, though, in more ways than one.

"I'm sorry."

Regina doesn't know what she's apologizing for, exactly. Maybe for everything, she isn't sure.

"I know you are, Nightingale."

She slides down into a laying position, her eyes still locked on Esmeralda. She's afraid that if she looks away, the woman will be gone. It's childish and petty, but that was what she felt.

She looked different, older and somehow sadder than before. Her clothes are still a beautiful rainbow of bright colors and ruffles of lace and silk. Her hair was as thick and wild as it had always been, but not there were streaks of white intertwined with the midnight black. Where had she been? Why had she left? Why was she back? Why now? How?

"I missed you."

Yet another tear streaked down Regina's cheek. She had all these questions, but wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answers. She didn't want to take charge and be the mayor. She just wanted things to be like they were before-just for a few more minuites.

"Allot."

Her eyes were sliding closed and Regina fought to keep them open. She wasn't ready to go to sleep, not yet.

"Sleep, Regina. I will be here when you wake up."

Regina shook her head, she wanted to speak, there was so much to say: years and years worth of things to say.

"I have a son."

Her pride and joy, her reason for living, her Henry.

Esmeralda smiled, and looked every bit as beautiful as she had when Regina was a child.

"I named him after Daddy."

She plucked the framed picture of Henry off the nearby side-table with shaky hands and handed it to Esmeralda. There are long lists, thick tomes that could be written about the evil she's done in her life. Henry is the one good thing she's ever done.

Esmeralda looked at the picture and Regina would swear that there were tears forming in the other woman's eyes.

"How?"

Regina could not be surprised that Esmeralda asked her that. The Romani, as she had been told countless times as a child, knew all that was past, present and future.

"I adopted him when he was a newborn."

Adoption was not only accepted in the Romani, it was a revered tradition. When she was a child she had often imagined that Esmeralda would adopt her and the three of them, Esmeralda, Daddy and herself, would run away and go on adventures together.

Regina was slipping in and out of a doze so she didn't see the woman move, but felt a pair of lips press against her forehead.

"He is beautiful. Your father would have adored him."

Something warm was spread over her and Regina felt herself giving into the sleep that her body so petulantly demanded.

"Will you stay?"

Her voice sounded small, like Henry's when he'd been three and she'd been his everything.

"Of course."

Then Esmeralda started to sing a familiar song. It was the same lullaby she had fallen asleep to for her first ten years of life. It was the same lullaby that she had sang to Henry when he'd been a baby.

She fell asleep with a smile on her still too pale face.

Esmeralda watched the younger woman fall asleep and smiled. Regina was curled up on what she had called a couch. Though she had handed her back the picture of the boy, Regina had not put it back on the table, she curled her arms around it. She clutched to the picture in her sleep as tightly as she had her dolls as a girl. Esmeralda did not know where the blankets were kept and frankly had no idea where to start looking. Regina, though, would get cold, she always had. Esmeralda spread her cloak over Regina's slight form as a blanket and couldn't help but chuckle when the woman snuggled into it. Her face, pale and drawn, held stress and pain even in her sleep. Regina, the child of her heart, was no longer the innocent she had once been. Esmeralda had heard of her deeds. Word and fear of the Evil Queen had stretched far and wide. Despite her knowledge, and Esmeralda had known that things would be complicated at best, and that Regina would need lots of help, but she had never expected it to be this bad.

"Oh Henry, what has happened to our little girl?"

She spoke, of course, to Regina's father, not her son.

Son, Regina finally had a child of her own. Where was he and why did even mentioning his name come with both pride and sorrow in her Little One's brown eyes? Her eyebrows furrowed when Regina started to whimper in her sleep. She had never grown out of her night terrors, it seemed. She settled down beside the woman, as she had so many times when the woman had been only a girl, and stroked her hair to calm her.

When Regina calmed again, Esmeralda pulled her satchel close and opened it. There were many odds and ends in her bag. Clothing, food, a dagger for protection, and then there was her book. She took the ancient leather volume out and opened it on her lap. She had to learn about the new land she had found herself in. She flipped the book open to the middle.

"Show me Storybrooke."

She read almost as quickly as the words appeared on the page. Her concentration only broke when Regina began to whimper again. Most of the sounds were indistinguishable and jumbled, but one word was inmistakable and it caused Esmeralda's jet black brow to rise in curiosity. Who was Emma and why did she haunt her Little Nightingale's dreams?