Chapter Nine

Regina was growing used to the heated abyss, to the point that she lay across the bleak, black marble with her face hidden in her inner elbow.

As much as she'd researched the sleeping curse to make sure that it was a fit punishment for Snow White, she hadn't been quite prepared for it at first.

She spent days (or so she assumed) consumed by regrets, reliving every stupid and evil thing she had ever done. Every person she had ever tormented in order to hurt the woman who she now believed to be the mother of her True Love.

Perhaps it was all a convoluted way to lead her here where she would wallow in her own mistakes for the rest of time?

The more time that passed, the more that she resigned herself to spending eternity in this hellish nothingness, obviously her last ditch effort to convince Emma had failed.

The saviour was either too stubborn to kiss her or she had and it didn't work. It didn't matter much which one was the case, either way, she would never see her children and wouldn't get the opportunity to explore what she and Emma could have been.

Now she was beginning to believe that this was exactly what she deserved, what the Evil Queen deserved.

She had to be foolish to think even for a second that things could be any different.

It was these increasingly despairing thoughts that finally led her to apathy until a flashing light forced her upwards, where it flashed again and she scrunched her eyes as a blaring screech hit her.

It took her drained mind a moment to recognise that it was a flatlining heart monitor.

Her hand shot up to her chest and she hissed as Dr Whale's voice came to her from the other world, the real world:

"Charge to 200, clear!"

She gasped at the jolt and clutched her chest harder, unsure exactly what was going on. This was not how sleeping curses worked!

At least it wasn't how they worked in the Enchanted Forest.

"Charge again!"

"But doctor…"

"Do you want to tell Henry that we didn't try everything? Charge again…clear!"

Regina hissed again between a rush of gratitude for Whale's perseverance and this time the flash of light cleared into an actual place.

The scent that her mother thought foul, the cool breeze that once filled her with a sense of freedom that she'd never really achieved, the neighing of her favourite creatures in all the realms.

Now slumped on her knees, she cracked her spotting eyes open and a rush of guilt rushed over her as Rocinante stared back at her.

Swallowing hard, she was about to stand to touch his mane but halted as an ocean of guilt enveloped her in response to a voice:

"Regina?"

The former queen slowly rose and swivelled to the source of the voice, the sight of him doing little to make her believe that this was real.

She was transported back to that day before everything fell apart.

When she was sure that she would marry the stable boy and get her happy ending when she was a young girl incapable of so much as malice, let alone evil.

Her first love was smiling at her as if she had never done anything wrong.

"Daniel," Regina breathed, allowing herself to be pulled into a tight hug that felt so tangible, enough that she stepped back and asked, "Does this mean…am I dead?"

Daniel pushed a strand of hair out of her face, his eyes flashing briefly with curiosity that Regina was certain was a response to her pants suit. Despite this, she was beyond grateful that he wasn't looking at some of her more majestic garbs.

"No, you're not dead, there is still time for your True Love to wake you up," Daniel replied, a strange acceptance in his tone that had a lump form in Regina's throat.

How was it fair that someone so good should have to suffer as a stepping stone to her actual True Love? Was that something that she could live with?

"Perhaps I was wrong about Emma? This was all supposed to bring us back together?" she asked, though the suggestion did little to assuage her rampant guilt.

"Do you really believe that?" Daniel asked and Regina swallowed hard.

She could feel how desperately she had pleaded with her mother not to hurt him, how utterly broken she had been for years after that day.

The devastation that made her feel as though her only choice was to curse an entire realm so that they could feel some semblance of the pain that she had experienced.

After all of that, how could she stare at him and not feel as though this was the point of all that had happened?

As much as she loved him, she was looking at a teenage stable boy from her past, one who deserved so much more than the Evil Queen.

But then the question arose, did the saviour deserve more as well? What about their children?

With a heavy sigh, she said, "No, I don't," and looked down to the stable floor until a finger under her chin forced her face up.

Daniel's features held no ill feelings, was he happy for her?

"Congratulations are in order, I gather? For both of your children?"

More guilt crashed down on Regina, how was it that he was so at peace with her potentially being with another?

With a sniff, Regina said, "I may never meet one of them."

"You have no faith in Emma?" Daniel asked.

"When I bit the apple I did but….should I not already be awake if I was correct? What if I was wrong about everything?"

"Love is about faith, is it not?" Daniel retorted.

"Faith that she clearly does not have," Regina grumbled, crossing her arms and looking around the horses as if it would help with the sheer overwhelming feelings surrounding her.

"Perhaps she is giving you a chance to spend time with me first? You could be grateful for that?" Daniel suggested, forcing her to look back at him.

"If I never see my son again, gratitude will be difficult," Regina admitted.

Daniel tilted his head and Regina had to assume that he was comparing her to the young woman he was going to marry. Was he disappointed?

This anxiety was dashed as he moved around her to open the stable door to lead the black steed out and she, at last, laid her hand onto Rocinante. The horse was as relaxed as ever under her touch.

"While we have time, perhaps we could ride for a while. For old time's sake?" he asked.

Regina stared longingly at the horse and then back to Daniel, to a much simpler time.

"Is this real?" she replied.

Daniel shrugged, "Do you want this to be real?"

Regina took in a deep breath and replied, "I don't like the possibility that you have been trapped here for decades."

"I haven't," he assured, "I went somewhere…better. I just didn't want you to wait alone."

"The sleeping curse is supposed to be torture," Regina said doubtfully, "This doesn't feel like torture."

"Maybe being away from your family is torture enough?" he posited, "Or it could be that the universe has decided that you do not deserve it?"

"If you knew what the Evil Queen has done, you wouldn't say that," Regina scoffed, praying that he wouldn't ask for details. She wasn't sure that she could handle the shame.

Daniel was unaffected, however, "And yet, the saviour is your True Love. It would seem to me that things are turning around for you."

Regina gripped Rocinante tight as if the steed could give her the balance required to ask the question that had lingered over their entire interaction, "And you would be okay with…things turning around with someone else?"

"I can't be with you," Daniel replied, with finality that Regina found herself to be envious of, "Of course, I am okay with your chance to be happy, it is all I have ever wanted for you."

The latest wave of guilt was the most intense yet and it forced Regina to back away from the horse as she said, "I'm so sorry."

Daniel weaved around to bring her into another hug as he replied, "It wasn't your fault."

"It was…if you had never met me…" Regina argued.

"I wouldn't change a thing," Daniel replied and released her, "Now, how about we ride the horse and stop trying to figure out what the universe wants?"

Regina wiped a tear away and proceeded towards the horse where she allowed her first love to take her hand and unnecessarily help her up into the saddle.

S

The proceeding two weeks after her vow to stay for as long as Henry needed her were the slowest of Emma's life. Regina coded twice more in that time and they were now officially twenty-four hours away from the deadline.

This time tomorrow, if it happened then Whale would not be allowed to do anything other than turning off the heart monitor to make sure that it wouldn't scare Henry who was getting harder to pull out of the room each time it happened.

It had been twelve hours since the boy had said a word to anyone other than Regina, who he switched between assuring that everything would be okay and reading to her, his grip on the storybook getting tighter and tighter as time went on.

He hadn't said a word to Emma since his pleas to get her to believe only turned into shouting and desperate tears that she was not able to ease. It wasn't as if she could just choose to believe that she was born in another realm and that the reason that she had grown up alone was because Snow White and Prince Charming had to protect her from a curse.

It was an off-hand comment about pregnancy and stress from Doctor Whale that gave her the excuse that she needed to leave the room for something other than food, her first scan was already overdue and it wasn't as if she could fit it into whatever her schedule would look like after Regina's advanced directive expired.

Henry was just in the middle of reading the story of how Jiminy Cricket went from a con man to a cricket when she pushed the chair back and tried not to grimace at the twinge in her back which was not a great sign of things to come with this pregnancy.

"I've got to go to my appointment, kid," she said, breaking the unspoken pact not to talk until she miraculously believed, "Just stay here, I'll be back soon."

Henry nodded, mutely upholding his end of their 'pact' and Emma put great effort into not rolling his eyes. How could she do that to a boy who was literally sitting beside his mother's hospital bed?

"Just…call me if you need anything, okay?"

He nodded again and just continued reading like it had done anything to help up until now. She didn't see much point in telling him that there was very little evidence for his storybook theory, it wasn't as though he had anything else to hold onto right now.

As she left the room, she allowed her mind to drift to worrying about her second child. She may not know anything about them, but now that she was fairly certain that she was going to be keeping them, her affection for them was inescapable.

Whale was annoyingly right about her levels of stress, she hadn't exactly been exercising much in the last four weeks and her diet wasn't the greatest, what if all of this did something to the growing fetus?

She got to the appointment exactly on time and was called into the clinic that had to only be for her now that Ashley had given birth. Was it strange that she was the only pregnant person in this town?

The odd thought like that would pop into her head increasingly, there were so many things in Storybrooke that were dissonant with reality, but she wasn't supposed to be allowing stress in right now so she actively ignored it.

"Hello, sheriff, I hope everything is okay?" Whale greeted, distractedly reading through her chart.

"You know how everything is, Whale," Emma replied as she hopped up onto the exam table.

Whale dropped the chart, clearly embarrassed, "Yes, of course, we could start with how you are feeling…"

"I'll talk to Archie about it," Emma cut him off, expecting that even he knew that was a lie.

"I meant more…physically," Whale replied, "As I mentioned, stress or anxiety can have quite the negative impact on a pregnancy."

"I've had some nausea, but it's nothing that I didn't have with Henry," Emma replied.

"And have you been sleeping?" he replied, plucking up the chart so that he could begin writing and Emma felt a swell of irritation that she had to disregard as she reminded herself that he was doing this to make sure that her child was okay.

"As much as I can, the nurses got me that cot, that's helped," she said.

Whale hummed, apparently sensing her irritation as he placed the chart down and asked, "How about we do the scan and check everything that way?"

"Sure," Emma said, settling backwards and lifting her shirt in preparation for the jelly which he warned her would be cold.

Her knuckles turned white around the edges of the exam table as she waited for the wand to pick up the most comforting sound that it could have in these circumstances, a heartbeat.

She looked at the doctor, begging him to tell her exactly what the squiggly lines on the monitor meant.

Whale inspected it for a few more seconds before he cracked the smile that Emma was hoping for, "All looks good, strong heartbeat…Were you interested in knowing the sex?" he asked, continuing to check the ultrasound and apparently not finding any issues.

Emma ran her tongue over her lips.

Even with her slowly growing stomach, there had been some part of her that somehow believed that this was something other than a baby. Despite feeling patently pregnant, she knew well that she hadn't slept with a man recently enough for it to be possible, so it simply had to be something else.

She had never heard of any other medical condition that had their own heartbeats, so the simplest answer had to be the truth even if it didn't make complete sense to her.

"Uh, sure, what is it?" she asked cautiously.

"You are having a baby girl," Whale said brightly as he removed the ultrasound wand and handed her a paper towel to wipe away the jelly.

She did this promptly, pulling her shirt down so that she could sit up and stare at the monitor on which he had frozen the vague lines that would become a fully-fledged human. Somehow, she was more acutely aware of this than she was the last time around, maybe it was because she had met Henry since she had seen his ultrasound?

That was all the proof that she needed that this was going to become someone who would need her for everything and, by all indications, there wasn't going to be anyone around to help her with those demands.

It wasn't helped by the images that her mind conjured, a little girl with blonde hair, brown eyes and olive complexion, one that she loved instantly even with no idea whether she would actually look like that.

After swallowing, she wiped at her cheeks, grateful to find that there were not actually any tears there, and she replied, "Thank you, Whale."

"No problem," the doctor replied, "But I would suggest that you consider making some changes if you want everything to stay fine?'

"I'll try my best," Emma promised, knowing that there was no point telling him that she didn't see how that could happen if tomorrow held what she suspected it would.

Unfortunately, her promise was followed by an involuntary sniff that caught Whale's attention while he was in the process of printing off the ultrasound.

"I know that this must be so difficult with everything else going on, but this is a good thing, try to remember that?" he urged.

Emma scratched the back of her neck, the doctor must have thought he was right but she hadn't really explained to him just how complicated everything was. What would she do six months from now when she gave birth to a girl who she was seriously considering could be a mix between her and another woman who was unlikely to be alive by then?

This reminded her of the test samples that she had submitted a couple weeks ago and had been following up on every day.

"Have you got my other results yet?" she asked.

"Yes, of course," Whale replied and a rush of relief flowed through Emma as he reached into his lab coat and pulled out a sealed envelope, "Sorry it took so long, Storybrooke is ill-equipped for that type of test as I'm sure you can appreciate."

Emma took it from him and made to tear it open but hesitated, she wanted nothing more than for this to confirm what she knew to be impossible so that she could readjust her thinking to focus on what was really important here.

Helping Henry when the inevitable happened.

Ultimately, she figured that it was best not to have an audience for this encase he asked any questions, so she jumped off the exam table and hugged the envelope close to her chest and said, "Thanks, Whale, for…everything. I should really get back to Henry though."

"Sure," Whale replied, "I'll be around to check on Mayor Mills in a little while."

"Okay," Emma said, smiling with real appreciation, but this dropped the moment that she got back into the hallway and she ripped viciously through the sealed paper as she marched down the hallway. She didn't stop until the second time she read through the test's findings.

'Dear Ms Swan, I am writing to confirm that the DNA sample shows that it is highly likely that the sample supplied is from the paternal parent…'

There was more information below, but it was only the first sentence that mattered.

A few objections came to her instantaneously. Would they have not noticed that the sample came from a woman? She didn't know enough about DNA to know the answer to that question.

Could Regina have set this up before she fell into the coma? Did the mayor know her well enough to guess what she would be doing two weeks after she passed out?

Did a ten-year-old boy have the resources to bribe a lab out of state to rig a test that she hadn't even told him about?

Ultimately, she could feel that she was just denying the truth right now. Something had broken in her as she read the scientific confirmation of what Regina had claimed all along, but if she was right about that, then that had to mean that everything that Henry was right about the curse, didn't it?

As she stuffed the letter into her pocket, she realised that she had reached Regina's room and that urge to run bubbled within her. It wasn't too late to forget about this place, was it?

Independently of this thought, her hand moved to open the door and she entered the room to hear that Henry must have finished his story.

He was speaking to her without any awareness that Emma could hear him, "I'm so proud of you mom, deciding to break the curse couldn't have been easy. I was so sure that you would get through this but…There isn't much time and Emma is stubborn. I just…I'm really going to miss you and I'm sorry I called you evil. You're not evil, you're my mom."

He stopped short in response to her entering the room and he looked over his shoulder at her, speaking to her for the first time in twelve hours, "Is the baby okay?"

She had to assume that it was so she wouldn't mention what he had just said, he'd made it clear that he didn't do well with her pity when she was 'refusing to believe'.

"Yeah…" Emma said absently and Henry furrowed his brow as she stared blankly at Regina. Never before had the images of their daughter in her head been clearer and Emma had finally decided that she wanted all of this, that she wanted Regina Mills to meet their second child.

For that to happen, she had to stop overthinking.

"Are you sure everything is okay?" Henry asked, his voice tinged with worry that he certainly couldn't take at this point.

"I…yeah…" she replied, his tone reminding her that it wasn't just her and Henry in this room, "I…do you think that I could get a minute alone with your mom?"

Henry frowned more deeply, looking between them.

There was a part of Emma that wanted to just kiss Regina, but she could feel that it wouldn't work with Henry present. Perhaps it was picturing how he would react if it didn't work this close to their deadline?

Henry took a second, during which she was sure that he was going to tell her that he wouldn't be leaving, but he promptly perked up as he examined her face more closely and left his seat, taking the money that she had unconsciously pulled out to hand to him.

Whatever hope she had given him seemed to have returned his appetite.

Emma ran her hand over her face as she waited for the door to close behind her and she pulled out the letter again as she went to take Henry's seat. She read it a few more times with her leg bouncing, confirming that she wasn't misunderstanding what they meant.

Clerical error was another objection that occurred to her but it also didn't last long as she dropped the letter and looked upwards. Even after the multiple codes, Regina visibly looked the same as she had for the last months if a little paler from not being outside at all.

If it wasn't for the intubation, Emma wouldn't have believed that she was about to die.

The last vestiges of her doubt were overwritten by the hissing from beside her and she turned to see that Henry had forgotten to take his precious book with him. She reached for it, intending to just open it to the page with the Evil Queen interrupting the wedding; she could compare it to the woman in front of her, though she had no idea what she intended to achieve with that venture.

Instead, when she picked it up, whatever was left of her resistance snapped and images flooded through her mind.

She saw Snow White and Prince Charming beaming down at her until they were surrounded by a black cloud. The prince slicing down black knights, sustaining an injury but doing everything in his power to get to the wardrobe into which he placed the bundle.

The bundle was lovingly wrapped in the baby blanket that she had been travelling with for her entire life.

The plastic chair fell out from behind her as she jumped to her feet, dropping the book and the letter as she stared at Regina with wide eyes.

No, not just Regina, she was staring at Queen Regina, the woman who had cast the curse that had split her up from her family to get revenge on Snow White.

The woman who had risked everything she had so that she could be reunited with her family so that they could have a family together because she believed so strongly that they were meant to be together.

The two truths warred in Emma's mind until she touched her swollen stomach and was certain of what she had to do for the first time in her entire life.

"Please don't let it be too late," she muttered and dropped a kiss onto Regina's forehead, at last truly believing everything she had ever told her.

She may not be able to say that she loved the woman, but she accepted beyond any doubt that she was meant to and she had to hope that would be enough.

As her lips touched Regina's forehead, a bright light burst outwards, proving to her that she had been wrong all along.

She had never been so grateful for this as she straightened to find Regina's eyes opening.