I don't really know how this happened, but I hope you enjoy it.

Please review — it fuels my muse.

The usual disclaimer: I own nothing but my words, blah blah blah.

"What are we doing here, anyway?" Emma grumbled, as she clomped down the stairs of Regina's vault. She had not been impressed when her wife had woken her at 5am, insisting that she needed to go to the mausoleum at that very moment. Emma had been tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, leaving the brunette to venture out alone — but she knew the guilt (and probably Regina's irritation) would eat her alive come morning.

Unlike her blonde companion, Regina descended the stairs quickly and with graceful aplomb. "As I said, I need to find something."

Emma rolled her eyes. "Really? At 5am? What's so important that it couldn't even wait until the damn sun came up?" She whined.

"Something that you are going to thank me for when I find it," Regina murmured as she turned in a full circle at the base of stairway. She then headed for the large chest in the corner of the room and began to rifle through its contents.

Emma stood on the bottom step, arms crossed, her foot tapping out a soft staccato on the concrete floor. "I'll believe that when I see whatever this thing is that's costing me valuable sleep," she groused, frowning.

Regina snorted, as she moved on to a large box that sat alongside the chest. "It's Saturday. You and I both know you wouldn't surface before 11, whether I'd woken you up or not."

"Yeah, well, guess what? When I get back to sleep, I won't surface before the afternoon," Emma mumbled, her frown deepening.

"Whatever you say, dear," the brunette sighed. "It's not here; I may have put it with some of mother's things." Regina headed for the doorway that would take her to the other rooms. She paused and turned back to her wife on the way out. "Can I leave you unsupervised?" She smirked.

Emma smirked right back. "Well, that really depends on how bored I get. But yes, I remember her majesty's rule: 'don't touch anything'," she said, imitating the other woman with remarkable precision.

Regina raised her eyebrows. "And they say you can't teach a Charming."

"Lucky for you I'm a Swan-Mills, lady," the blonde grinned.

"Indeed you are," Regina chuckled and disappeared through the doorway.

Emma wandered around the room aimlessly for a few minutes, until her gaze fell on a small, ornately carved wooden cupboard. She hadn't noticed it the last time she had been here, but it drew her interest now. She kneeled before it and ran her fingertips over the intricate patterns etched into its doors. When she eased those doors open, Emma saw that there two shelves inside, each containing several small spray bottles. They were almost like the ones she had seen hairdressers use at salons, only these were made of glass and were different shapes and colours. She pulled out a bottle shaped like an hour glass, dark red with a small handwritten label, and squinted as she attempted to read it in the dimly lit room. "Ad Volatum? What the hell does that mean?" Emma raised the bottle to her nose and sniffed it. Okay, if it was meant to be perfume, it wasn't great. She opened her other hand, squeezed the trigger over it, and watched as tiny, cool droplets landed softly on her palm.

Regina's hand closed around a soft shawl that was wrapped around something. She pulled it out from the bottom of the case she had been digging through and laid it out carefully on the ground. She unwrapped the shawl and gasped, her lips curving into a gleeful smile. "Yes!" she whispered and clapped her hands together. "Emma!" she called out. Regina traced her prize with gentle fingertips. "Emma!" she called again. "I found it!" Still no response. She frowned and climbed to her feet, cradling her find in her arms. "Emma," she said as she hurried into the other room, and then stopped abruptly. Her wife was nowhere to be seen. The brunette's frown deepened. "Emma? Where are you?" A rustling sound came from somewhere above Regina's head and she turned her gaze upward. Flattened against the ceiling, cheeks pink and expression sheepish, was Emma.

The blonde waved. "Hey… What's up?"

"You, clearly," Regina sighed. "Do I even want to know how this happened?"

Emma coughed and cleared her throat. "Maybe not… Yeah, definitely not."

The grounded woman huffed. "What did you do?"

"Well, I was just admiring that cupboard over there and-"

Regina whipped around to see what her wife was pointing at, then closed her eyes and took three slow, deep breaths. "My mother's potions cupboard? You used her potions?" she snapped.

"Just the one," Emma grimaced.

"What was the one thing I asked you to do?"

"Uh… To get out of bed at 5am and come here with you?"

"The other thing!" Regina growled.

Emma winced and mumbled, "To not touch anything."

"So naturally, you interpreted that as 'help myself to the most volatile magic in the room'." The brunette rolled her eyes. "I should leave you here to find your own way out of this. At least then you might learn something."

"Come on, Regina, please help me. I promise I won't touch anything in your vault again. Ever," Emma begged.

"Ha!" Regina huffed. "And I should believe you this time why exactly?"

"Because I know I messed up and this is kinda uncomfortable, okay?! Please get me down?"

Regina raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

"Please? If you do, I'll do that thing you like when we get home." Emma wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and grinned.

Her wife smirked. "Well, in that case…" she flicked her wrist and Emma came crashing down from the ceiling; she stopped barely two inches from the ground and let out a ragged breath of relief.

Regina rolled her eyes as she watched Emma get to her feet. This powerful woman with untamed blonde locks had a habit of getting herself into the most ridiculous situations, but damn if it wasn't somehow endearing, as well as entertaining. "Come here," she sighed and opened her arms to the taller woman.

Emma grinned and almost threw herself at the other woman in her haste. "So you still love me, then?"

Regina laughed. "Such an idiot."

"Yours."

"Completely."

They held each other quietly for several minutes and breathed in one another's scent, reveling in the stillness of the moment. And then warm lips sought jaw lines and ear lobes and clavicles; fingertips pressed into hips, and breasts and stomachs drew together. Soft, barely there kisses became hungry and deep, fueled by a desperate desire to be as close as possible — to inhale and devour and merge.

Regina's hands reached up to take the lapels of Emma's jacket and she slid it down the blonde's arms as they continued to kiss, before dropping it onto the floor. One hand found its way into golden curls, as the other slipped beneath the hem of her wife's tank top.

Emma pulled back, breathless. "Suddenly I can't remember why we even came here," she murmured and grinned.

"But I can," Regina said with a smile. She untangled herself from Emma's embrace and walked over to the discarded scarf. She picked it up and carefully unwrapped it once more, revealing a beautifully engraved silver chalice.

"Am I supposed to know why you're smiling about a cup?" Emma frowned.

Regina stepped back into the other woman's space and held it between them. "Dear, you should know better than to assume that it's a mere cup. This chalice holds a particular power that the two of us combined could not achieve without it."

"What kind of power are we talking about here?"

"In the enchanted forest, it was said that if a couple were to combine a drop of their blood in this chalice, it would create magic that could create life. It would overpower any inability to conceive," Regina said, as she turned the cup over in her hands.

Emma frowned again. "But Regina," she said gently, a hand now covering her wife's over the chalice. "Our situation? It's not exactly an inability to conceive. I mean, it is. But it's because of biology, not… infertility."

"It would overpower any inability to conceive, Emma. Any," Regina whispered, staring into sea-green eyes.

Emma swallowed. "Really?"

Regina nodded, as the corners of her mouth climbed upward at the hope shining in her wife's eyes. "Really."

Emma grinned and grabbed the brunette roughly by the waist. She pulled the woman to her and kissed her deeply. "Then let's make a baby."

They gravitated to the room behind the mirror, filled with elaborate gowns and an apple tree. Regina half filled the chalice with one of her bottles of home made cider, then placed the silver cup and a small pin on a small table nearby. She pulled Emma to her and buried her face in the woman's neck, breathing in cinnamon and cloves and citrus. When she planted warm kisses on that smooth expanse of skin, she felt more than heard the quiet hum in her wife's throat. Her stomach tingled when Emma's fingertips curled beneath her shirt and grazed her flesh. Her lips found Emma's once more and they kissed with a hunger that swallowed them whole.

Shirts were lifted overhead by warm fingers, pants and underwear discarded in haste. When they found themselves bare-skinned on the soft carpet, everything slowed down. Eyes of dark brown and gold and every shade in between gazed into sea-green that shone with love, always with love. The days of veiled threats shaped like apple baskets, and chainsaws, and fighting, fighting, fighting, were a distant memory.

"I love you, Regina," Emma murmured as her fingertips skimmed Regina's waist.

The brunette's hand found her wife's cheek. "I love you too," she whispered. "And I want nothing more than to have your baby."

Emma raised herself up on one elbow and reached for the chalice and the pin. "I still can't believe this is actually possible." She sat up and took Regina's hand in her own, held it to her lips and kissed the woman's fingers. "I'm sorry if this hurts," she said, as she pressed the pin into the tip of Regina's finger. When a drop of blood appeared, she withdrew the pin and placed it in Regina's other hand.

The brunette sat up, took her wife's hand and wiped off the pin, then pricked the tip of one slender finger. She placed the pin back on the table and picked up the chalice, holding it between herself and the blonde. "To a beautiful sibling for our beautiful son." They both held their pricked fingers over the silver cup and watched the red droplets fall from each. They swirled together in the cider, until the liquid took on a lilac hue. Then Regina put the chalice on the floor, just far enough away to avoid knocking it over.

Emma threw her leg over an olive thigh and pulled herself onto her wife. She kissed the woman's shoulders and throat and jaw and lips. She inhaled apples and jasmine and lavender, the scent that she would always equate with home. When the brunette raised a thigh between her own and pressed it to her heated core, she sat up and lowered herself onto it. She gasped as hands found her hips and pulled her back and forth over flesh that was already slick with her wetness.

Regina moaned when Emma fell forward over her once more, and took a hardened nipple into her mouth. She arched up into the sensation of the blonde's tongue swirling over her breast. She felt arousal pooling between her legs at the feel of her wife's wetness on her skin. She gasped when slender fingers, strong and warm, moved down her stomach, over a trimmed thatch of hair. Her hips bucked when those fingers slid down between glistening folds and further still, into wet heat. "Emma," she moaned, as a thumb slid over her clit.

The blonde's spare hand wound itself into dark, shiny locks as her hips moved in time with her wife's, her clit hitting the patch of skin where thigh meets body on every downward stroke, as the brunette rose up onto her fingers, dancing and whirling on their tips. She could feel the woman beginning to clench and knew they were both close.

Regina lifted her hand from Emma's hip and reached for the chalice. She held it as she gazed at the woman moving atop her and inside her.

Emma nodded at her. "Drink it," she gasped. "Drink it and come for me." She pressed down on the brunette's clit again.

Regina moaned and lifted the cup to her lips. She took the liquid into her mouth and swallowed as her wife's fingers curled over the soft, ribbed skin deep within her. The chalice fell from her hand as she cried out, back arching and stiffening. She felt Emma clenching on her thigh, spine locked, until she fell against the brunette. They rocked through the aftershocks together, breasts on breasts, stomachs undulating and skin coated with one another's arousal.

Exhaustion claimed them and they curled up together, still and warm. Emma rubbed small circles on Regina's back, her lips pressed to the skin at her wife's hairline. "I can't believe we might have just made a person together," she said softly, grinning. She felt Regina's lips curve upward against the side of her breast.

"I wonder if our child will have your penchant for bear claws," she smirked.

Emma laughed. "Totally will — can't fight genetics. Kid doesn't stand a chance."

SQSQSQSQSQSQSQ

When Emma crawled into bed after her late shift, her eyes were already half closed. She curled up behind her sleeping wife, wrapped an arm around her, and nuzzled into the back of her neck. And then she heard it – the sound she hated above all others for the way it made her heart clench: a sniffle. She frowned and gently turned Regina over. The woman's eyes shone brightly in the darkened room and her bottom lip trembled ever so slightly. Emma smoothed the hair back from her face and kissed her dampened cheek. "What is it?" She whispered.

Regina looked up at her and swallowed. "I'm not…"

Emma waited for an answer that didn't come. "Not what?" she gently pressed.

The brunette sighed as another tear slipped down her cheek. She looked away. "Pregnant. I'm not pregnant. I'm sorry." She dissolved into quiet sobs and turned back over.

"What do you mean?" Emma asked, her eyebrows pulled low over the bridge of her nose, even as she tugged at her wife's shoulder to turn the woman toward her once more.

"I mean, I did a test today. And I'm not – we're not – having a baby." Regina bit her lip and reached for the blonde, as the ache in her chest intensified.

Emma wrapped her arms tightly around Regina and pressed her lips to the woman's ear. "First of all, please don't apologise for that," she whispered. "We did everything right, so if it doesn't happen then maybe it's just not meant to, and we'll make our peace with that. We have each other and we have Henry — we're already rich in all the ways that count, Regina. Secondly, it's been exactly four days since you drank from the chalice. No pregnancy test will pick anything up that early, so unless you got the unwanted visitor… Did you? Get your period, I mean?"

Regina pulled back to look her wife in the eyes. "No," she said slowly.

The blonde smiled softly. "Then we don't know anything yet."

The brunette frowned, even as her lips curved upward. "I suppose we don't," she murmured, as though the notion was entirely foreign to her.

"Did you really think four days was long enough to wait to take a test?" Emma laughed.

Regina shoved her shoulder. "Shut up, dear. I thought modern medicine was meant to be fast and efficient," she grumbled.

"Seriously?" Emma laughed harder. "Did you even read the box? Seven days at the earliest, babe. Ten is better."

Regina scowled at her wife until the laughter bubbled up in her throat and she could no longer contain it. "Fine, I didn't read it. I figured it was as simple as 'open packaging, urinate on stick'."

They laughed until they were breathless and then snuggled up under the warm quilt together. Emma curled her body around Regina's and rested her forehead at the base of the other woman's neck. She grinned against warm skin. "You're kind of adorable," she murmured, eyes already closed.

Regina pulled Emma's arm more tightly around her. "I know," she smirked.

"Promise me we'll take the test together — in another five days?" the blonde yawned.

Regina nodded. "I'm sorry I did it without you." She squeezed her wife's hand.

Emma squeezed back. "It's okay, I just wanna be there for the next one."

"Together. I promise."

SQSQSQSQSQSQSQ

Emma sipped her coffee, eyebrows raised, as the sound of heels tapping much too quickly down the stairs filled her ears. Seconds later, a dark-haired blur flew into the kitchen, breathless. "Slow down," the blonde laughed.

"Emma, I'm late — two days late. And it's been five. It's time," the Regina-shaped whirlwind gasped.

Emma got up and placed her hands on her wife's shoulders. "Okay, but let's just take a deep breath and calm ourselves first, 'kay?"

"Okay." Regina nodded and took two slow breaths. "Now."

Emma shook her head and followed the woman upstairs to the bathroom. She waited outside the door as Regina took the test and then brought it with her into the bedroom. They sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the stick in silence.

"This is ridiculous," Regina huffed suddenly. "How can a person be expected to wait so long for two simple pink lines?"

Emma smirked. "It's two minutes; I promise we'll make it to the other side."

The brunette rolled her eyes and huffed again.

Finally, the seemingly eternal two minutes passed and Regina held the stick out to her wife. "I can't look, you do it."

Emma took the stick, stared at it and swallowed. She closed her eyes, counted to three and then turned it over in her palm. She cried out and then began to laugh.

Regina raised her eyebrows. "What? Tell me, Emma!"

The blonde shook her head wordlessly and held out the stick. Her wife snatched it from her hand, promptly gasped and dropped it to the floor. Tears were already falling when her gaze connected with Emma's. "It's-"

"I know."

"We're-"

"I know. Get over here," Emma whispered, as she reached for her beloved.

Regina launched herself into her wife's arms and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. "We're having a baby," she gasped. In Emma's sea-green eyes her smile was reflected — a smile as wide and bright as the ocean.

A/N: I've decided that this will be a multi-chapter fic (if there is enough interest) that follows the Swan-Mills family through the pregnancy. There will be 9 more chapters, one for each month.