This is for Swan Queen Week Winter 2015 day 2 Roommate AU, enjoy.

Emma pulled up to her dorm and just stared at it. She wasn't quite sure this was real. She was at Yale. Yale. Of all fucking places. Eighteen years ago she was abandoned on the side of the road and here she was at an Ivy League university. In four years she would have her degree in psychology and then her parents, wherever they were, could suck it. She would show them. She had already showed them.

She slammed the door of the Bug shut. The only problem here was she had accepted a little late and in the haze of trying to work out everything with her financial aid she had overlooked the stupid roommate selection form or whatever. She wasn't exactly sure what the form was supposed to do since it asked questions like "How messy are you?" and who exactly was going to tell the truth on questions like that, but she was a little nervous about it. She didn't want someone who partied constantly but she didn't want someone with a stick up their ass and she certainly didn't want someone who woke up at the ass crack of dawn. Except that she had voided her one and only chance to even have a little input on that. She wasn't convinced that the university really super cared what was on the forms anyway. If she had needed to go be placed in a room with someone she wouldn't have matched with it would have happened whether she filled out the form or not.

She grabbed her backpack and one of the few bags she had of clothes out and walked into the building. The check in process was chaotic. There were other freshman literally everywhere and their parents were even worse. Emma did her best to avoid them, filled out the forms for her keys as fast as possible, took the room condition form, and fled up to the third floor where she'd be living. Part of her hoped that her roommate wouldn't already be there and part of her hoped she would. She wanted to pick her side of the room but she also didn't want to send the wrong message by picking the side that her roommate wanted. She wanted as little drama as possible, really.

She climbed the stairs quickly. The elevator was no better than a mosh pit at the moment. It was sort of a good thing at this point that she had very little stuff. She walked down the long hall, counting off numbers looking for 308. When she found it the door was already open and there was sound of movement coming from within. Emma stepped in and knocked on the door. A brunette with light bronze skin looked up at her, surveying her intently.

"Hi, I'm Emma Swan," Emma stepped forward with her hand outstretched. "It looks like I'm your roommate for the year."

The brunette's lip twitched up just barely as she reached out and shook Emma's hand firmly. "Regina Mills, pleasure."

Emma wasn't exactly sure what the whole cold attitude was about, but whatever. She stepped towards the side without all of Regina's stuff on it and plopped her bags down.

"So where are you from?" Emma asked. She started to open her bag of clothes and unpack them with practiced movements. If nothing else moving in and out of foster homes and group homes had taught her how to settle into a place quickly enough.

"Maine." Regina offered nothing else, but went right back to unpacking.

"Oh, cool, I lived up there when I was kid. But right before this I lived just outside Boston. It's cool there."

"How quaint."

Emma looked over again at the girl. Fine, if she wanted to be a cold bitch, let her. She unpacked her fist bag quickly and threw the stuff in her backpack into her desk before setting the bag in the bottom of the closet and going out to the Bug for more.

Three loads and she had everything unloaded and she was glad. She stared at the bags in her room for a few seconds before deciding to move the Bug. She had gotten permission from the university to keep it on campus even though she was a freshman since she was an independent student with no family to speak of, but that didn't mean it needed to be right in the middle of the chaos that was move in day for any longer than need be.

By the time she was back in her room what looked like Regina's parents were in the room. The older woman, her mother, Emma bet, was berating Regina for not being done unpacking yet. The man just stood back and looked like a kicked puppy. Emma slipped to her side of the room and started to unpack again. She knew from experience that if she tried to interfere it would only come back to bite Regina.

Her parents left in a huff not long after. Her mother didn't even say goodbye to Regina, but her father hugged her and told her he loved her and was proud of her before her mother yelled in the hallway for him to come on. Emma cringed. That might just explain why the hell Regina had been a super bitch earlier.

Regina, for her part, now that her mother was gone, kept unpacking calmly. Emma read her posture though, and it was anything but calm. She wanted to do something to make the girl feel better, but she didn't really know Regina and most of the things she could think of were things she used to comfort smaller kids back in foster homes. Those things probably wouldn't go over so well.

Emma frowned for a minute before digging in one of her bags and pulling out a huge tub of Red Vines. It was the one splurge she had allowed herself while shopping for school supplies. The thing would last her forever through a bunch of late nights studying so she didn't really feel too bad about it. She ripped the top off and took one and bit off a piece. She really fucking loved Red Vines.

"Want one?" Emma offered the tub to Regina.

Regina looked at her for a long moment, eyes unreadable before she reached out and took one. She peeled off one of the strings and ate it slowly. A smile appeared on her face after she finished chewing, but only for a moment. Emma smiled at her before going back to unpacking again.

"So," she said after a long while. "What are you majoring in?"

Regina hesitated again, Emma saw her face twist out of the corner of her eye. It was clear she couldn't quite decide to snap at her again or be at least a little nicer.

"Poly Sci and astronomy," Regina said eventually in a civil, if not warm tone.

Emma smiled at the improvement. "I'm a psych major. But really? Poly Sci and astronomy? Why that combination? What are you gonna do with those two things?"

Regina stiffened just a little bit. "Astronomy is just for my own enjoyment, really, and only as long as it doesn't interfere with my political science studies." She sounded as if she was reciting something that had been said to her a thousand times.

Emma bit the side of her mouth for half a second. "Your mom wants you to be a lawyer, doesn't she? And you'd rather be an astronomer."

Regina didn't look at her for a long time after that. She unpacked slowly and steadily, back ramrod straight. Emma hoped she hadn't fucked up the little bit of goodwill that the Red Vine had brought her. She had a feeling that she probably shouldn't ever mention Regina's mother, but what was the point in that? It was like not mentioning the elephant in the tiny little dorm room.

Maybe in return she should offer some secret of hers. But she really didn't want to do that. Here she could be anything she wanted and the last thing she wanted was to be the poor little foster kid again. But sooner or later family would come up and Emma didn't really want to lie either. She did live in break housing for a reason. If anything the fact that she wasn't going home for winter break might just give it away.

"My foster parents kicked me out as soon as I turned eighteen. I was still three months from finishing high school. Needless to say, they don't exactly care what I major in, they only cared about the monthly checks I brought in."

They were silent again. Emma went to putting up the posters she had bought just to liven up the room a bit, fairytale posters, but not the cutesie Disney ones, they were artistic renditions of the Grimm stories. Some were a bit morbid if you looked closely at them, but they were all beautiful so you almost didn't notice it. When she sat back on her heels on her still unmade bed she smiled. Put her books on her desk, make her bed, and she'd be done.

"How did you end up here, then?" Regina asked quietly.

"I always did well in school, even with all the switching around. School was the one place I could get away, you know? As I got older I realized that doing well could be my ticket out, too, so I kept it up. Senior year rolled around and I applied to all the state schools, of course, and then a bunch of schools that had really good reputations for financial aid, last, honestly, was schools with super good psych programs and ivy leagues just because I could. I had all the application fees waved since I was a foster kid, might as well." Emma flopped down off her heels onto her butt on the bed. She crisscrossed her legs and leaned her elbows on them. Might as well get comfortable.

"Then I got kicked out, and that was the address I'd given for all my applications. One of my foster brothers brought me my mail when he could, but he had to sneak it past the parents, because they said I'd never get any of it. I ended up getting the Yale acceptance letter three weeks later. When I saw it was a big envelope I almost flipped shit. I couldn't believe I'd gotten in. But it was three weeks later, you know? I didn't think they'd still have a place for me. I called them and explained everything that had happened. I was couch surfing between friends, staying in a shelter when I couldn't find anywhere else, still going to school every day, but I managed to work out everything with the financial aid office here and suddenly I was actually going to an Ivy League school. I really didn't believe it. It's still kind of not real and I'm sitting here. And I hope those fucks who threw me out regret it. They won't, but I hope someday, just maybe they'll realize that they're horrible people."

Regina put the last of her bags in her closet, neatly nestled inside one another. "So the psych major, you want to help children who were like you?"

Emma hummed to the affirmative. "Yeah, I'm going to go up through my doctorate, get certified and all that, maybe found my own practice, maybe just work for another office, but I'm going to do pro bono work with foster kids whenever I can."

"Sounds like a noble pursuit." Regina still wasn't looking at Emma. She was organizing her desk now, books in their place, pencils neatly arranged in a cup. "Stars were the first thing I ever remember looking at. My father, he loves the night sky, taught me all the constellations before I ever started school. I got older and I never lost my love from them. I always wanted to learn more. They were always a comfort to me when my mother was being…difficult. But she says its not a practical career, that becoming a lawyer and then a politician is a much better route. My father…well, he loves me, but he's weak. The best I can hope for is to double major, but after that… My mother always gets her way."

Emma thought about her response for a few minutes. There wasn't really anything she could say, but. "I feel like I'm sorry here would be the wrong thing to say, but at the same time." Emma shrugged. "I haven't gotten the psych degree yet."

"I need no pity. I will do well enough on my own without it. It's a useless sentiment." Regina's lip curled.

"Don't know about that, sometimes I think it helps even just a little bit. It's supposed to anyway."

Regina looked her dead in the eye for once. "Do you want anyone pitying you for being a foster kid?"

Emma scowled at that. "Fine, you have a point."

Regina's mouth ghosted up into a smile again. She turned to look at her side of the room. From what Emma could see it was completely done. Regina sighed and pulled out the desk chair and sat down as if it was a throne.

"I always do, dear."

Emma rolled her eyes at that. She got up and started to make her bed. The thing was hard as a rock just to sit on; she wondered how she was going to sleep on it. She might have to dig into her limited funds to get one of those egg crate thingies.

"So, are you actually in any poly sci or astronomy courses this semester or are you in gen eds?" Emma asked, unfolding the fitted sheet and trying to find which way went what. She swore they made them so it was impossible.

"I'm in the intro level course of both poly sci and astronomy, but my other two class are gen eds, writing 101 and calc two."

"What time do you have writing 101?" She knew she had the class, but forgot exactly when.

"Tuesday and Thursday at two to four."

"With Professor Wen?"

"Yes, why?"

Emma looked over her shoulder and smiled at Regina while trying to reach a far corner of her bed. "We have that class together then. Want to get lost together looking for the classroom?"

Regina frowned. "I don't get lost."

Emma snorted. "It's a big campus, it's probably going to happen. But fine, I'll amend that to, do you want to go together?"

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt."

"Good."

She made her bed quickly and organized her desk. She looked it over again. It looked like the room could be lived in now that everything was done. She flopped back on her bed. Thing was still hard as a rock even laying down. She was totally going to have to bust out the money for an egg crate.

"Ugh, these things are hard as rocks," Emma groaned.

Regina snorted. "I brought a foam mattress pad."

"I'm gonna need something or my ribs are gonna break sleeping here." She sat up again as her stomach growled loudly. She looked sheepishly at Regina. "Wanna go find the nearest Walmart and grab something to eat?"

Regina hesitated.

Emma hopped off the bed and grabbed Regina's hand while completely in her view. She tugged gently, ignoring how her heart had sped up at the feel of Regina's skin on hers. Yeah, she was attractive and Emma was open to girls, but Jesus this was her roommate and no.

Regina came with her tug and stood up. "Well, I suppose if you're going to be a child about it."

"Oh it won't harm you to go to Walmart." She dropped Regina's hand though regretted it instantly. "Besides, I'm sure we'll end up there a lot. And they do have those containers of Red Vines there." She gestured over her shoulder.

Regina eyed the container. "Well, it wouldn't hurt to know where the important stores are, after all."

Emma laughed. Yeah, friends. She could be friends with Regina, sure. They were roommates after all and friends would be a good thing. Just friends.

She led Regina down the stairs again, telling her about her car. If Regina looked relieved at not having to ride the bus, well, Emma wouldn't blame her.