A/N: Thanks for taking this voyage with me. Hope you enjoyed it!

Warnings: Sex. Yeah. Heh. And a wee bit of emotional stuff...but the good kind!

It's three weeks later before Victor finally releases a still very sore and movement constricted Emma back to her house (or a house – yet to be decided - really). Of course, during that time, there'd been two attempted jailbreaks and at least one moment of a bloodied Emma staring up at the ceiling of the hallway while Regina and Snow had glared down at her. Thankfully, that had only lasted seconds if that – the reality is that it had probably only lasted a split second, but Emma admits that her mind has become somewhat dramatic after being part of this family for the last few years - before they'd moved to help her, but she thinks that she'd seen the Evil Queen for a few beats and that woman had been extremely pissed.

Crazy hot, but pissed as hell.

So wisely, she'd chosen not to mention how attractive she'd found Regina at the time. That, and of course, her mother had been standing next to her lover, smirking.

Like she'd known. Like she'd been about to say something like, "Like father like daughter." Which really, Emma wouldn't have wanted to have heard. Really, no.

But she's been (relatively) good for the last week or so, and the jagged wound in her gut has finally closed up enough that Victor seems reasonably confident that she won't bleed to death if left unsupervised for more than five minutes at a time.

Which seems insulting, really, because despite actions to the opposite, she is an adult who is entirely capable of taking care of herself. Most of the time, anyway.

Either way, she's incredibly thankful to be pulling her jeans on (men's jeans which means far looser ones than the usual close to the skin kind that she prefers because the idea of trying to suck in her stomach is abhorrent to her right now). Regina, her eyes keenly watchful as always, waits until she's buttoned the fly up and then offers Emma a blue and black flannel shirt which she layers over a light gray Henley.

It's about as lay-around-on-the-sofa-eating-pizza as a look can get, and for a moment, Emma feels a flush of embarrassment go through her because as usual, Regina is dressed sharply in slacks and black blouse, but then she sighs and shrugs it off; Regina isn't with her for her fashion, and after thirty years of preferring the more casual and simple things, Emma thinks that she's not exactly in a hurry to change now. Especially since the look that Regina is giving her isn't unappreciative.

"Thanks," Emma says, smiling brightly back at her. It's been a strange three weeks between them. Since that night after Regina and her mom had come back from dealing with Scar and she had promised Regina no more running away, they really haven't talked much about anything. Sure, Regina and Henry and both of her parents have been here every day and sure, Regina has fretted over her stomach wound with bemusing consistency. The one on her throat has caused a different reaction and Emma is almost afraid to push on why Regina seems so upset by it.

Which isn't to say that Emma herself is all right with having the scars of a crazed lunatic biting her pressed into her skin, but Regina has quietly assured her that once the tissue damage beneath the wound has fully healed up, they can heal away the marks. So Emma doesn't understand the upset she sees on Regina and a very large part of her (the part that will always feel like she isn't enough) is terrified to try to.

Because what if –

No. No more what ifs.

There's just this.

So she smiles again and then as she slowly and gingerly pulls the flannel on, she looks in the mirror on the backside of the door, and for the first time in weeks, she truly sees Emma Swan. Her hair is long and styled by her fingers, but she looks alive.

She is alive.

In any case, things have been uncomfortably strange between she and Regina and she can't say she cares for it at all. She figures it's the hospital, the anxiety and implications of this room and how ill-prepared Regina is to ever deal with that which she can't control. All of those things make sense to Emma and yet none of them settle her nerves. Now that she has finally figured things out in her head – seen what the end looks like and realized that she doesn't want to go out having never tried to be truly happy, she realizes that she just wants what she wants.

Family, friendship and love. Everything. All of it.

"Emma?" Regina prompts, noticing how her lover is gazing into the mirror.

"All good," she assures Regina and then turns slightly. It still hurts quite a bit to move around still, the healing skin continuing to pull far more than she cares to feel. But this is okay and so is moving closer to Regina, close enough to make one of Regina's eyebrows lift in anticipation and her breath catch in breathless desire.

Because it's been over three weeks – far closer to six or seven if she's actually forced to count them – since they've shared anything that was more than a chaste and sweet goodnight kiss between them. Emma wants a lot more right now.

A whole hell of a lot more.

Not that this is either the time or the place.

But when she actually thinks about its, she finds herself realizing life is so very painfully short and she'd been bleeding out in a stairwell just three short weeks ago so now she damn well intends to make sure that whatever it takes, she gets to live.

A life that includes the beautifully infuriating woman standing opposite her and the hovering always worried but now touchingly over-involved parents out in the hallway signing her check-out paperwork and the entirely too much of a smart ass son who is deeply irked that he can't be here right now because he still has school.

Family, and yeah it's more than a little bit cheesy and it makes her feel like she's in some kind of oddball Lilo and Stitch kind of movie, but this weird little family is hers and it's worth everything to her, and she just wishes she hadn't almost had to die to understand she was only running away from her own happiness while she'd been so ferociously trying to protect herself. Yes, she has loved and lost and those scars will stay with her forever. She'll never forget any of them, is actually incapable of it. Now, though, she realizes – finally (and painfully) – that she's no longer willing to give up the chance to have the imperfect perfection that is this life she has.

This life with Regina and Henry and her parents.

So she steps forward, slides her body completely into Regina's personal space, gently loops an arm around her lover's slim waist and then pulls her as close as possible with their clothes still. Leaning in, she presses her lips lightly against Regina's, warm breath passing between them as she tries to say so much to her.

Things like, "I love you."

Which she's said a few times already, but now wants to show.

Her eyes close and the kiss deepens and there are teeth and –

"Uh, sorry to interrupt," Victor coughs. "Your wheelchair is here, Miss Swan."

They turn to face him, and Emma might have been expecting embarrassment on his face at what he'd just walked in, but Regina sees exactly what she'd been anticipating knowing Victor Whale which is a knowing and wholly lecherous smirk.

She rolls her eyes at him, just does refrain from calling him an insufferable bastard and instead says gently, "Emma." She nudges her head towards the wheelchair.

"I can walk."

"Rules," Victor says. "And Regina promised she'd make you'd adhere to them."

"Traitor," Emma mumbles.

"Even if I have to play by the rules by the rules every now and again, dear. Besides, I do believe that your father wanted to push you," Regina drawls, her tone dry. "I think that the child in him wants to come out and rough-house with you for awhile."

A warm chuckle from the doorway answers that and then David and Snow are entering the room, a stack of papers tucked under Snow's arm. Snow's eyes flicker over Emma, taking her in. After a moment, apparently satisfied with her daughters' condition, Snow turns to David and says sweetly, "No wheelies, you two."

"Damn," David grins and then moves over to the wheelchair. He watches as Emma reluctantly moves towards it, wincing as she lowers herself into it. They know that getting into it is the easy part, and she'll likely need help getting out of it, but that's for later. For now, it's just this moment of realizing that they'd survived this, and letting her do this on her own. He leans forward, presses a kiss to the top of her head, shrugs when she pretends to roll her eyes, and then says, "You up for seeing how fast we can go down the hallway?" Like she's just as much of a kid as he is.

She probably is, she muses.

"No," both Snow and Regina say at the same time.

So Emma replies, "Yes."

And then grins up at Regina.

Who snorts in bemusement and just barely stops herself from kissing Emma.

That, she supposed, can wait for later.

Before they'd left the hospital, there had been a brief discussion over where Emma would return to for the rest of her lengthy recovery. Regina – trying to be understanding of the newness of this commitment of theirs – had said that she could stay with Emma at her apartment for a few weeks (the idea of staying at the loft again had been shot down immediately thanks to rapidly growing little brother Neal who never stops moving), but that idea had quickly (and thankfully, from Regina's POV) been pushed away and it had been decided that she would continue her healing at the Mayoral Mansion. Tucked safely away in one of the guest rooms.

In theory, anyway.

In reality, there's one thing Emma wants right now and as much as she craves the physicality of making love to Regina (and she does want that), what she truly wants is just the warmth of being next to her when everything is quiet – the feeling that comes with realizing that you're not alone in the world. She's had that before – had it in moments that have passed too quickly – and vows she'll hold on this time.

Henry leaves school that afternoon as quickly as he possibly can and gets home just after three, allowing a breath of relief when he enters to find Emma on the couch, a blanket slung over her, and Regina in the kitchen making dinner. The dinner table is already set and it's clear that his grandparents will be coming back over soon.

Which is fantastic, but for the moment, he just wants to be with his mothers.

He hugs Regina, and she thinks about how thankful she is that even as he grows taller and becomes a man - bigger and stronger every single day -, he's still willing to do this. How thankful she is that he still needs her as much as she need him.

And then he sits down next to Emma, pulls her legs over his, and hands her a PlayStation controller. A look passes between them, and he knows that eventually there will be a in-depth conversation about what he almost did, but not now.

Now, is just about them and right now.

Because this is their family and there's no better hope than these moments.

Dinner is loud and obnoxious and she thinks her parents are watching she and Regina just a bit too carefully, like they think they're about to start making out at any moment. She wonders if that's just the two of them just adapting to this or if it's them having weird mental roadblocks about the two women thing, but either way, her mom keeps getting that weird wistful smile and she's pretty sure that there's going to come an uncomfortable moment where she asks them to kiss.

Thankfully, that moment never comes.

The one that does come, however, is the one where her mother finds her by herself in the kitchen (she'd insisted on doing the dishes because even as sore as she is, she still needs to be in motion and after three weeks in that bed, even this feels like some kind of perfect) and pulls her into her arms and says, "In case you ever doubt how much I love you, how much you mean to me, know that I would have killed that man a thousand times over if I thought that you would have been all right with that. And if he ever finds a way to come near you again, I will destroy him."

Emma lets out a choked cough of laughter, caught between desperately touched and morbidly amused. It's not every day that a promise of murder can grip you right in the middle of your chest and squeeze hard. Well, at least not one from your mother (when you're sleeping with the Evil Queen, you kind of learn to find such statements oddly romantic in a weirdly twisted and bent kind of way).

"I'm okay," Emma promises her, not letting go of her mother.

"I know. But you scared me."

"I scared me, too," Emma admits, dipping her head in for a moment.

"Well then, let's not do that again, okay?" Snow pleads as she pulls back and moves a strand of blonde hair away from Emma's forehead, smiling up at her daughter with so much unrestrained love, unshed tears gleaming in her bright green eyes.

"I'm the Savior," Emma reminds her. "I always make it through, right?"

"You're my daughter," Snow counters. "Emma. Nothing else matters."

"Where is this coming from?" Emma asks.

"It's not coming from anywhere, but it is a long time in coming. These are the things that I should have said to you…years ago, but almost didn't get the chance to. I should have - we should - have had this talk long before you became the Dark One, and almost left us, but most certainly after, and I didn't. Emma, I'm sorry."

"You forgive me for what I did during that time, right?"

"Of course."

"Then I think I can forgive you for what you didn't do. I just want…this." She waves her hand around, her gesture encompassing the entire house and everyone in it. "I'm sick of living in fear and regret. I just want a chance to be happy. That's it."

Snow steps forward and hugs her again. "You'll have it," she promises.

And Emma thinks as she holds on tight, "I believe you."

The last thing Henry says as he flees into his bedroom is, "Keep it down."

Then he makes a face of disgust because he's fifteen and he has seen a Playboy.

Regina isn't entirely sure how one got into town, but well, he has visuals now.

But then the door to the master bedroom is closing and Emma is stepping close to her, and they're breathing in the same air and all thoughts about Henry and dirty magazines are flickering away. "Hi," Emma says in that somewhat nervous voice she gets when she's a bit off-balance. She's moving in, though, her small height advantage giving her just enough size to be visually dominant for a moment.

"Hi," Regina replies in bemusement, smirking as she leans up and kisses Emma long and hard and without reservation. She's not in the mood for games or further separation. It's been too long and she wants to feel everything that she's missed.

She wants to feel everything that there is to feel.

She wants Emma.

Slowly, she peels away Emma's clothing – the flannel, the Henley and then the jeans. Emma is in matching undergarments, a bold red color that makes Regina smirk at the cheekiness of it (she hadn't been wearing these when they'd left the hospital, which means that she'd come upstairs and changed just for this moment).

"Beautiful," Regina murmurs, her hands reaching out to run down the length of Emma's long arms and then to come around to lightly touch at the swells of her breasts, the tips of her fingers brushing teasingly against cloth-covered but already hardened nipples (she enjoys Emma's soft gasp, and Emma enjoys that she does). Below the line of her bra, the gauze is still there, covering a wound that is still healing and will be for quite awhile to come. The skin there is tender and new, and Regina finds that she hungers to taste it. But not tonight. No, they have all the time in the world for that kind of exploration. Tonight, she will take what is given to her.

And there's a whole hell of a lot that's being freely given to her.

"You're wearing too much," Emma notes with a pout that doesn't meet her eyes even if the slightly wolfish grin that she's wearing does. "I don't like it." She says this between kisses that start out relatively tender but rapidly grow into something far more feverish and needy, escalating into something demanding and wanting.

She pulls her lips away from Regina's and brings them to the older woman's slender neck, tracing her teeth over the skin there for half a second before suddenly stopping, a frown upon her lips as she remembers the garish bite mark on her neck.

"Emma?"

"Are you okay with it?" she asks, sounding unsteady. "Me biting you, I mean?"

Regina chuckles at that, warm and deep like liquid fudge. "Oh yes, my dear."

"It's not possessive?"

"Perhaps it is," Regina allows. "And while we are both clothed and acting in our roles as the Mayor and the Sheriff of this little town of ours, I have no desire to ever be possessed by anyone - not even you - but here in this room, in this bed with you, I have absolutely no problem with it. And besides, you have never marked me to own me. So if the question is do I like it, then the answer is yes."

"Then why have you seemed so...put off by it?" she presses. "The wound on my stomach hasn't been an issue, but -"

"I'm still me...and I am still prone to getting...angry," Regina says softly, her fingers lightly dancing against Emma's cheek. "At him. At myself. I see that mark on you, and I get angry because that...animal had no right to touch you like that. Or to make you think that you ever need to ask me these questions." Her thumb lightly traces against the scar there. "To make you ever think that I could love you less for this. So it's me, Emma; I get angry because I do not deal particularly well with someone having hurt you. In any way."

"I'm okay," Emma assures her, a hand sliding over Regina's and pulling it away from her cheek so that she can bring it to her lips.

Regina smiles wickedly in response to that, the gaze full of so much desire and want that it makes Emma's body heat up. "Oh, yes you are. But I must admit that I feel that at this point, I should point out to you that I am still wearing too many clothes, Emma."

Emma laughs loudly at that. "Yeah, you are." And then she's jerking forward and kissing Regina passionately again and her hands are moving down the older woman's body, peeling open the blouse and pushing down the slacks and her mouth is lowering down first to Regina's always sensitive neck and then to the swell of her even more sensitive breasts and then nipples that are begging for attention.

Which she happily gives them. One, and then the other.

She listens as Regina lets out this throaty moan that echoes through the room and then sighs in happiness when she feels a long leg swipe around her waist, pulling her closer. Her hands scrape against Regina's buttocks, then up her back again.

"Bed," Regina mutters. "Now. Or else I'll end up taking you against the wall, and I'm pretty sure that Henry won't be able to pretend that it's not what it is."

Emma snorts in bemused response to that and then shrugs her shoulders. "Works for me." She pushes them back and then they're tumbling together onto the mattress. Involuntarily, though, she winces, her side pulling just a bit as they fall.

Which, of course, Regina notices. "Emma –"

"I'm fine," she insists and then feverishly kisses Regina again and again.

Because it's not just safe meaningless sex anymore. Maybe it had started out that way for them in the beginning (that's a lie, and now they both know it – there's no way that it could have ever stayed that). Maybe it had been meant to be just that (of course it had, but there's moving the moon and changing fate and just them). Maybe it would have been better for everyone if it had just stayed that way (but then there would be a hole within both of them, and sometimes you realize that).

It's not just meaningless sex, and she is so madly in love with this woman (and loved so madly in return, she knows) that the idea of not touching her and not making love to her until the sun comes up is utterly absurd to her. She wants so very much and for once, no one is telling her that she can't have whatever it is that she desires.

So she takes and she has and then Regina is clutching her and holding onto her like she's some kind of unimaginable gift and the soft rumbling cries that come from her ruby red lips are like a song and God, when did she become so insanely sappy?

She would laugh at that, but she's feeling far too much right now. She feels fingers pressed into her back and those same strong fingers are gripping at her body, and she's turning and then Regina is kissing her with a kind of hunger that only she could ever really understand. It's so much fear and loss and desperation and the scars of a hundred times when neither one of them had been enough for someone else.

It's the past and all of its damage.

It's the present and all of its hope.

She feels Regina's tongue swipe over the mostly healed wound on her neck, gentle and loving and letting her know that this is nothing to them and most certainly nothing to her; it's just a piece of the past that doesn't matter.

Something that won't hold them back.

Not anymore.

It's sex, and it's amazing and it's not sex at all; it's more than that in a way that she can't even begin to put into proper words

Her eyes roll back when she feels Regina lowering herself down her body, the older woman's elegant, but deceptively strong fingers pressed into her thighs, and then higher and then pushing into her, claiming her with a hunger almost beyond description. There's a soft chuckle, then, and Emma doesn't even need to bother to look to know Regina is smirking up at her, enjoying the gasping sounds that she's making (the ones that she's trying to muffle and hadn't it been easier to do that when it had just been sex between them?) entirely too much. When she comes, it's not with bright lights exploding, but with a surge of something so fierce and brilliant that tears leak from her eyes and oh, that's pretty damned embarrassing, right?

Only apparently it's not because Regina is lifting herself up and kissing the tears away from her cheeks and kissing her lips and then their legs and their hands and every single part of them is tangling together. "I love you," Regina whispers to her, and Emma knows it for the gift that it is, knows how difficult love is for them both.

Not to have – they both have more than enough of it inside of them – but to give; how hard it is to love without fearing the eventual destruction and loss of it and to receive it without having the same dark fears encroaching on their every day lives.

She knows how hard the words are to believe, even harder to say.

So Emma pulls her close, close enough that they can both feel the other ones' heart pounding away in their chests, strong and vibrant and ferocious, and she presses her mouth to Regina's ear. "I love you, too," she whispers, a plea and a promise.

Don't leave me and I won't leave you.

Regina exhales and then she's turning and their lips are coming together again, softer than have expected, but needy and wanting and yeah, this isn't sex.

Maybe it never was.

It's these moments, Emma thinks, theses are the ones that she'd been so afraid of.

The ones she'd always run away from.

Hidden from.

The moments when they're just lying together, facing each other.

Not saying anything.

A stray hand reaching out to brush hair away.

Another one tracing the lines of a perfect jaw.

A soft kiss and then an even softer breath out.

These are the scary moments.

The perfect ones.

"Why are you still up, Kid?" Emma asks as she slips into the kitchen. It's almost three in the morning, and just the abnormality of the normal sleep rhythms of being back in a house instead of in a hospital room has her awake and moving about.

"Why are you up at all?" Henry fires back smirking at her in a way that's both knowing (as much as a boy his age can know) and cheeky. "Shouldn't you be doing things to you know –" he swirls his hand around in the air, a bit like Rumple does.

"What does that even mean?"

"Nothing that I want to think about," he admits. "And I couldn't sleep."

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Are you? You're walking weird." He frowns. "That's from –"

"The wound on my side not…yeah. I'm fine. Just…sore. But fine." Then, "So…"

"Is there where you finally talk to me about what I almost did with Scar?"

"This is where I tell you that I'm incredibly proud to have a son who is willing to protect his family, but I do not even want you following either Regina or I or anyone else into that…I don't ever want blood on your hands, Henry. Not ever, okay?"

"Ma –"

"I will for the rest of my life dream about what I did as the Dark One. I will forever remember holding your mother's heart in my hand squeezing it. I will forever remember the screams. That's my burden, Henry. And you know Regina carries one far worse than that. Neither of us want that for you." She smiles at him, soft and emotional. "You're what reminds all of us that we can be the best of ourselves."

"I just wanted to protect you. Both of you."

"You do. By reminding us of what we're capable of being. What we want to be. That's your job. You never gave up faith in me, you never let anyone do it. And because you didn't, they didn't. None of us work if you give that up faith, Henry."

"We grow up, right?"

"Unfortunately, but that doesn't mean we always have to see the bad stuff more than good stuff. Is that why you're up so late? Thinking about all of this stuff."

"Well that and I heard sounds coming from your room that I'd really prefer not to have heard." He chuckles. "But yeah, I guess. I mean, I'm not ten anymore," he reminds her. "I know there's bad shit in the world. I've seen it between Neverland and the Author and Zelena and the Dark One stuff and then Scar. I've seen all of it."

"I know you have, Kid, and I hate that you have seen all of that, but you are still my son, and until the day I die, I'll going to do my best to keep you seeing the light."

"Don't die anytime soon," he says, and yeah, in this moment he is ten again.

She presses her forehead against his (and she has to gingerly lift herself off the ground just a bit because she's only five-five and he's quite a bit taller than that) and says, "I'll promise you the same thing I promised your mom; I'm not going anywhere. That was my life and death adventure, now I'm sticking around."

"That all depends on if you climb out of my bed ever again," Regina mumbles from the doorway of the kitchen. When she enters, Emma's eyes sweep over her, taking in the carefully cinched up robe and the heavily tousled hair. Henry's too young to recognize that as "sex hair" but Emma isn't, and she's immediately grinning away.

Which earns her a playful slap on the arm as Regina passes by, moving over to stand by the stove. Without hesitation, Regina bends down and picks up a pot, placing it on the burner. She has milk in her hands a moment later, and okay, so apparently this is going to be a family hot cocoa thing. Which brings on another bright smile

"Guys," Henry reminds them, good-naturedly, his eyes watching both of them.

Watching as Ma slips behind Mom and hugs her tight for just a brief moment, their cheeks touching in a way that seems entirely too intimate for him to be seeing.

Watching as Mom tilts her head back and steals a kiss when Ma whispers a sheepish sounding, "Sorry." Presumably for having left Mom alone in her…their bed.

Watching them, and realizing that this isn't the fairy tale, but it's somehow better.

And when Mom puts the whipped cream drenched mugs of hot cocoa down on the counter – including one for herself – and then slips her hand into Emma's without any kind of fuss or massive statement about why she is, just doing it like they fit together kind of naturally and right, Henry grins and thinks yeah, much better.

He catches a curious and somewhat loaded look that passes between his mothers, then, and he doesn't know what it means, but thinks that they certainly do.

Because as it turns out, it really was a thing after all.

-Fin

:D

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