I've always wanted to read a fic where Regina adopts another child, so I wrote one. Well, the beginning of one. I might continue it if enough ideas hit me. Don't expect regular updates. I also have only a vague idea of how the foster system works, so please tell me if I get something wrong. OUAT paints the foster system in a very negative light, but I have no idea if that's the truth or not. Thanks :) The rating is T because I'm paranoid, and a few mentions of child abuse.

Regina sat down in her office, sighed at the amount of paper and folders on her desk, and stopped. She picked up a note left on her desk, and smiled.

Lunch at Granny's?

-RH

She shook her head. When she had found out that Robin Hood was her 'true love' she hadn't expected for everything to be so perfect between them. She hadn't expected to be able to move on from Daniel, after all, and she'd run away from her first chance with Robin, and villains don't get second chances. Of course, if you listened to Henry then she wasn't that much of a villain any more, even if no one really trusted her. Even Rumpelstiltskin was trusted more than she was, although, to be fair, he was known for keeping his deals and he had promised Belle that he would change.

Regina snorted. There was another unlikely love for you. She'd thought that he could never fall in love, or be loved, but he'd demonstrated what lengths he was willing to go to to keep Belle safe, and if that didn't prove his love then what did? Maybe 'the Saviour' had brought back the happy endings after all.

She was jerked from her thoughts as the phone rang. "If this is the Sheriff office again," she muttered threateningly, picking it up. "Hello, Mayor's office."

"Mayor Mills? This is the Boston adoption agency."

Robin looked at the clock again, slouching down in his seat. It wasn't like Regina to be late, but it was almost ten past twelve and she still hadn't shown up. Don't be silly, he chided himself. She's Mayor. She has a lot of work to do. She might not even be coming.

He didn't know what it was about Regina, but every time he arranged to meet her he felt nervous and unsure of himself. Once she was there he was his usual, confident self, but beforehand he was a nervous wreck, desperate for everything to be perfect for her.

He looked up as she sat down in the seat opposite him, flashing him a smile. "Hi, sorry I'm late, I got a surprising phone call."

"The Sheriff found someone who can actually drive a car?" Since the second curse, a lot of fairytale characters that hadn't been in Storybrooke the first time were experimenting with technology, often with disastrous results. Regina and Emma had been putting out metaphorical fires for weeks, and a couple of real ones.

"No, not that." She sighed. "I got a phone call from Boston."

"Boston?" He'd heard of it – it was where Emma Swan had lived when Henry found her, but he couldn't see why someone from there would call Regina. She nodded.

"The adoption agency."

"Henry?" he asked, reaching for her hand. She smiled and shook her head.

"No, thank goodness." She paused for a moment, glancing down in a way that he knew meant that she was nervous. "They want me to foster a girl."

He raised an eyebrow. He hadn't been expecting that. "They assured me that it was a temporary placement," she continued, "but she needs a good home that is somewhere quiet; in a small town, not a big city."

"Why?" Robin asked. Surely a good home was all she would need. Regina sighed.

"Because the last home that she was in wasn't very good and they want to make her feel comfortable in her new home. She grew up in a town like this one, so..." She smiled and shrugged.

"I thought that any strangers was a bad idea," Robin said carefully; he knew Regina had a soft spot for children. Regina nodded.

"I know. I told them that I'd think about it." She shook her head and smiled brightly at him. "So, how's Roland?"

Robin wasn't fooled – he knew that this was far from over.

Ashley lent against the wall of her bedroom, staring blankly at the wall. She'd only recently been released from hospital after the car crash that had killed her foster father. The police had finally busted him on his drug dealing and he'd tried to make an escape, never mind that he was already drugged and inebriated.

He'd been driving on the wrong side of the road, late at night. Ashley, sitting in the passenger seat, had noticed the approaching car sooner than he had and had tried to turn the wheel. He'd hit her and knocked her back, and turned to yell at her, and they'd been hit. The only reason Ashley survived was because he'd yanked at the wheel when he turned, and the other car crashed into his side.

Once she'd woken up in hospital, the first question she'd asked, aside from 'where am I?' and 'how did I get here?' was 'do I have to go back?'. They'd told her that her foster father had died a few hours before she woke up and that she was going back to a group home. She'd cried, not out of grief, but relief.

Once she'd recovered a bit, the police had come in. Turned out that they'd suspected him for a while – his wife had sued for divorce on the grounds of domestic abuse and misuse of alcohol. Her social worker had been furious that they'd left her there and had shouted them out of the room. It was almost enough to make her smile, except she hadn't smiled in months.

Her social worker, Jean Fletcher, had told her that she wouldn't be staying here for very long – they were going to find her a good foster home this time. Jean had even speculated wistfully about adoption, but Ashley knew better than to hope for that. It was the little kids that got adopted, not the teenagers, but she knew that Jean felt guilty for the situation she'd been in, so she didn't want to point out how unrealistic her hopes were. In all likelihood, her next foster home would be just as bad as her previous homes.

There was no point getting her hopes up – foster kids didn't get happy endings.