prompt from zurupuppy for leaving the 300th review on The White Queen: "Emma's pregnant and Regina is the other parent."

Emma was feeling sick. Again. As she had every other single fricking morning this week. She didn't know what she was doing to anger whoever was up there watching over them, if there was anyone at all, but god damn it if she didn't want to fix it. She hated being nauseous. The only thing she hated more was throwing up and she had hit the jackpot for a straight week and had to deal with both.

She dragged herself from the station's bathroom and groaned. When was this going to end? It wasn't bad enough to be the flu. It had lasted too long to be food poisoning. Hell, she had eaten oatmeal for dinner last night just to be sure it wasn't something she ate that was causing this. It almost felt like the morning sickness she'd had when she was pregnant with Henry, but that hadn't been this bad, it had barely been an upset stomach most days with only really bad ones resulting in her puking.

But there was absolutely no possible way she could be pregnant. She had broken it off with Hook coming up on six months ago and there was no way she was six months pregnant. She'd be the size of a small house if she was, she had been with Henry. And after that she hadn't had anyone, in a relationship or one night stand. She had been celibate and it had been driving her a little mad, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle.

The closest she had come to anyone other than Henry in the last six months was to hold hand with Regina while they were casting a spell to send the three bitches from hell back to where they came from. They had needed all their magic to do it, to combat both Maleficent and Ursula's magi along with whatever the hell Cruella actually did, but they had done it.

Emma had thought about kissing the woman afterwards in the heat of the moment, but she hadn't. That would make things so very awkward and they had just started to truly rebuild their friendship again after the whole Marian thing. She had known it at the time and she still knew it now.

But that didn't explain why in the world she was pregnant now. She hadn't thought hand holding could get her pregnant since she was about six and she wasn't about ready to go back to believing that now. Though, with all that she'd seen over the years, it wouldn't really surprise her if somehow that could be done. There was way too much magic in the world for her to really understand the rules anymore. Most days she just played them fast and loose and hoped that everything would turn out all right.

There was one way to find out if she was really pregnant, though. Pregnancy tests, while not one hundred percent accurate, were her best bet. If she wasn't pregnant she was going to have to go to a doctor or something and that just didn't sound pleasing to Emma. It would be all over town in five minutes that she had gone to the doctor. She sighed. And it didn't help that Whale himself was an absolute fucking creep.

Oh god, if she really was pregnant then Whale was really the only doctor around. He would be looking after her the whole time. She resisted the urge to bang her head off her desk. Ogres, where were the ogres when she needed them?

She groaned and stood up from the desk. She was going to have to go to the drug store on her lunch break. Oh god, the drug store. If she bought pregnancy tests that was going to be all over town in a matter of seconds too. And fucking Sneezy ran the drug store. Her mother would be one of the first to hear. She cursed out loud and drew the attention of her father.

She shrugged at him. "Stubbed my toe."

Her father nodded. "Ouch," he said in sympathy.

"Yeah, I'm going to go snatch some lunch, ok? You want anything from Granny's?" She grabbed her jacket off the hook by the door.

"Yeah, just grab me a burger, too, if you could." He smiled at her.

"'kay, be back in a bit."

She walked out of the station, mind spinning. Did she really want to go to the drug store? Well, was there really anyway around it? Emma bit her lip for a long moment as she kept walking towards Granny's. She always could just pocket them and walk out, but that wasn't who she was anymore. If she was going to do this she was going to own up to it and pay like a respected person in society should.

But, ugh, her mother was going to think it was Hook's and she didn't even want to deal with that. She had had enough of that true love bullshit for a life time. Hook wasn't even near her true love, he was a skeevy guy, same as she always ended up with until she saw that they were creeps and dumped them.

She walked into Granny's and idea hit her just as she saw Ruby. Ruby. She was the answer. She could ask Ruby to go in for her and buy them and she could swear the other woman to secrecy until she was ready to tell everyone what the hell was going on. She was a gossip but she was a better friend and could keep her mouth shut when need be.

Emma walked up to the counter. "Hey, Rubes."

Ruby smiled at her. "Your usual today?"

Emma nodded. "And one for my Dad, too."

"Got it." She ripped off an order ticket and turned to put in on the little turny wheel in the kitchen window. She turned back to Emma. "So what's up? You look a little green around the gills this morning."

"Uh, yeah, um, Ruby, do you think I can talk to you some place more private?" She put her hands in her pockets and rocked back and forth on her heels.

Ruby tilted her head and looked Emma over again. "What's wrong, Ems?"

"Please?" She titled her head to indicate literally everyone in the diner. She wasn't about to ask even in a hushed tone with everyone around. With her luck someone could read lips or had super good hearing.

Ruby nodded. She turned and yelled to Granny that she was taking five and disappeared down the hall to the bathroom. Emma followed a second later and slipped in behind her.

The wolf turned to her as soon as the door shut. "Ok, what's wrong?"

She rubbed the back of her neck. Ok, so saying this might be a little harder than she expected. But this was Ruby. She was fine. Ruby was her friend. This wasn't a prison guard or nurse or doctor, this was her best friend.

"Ruby, I think I might be pregnant." She said it all in one rush, so much that she was surprised that Ruby actually made out what she was saying.

She watched as Ruby did the math in her head as she looked down at Emma's stomach and scowled. "But who?"

"That's the thing Ruby, I have no idea. It might just be some weird sickness that mimics the symptoms and such but I sort of need pregnancy tests to figure that out. After that, if it's true I'll fucking figure it out. God knows this town is weird enough that there's probably some sort of weird ass explanation."

"Ok, ok, well what do you want me to do?"

"If I go to the drug store it's going to catch some attention and Sneezy will go right to Snow. Could you go for me and drop them off at my place later? I wouldn't ask if it wasn't the most awkward situation I've ever been in…well at least in a while anyway."

Ruby sighed and nodded. "Ok, I'll go for you, but when Granny eventually finds out you're going to have to save me from her wrath."

Emma laughed quietly. "Yeah, ok, Rubes, that I can do."

Ruby made to exit the bathroom before she stopped. "You really don't know?"

Emma shook her head. "I haven't had sex in six months, Ruby. Unless I'm the next Virgin Mary or something I have no idea how it happened. Unless I've managed to somehow asexually reproduce and I'm not exactly sure what would be weirder here."

Ruby looked her over for a long moment before nodding, accepting Emma's store as the truth. "Well, I guess someone around here might know what's going on if you are. If not, well someone might still know what's going on with you illness-wise."

They both walked out of the bathroom.

"Ugh, but Whale, though." Emma shivered.

Ruby snorted as she walked back behind the counter. "Yeah, I know." She picked up a mug and grabbed the milk. A minute later a steaming cup of hot chocolate with cinnamon was sitting in front of Emma. Emma smiled at Ruby as she went off to tend her other customers.

Later Emma was in her apartment staring at the box of pregnancy tests as if they were about to jump up and kill her. Did she really want to know? After all, they had just settled into a period of relative normality and this was going to ruin that. Emma liked when it was normal around here. Well, as normal as it could get in a town of fairytale characters. When it was normal she didn't feel like running as much. And this? Yeah, she was going to want to run from this, she could tell right then.

Fuck it. She grabbed the box and went into the bathroom. Ten minutes later she was staring anywhere but the three sticks on her sink and hoping, really hoping, that this was all just some sort of fucking illusion, hallucination, something, and that she would wake up soon and everything would be completely normal.

She swallowed and looked down. The tests were done. All of them were fucking pluses and it didn't take a god damn genius to interpret what that meant.

"Fucking fuck." Emma swept all of them into the waste basket. Pregnancy tests could be wrong. But three of them all being wrong at the same time, well that was statistically really slim. She would have to call the doctor's office tomorrow and get an appointment with Whale for a blood test and god that wasn't going to be fun. He was totally going to leer at her and ask who the father was and Emma so did not want that. But it couldn't be helped she guessed.

She walked out of the bathroom and collapsed on her bed. She was really glad she had gotten her own place and even more glad that Henry was with Regina for the night. She needed time to process, to make completely sure that this was actually going on before she saw the kid again. How exactly was she supposed to tell him that he was going to be a big brother?

God, was she even ready for another kid? She hadn't been the first time for sure, but then…after all those memories from after Pan's curse. She had been Henry's one mother for a whole year and thought she had been for much longer than that. She had the memories of raising him still. It hurt her that they weren't real. She wished they were so desperately. With this kid they could be real.

But a kid wasn't the solution for her hang ups with Henry. She had to want this kid for being this kid and nothing more. Otherwise she would turn into the fucking Swans or something and god Emma swore she would never become those people. Her parents had given her up and she had given Henry up but that was at the very beginning for their best chances. The Swans had given her back selfishly, had had her for three years and had loved her and raised her as her own and then just thrown her back into the system as if she were some kind of toy. She wouldn't be them. She would hate herself.

So, really, did she want this kid? Yeah, yeah she did. She would love them and this time, unlike with Henry, she had everything going for her. She had family that would help her out, she had a stable job, she had a place to live, she wasn't in prison. This was a surprise, sure, but that didn't mean she couldn't make the best of it like she had every single twist and turn of her life so far.

She swallowed hard. This was so complicated. And she could admit to herself that she was scared. Even if she did want the kid, what if she screwed them up or something? What if they hated her? With Henry up until New York she was just the fun aunt type. Even now when she was much more his mother, she still had Regina to rely on to help straighten out her parenting fuck ups. After all, Regina had been doing this a lot longer than she really had. She was so much more disciplined. She was the one who enforced bed times and rules about eating vegetables and Emma was still the more fun parent, if much more within reason now. They balanced each other out in a way. But she wasn't going to have that with this new kid. She was going to be on her own parenting-wise.

Her thinking in circles was starting to make her nauseous. Emma groaned and buried her face farther into her pillow. She'd go to sleep, make her appointment with Dr. Wale, and she would figure out everything else as she went. No need to put the cart before the horse.

She snuggled down into bed and started to relax. This fucking town, though.

A week later she had the blood work back from Dr. Whale. She was indeed pregnant and the man had indeed leered at her when she told him her suspicions. God she really wished that the man was board certified so she could report his ass, but sadly no one outside of Storybrooke knew this place existed. It really was rather unfortunate sometimes.

She was walking around her apartment, going through the stuff she had in her cabinets and pulling out the stuff that Whale had said would be good for her. Unfortunately she didn't have a lot of it. She was going to have to go shopping. Maybe she should take Regina. She really didn't know much about what the criteria for leafy green buying was. She didn't want to spend her money on crappy spinach.

Oh, spinach salad sounded so good right now. With cheese. And croutons. Mmm.

Emma shook herself. Ok, yeah, the cravings had started. They had started early with Henry too and hadn't really left until she had given birth to the kid. God, she would pay to have Hook around just to send him around to the stores to find impossible things at three am because she was 'craving' it and then watching him fail miserably. She smiled at the image. She wasn't a saint after all and Hook was a sleaze.

Emma sighed at all the junk in her cabinets. Regina was right, she really did eat like crap. She grabbed a bag of cheese poofs. But cheese poofs were so good. She opened the bag and crammed a handful in her mouth before closing he bag again and shoving it back in the cabinet. Maybe if she organized everything into a junk food cabinet and put the stuff she was actually eating in the others that could work in her favor. Especially if the junk cabinet was the farthest away. It wasn't a fool proof method, but Rome wasn't built in a day or anything.

She gathered up everything and started to organize. She hadn't really looked into how she had gotten pregnant after that first day of wondering. She was. Knowing why wasn't really going to change that. Though she supposed if it helped monitor the progression of the pregnancy she should find out. But who was there who would know? There was Gold and the Blue Fairy. They would probably know. But then again it was more like no and hell no. She didn't want to go to either of them. And since this was probably something to do with magic or something else freaky, that meant Regina was probably her option. At least they had become mostly friends again so she could count on the woman not to brush her off.

She ran her hand through her hair and shut the door of the junk cabinet. It had all fit in there, but barely. Whatever, it had worked.

She was supposed to pick up Henry tonight. She wondered if Regina would be against the idea of a family dinner. They'd had them a few times before and it was really the only way she could think of to get Regina alone long enough for her to discuss everything that was going on.

Emma slipped her phone out of her pocket and fired off a quick text to Regina, asking her about the idea. She set the phone aside and went across the room to start organizing the cabinets full of stuff that was supposed to be good for pregnant women. She sighed and shoved stuff in a little more violently than she probably should.

She was done a couple minutes before her phone vibrated. She spent the entirety of that two minutes just staring at her phone willing it to ring. When it finally did she jumped about three feet in the air. Again, she was glad no one was home to have seen that.

She rushed over and checked her phone. She sighed in relief when the text from Regina said that dinner was fine as long as Emma stopped at the store and picked up some lasagna noodles as she wasn't sure she had enough to make for three people. Emma texted back her affirmative and grabbed her stuff to go to the store. She might as well grab more of the stuff Whale said to eat while she was at it.

A few hours later she was on Regina's front step with a box of noodles, the ones she knew Regina liked to use. She smiled at her when she opened the door to find Emma. It was a small smile, barely there, but Emma caught it nonetheless and she practically lit up in response. After all the rough times they'd gone through recently it was nice to be back on even ground.

"Hey, Ma," Henry said, tromping through the hall to the living room.

Regina stepped aside and let Emma in. "Hey kid," Emma called back but he'd already disappeared

Regina chuckled. "He's obsessed with a new game he's gotten. We won't see him until food lures him out again. Something about dragons. I'm not entirely sure. He keeps telling me the plot and it sounds like something from the Enchanted Forest, closing portals with interesting, evil things coming from them."

Emma stopped. "No way, the kid has the new Dragon Age game?"

"Ah, yes, that was the name of it, and yes he does. He bought it with his allowance earlier in the week."

Emma glanced at the living room. She'd been dying to play that it looked so freaking cool. But she held herself back. She had to talk to Regina and if Henry was involved with his game then it was the perfect opportunity. Besides, she could always tell the kid to bring the game with him.

She followed Regina into the kitchen and plopped down on one of the stools. Regina already had her homemade sauce bubbling and the water on to boil. She wasn't sure just how Regina timed everything so perfectly when she cooked. It was like clockwork. Emma, on the other hand always seemed to have something done way before the next thing and would end up having to leave something on simmer for a few minutes while everything caught up.

Regina put the noodles in just as the water started to really boil. She stirred them around for a minute so they didn't stick together before she turned back to Emma.

"So how have you been, Emma?" Regina asked. She always tried for small talk. It never worked for the two of them. Somehow within a few exchanges they were in odd territory. Emma was telling stories about being a bail bonds person. Regina would tell stories of Henry, sometimes tame stories from the Enchanted Forest. They couldn't really keep it impersonal when the other just got them almost completely.

Emma bit her lip. This was the perfect opportunity to launch into what her problem really was. But again the words were hard to come by. She had never been much for words, but for actions, but in this case there were no real actions to take. Words were what she had.

She looked down at her hands, tracing patterns on the granite counter below her. "I, uh, I'm pregnant. Two months along. I don't even know how."

She felt Regina still. "Well, Hook will be pleased I suppose." Her voice was a little sharper than normal.

Emma looked up, waited until Regina met her eyes. "That's the thing, Regina. I haven't slept with Hook in over six months. I haven't slept with anyone in over six months. The closest I've gotten to sex in the last six months involved a vibrator or my own hand." Emma flinched a little at that last part. Uh, maybe that had been a little too much honesty, but it was out there now.

"And how else would you expect me to believe you got pregnant?" Regina cocked an eyebrow.

"I don't know? Magic, or whatever else kind of fuckery this town has got going on."

Regina glared at her.

"Right, sorry, language, I know." She rolled her eyes. "But that doesn't change the fact that I have no idea and Storybrooke isn't exactly the land of sense making, Regina. All I know is two months ago we were fighting off the evil triplets from the depths of hell and I barely had any time to think let along sleep with someone, but somehow that's when I got pregnant."

Regina tilted her head to the side and thought for a minute. She shook her head a few seconds later and checked on the noodles. Finding they were to her satisfaction she drained them and set them to the side for use later. She stirred the sauce once more, tasted it with one of the spoons she forever kept in her apron pocket and then turned the burner off. Regina walked over to the fridge and grabbed out the cheeses, Romano, ricotta, and mozzarella. Her lasagna was always a cheese lover's dream. She set to work assembling the dish and was done in a few minutes. She put the foil over it and slipped it into the oven and set the timer.

Emma thought she would turn back to her after the work was done, but Regina just went to the fridge and started to pull out ingredients for a salad. Emma smiled to herself when she saw the spinach land on the counter. But that didn't change that Regina wasn't talking to her. She was torn between prodding Regina and just let her deal with the stuff that was going on in her head on her own. Sometimes it was what she needed to just be left alone and sometimes it was the last thing.

Regina put her knife down in the middle of chopping tomatoes into little pieces so Henry would eat them. "You're sure that's the time frame of your conception?"

Emma nodded. "Yeah, Whale confirmed it this week. I'll have the first ultrasound in about three weeks to establish the due date and make sure the heart's beating and stuff. Why?"

The brunette turned away again. She finished chopping the tomato and threw it into the salad bowl. She washed the spinach with quick movements and put it into the salad spinner to dry. Every movement was a little jerkier than normal. What in the world was going on in her head.

"Regina?"

Regina sighed and poured the now dry spinach into a bowl. "You say that you haven't had sex in six months and yet your two months pregnant. Two months ago you and I joined our magic together to defeat Maleficent and crew. You think magic is the reason why you're pregnant. I've never heard of anyone out of a true love couple getting pregnant on magic alone, and you and I most certainly aren't true loves, but…" She trailed off and shook her head, chopping up a few pieces of red onion to throw into the salad.

"But?"

"You're the child of true love, true love incarnate really, and I'm one of the most powerful practioners of magic to ever live. It's not so far outside of the realm of possibility that those two things combined might have been enough to create a life within you in the backlash of fighting those idiots."

Emma scrunched her brow. "So wait, what you're saying is that you think that you might be the father of my baby?"

Regina started to peel carrots like she was about to murder them, not put them in a salad. "Yes, Miss Swan, I think so. I think you should get a DNA test on the child to confirm of course, but if you're telling the truth it would make the most sense. Asexual reproduction is still not a thing for humans with or without magic. Even with magic there has to be some sort of impetus, a combination of DNA, magical or otherwise to create life. So. Therefore that is the most probable solution, don't you think."

"Well, better than me being the next Virgin Mary, don't you think?"

At that Regina laughed and suddenly all the tension in the room evaporated with the sound. Emma grinned at Regina, still making a salad as if this conversation wasn't happening at all.

"Yes dear, I do believe it's a much better explanation than that," Regina said as she calmed down.

Emma nodded and went quiet for a little while. "Wait, does this mean the kid calls you Dad?" Her lips quirked up into a shit eating grin.

Regina rolled her eyes. "I'm sure we'll figure out something for the child to call me, Emma. We've already raised one together, I suppose another wouldn't hurt."