Bluest of Grey Skies

Chapter Twenty-Three

Regina stood at the sink in the bathroom and placed a hand over her lower abdomen. While the seven stitches were gone and the wound was healed, she still felt some pain and discomfort if she moved too quickly or turned the wrong way. She sighed, cupped her hands under the running water from the tap, and splashed her face, sighing again as she blindly reached for the towel hanging on the ring next to the sink.

It had been two weeks, two long weeks of being stuck in her parents' house while she recovered from the surgery that kept her from bleeding out. Two weeks of nights filled with nightmares and her beautiful, loving girlfriend doting on her almost every second of every day—when her mother wasn't trying to do the very same thing. She wanted to get out of there, to go back to where she now called home in Storybrooke, Maine. She felt suffocated being stuck in that house, her mother always hovering around and practically breathing down her neck.

"Regina?" Emma asked tentatively as she knocked on the bathroom door. "Your father and I just packed up the car. Are you ready to go?"

"I'll be out in a minute," she replied and she placed the towel back on the ring and shut off the tap.

The news of Robert Gold was everywhere and the details of the investigation the federal agents had conducted had been publically released. Regina was being called a hero for finding Henry Swan the day he went missing, a hero who nearly died in an attempt to save the young boy from his crazed captor. She didn't feel like a hero. She'd only done what she needed to do and she had been driven by her love for the boy right until she had collapsed on the dirty floor of the abandoned building she had found him in.

Her nightmares, however, were always the same and always of that very moment Felix plunged the dagger into her stomach and made a move towards Henry. Only in her nightmares she never pulled the trigger. Sometimes she had to watch him strangle the life out of the young toddler, other times he watched him slit his throat, or made him watch as he took her gun from her, placed it to her head and pulled the trigger. She woke up covered in sweat, gasping and panting with Emma tenderly stroking over her forehead and whispering that it was only just a dream.

Regina pulled open the bathroom door, not surprised to see Emma waiting out in the hallway for her. She was dressed in one of her cute sundresses despite the fact that it was nearing the end of October and she wore a black leather jacket over top. It was mismatched but it suited her and Regina just smiled as she leaned in to place a soft kiss upon her lips.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine, Emma," Regina replied and upon the worried look she received, she sighed and placed a hand over her lower abdomen, thankful the high waist pants she wore didn't aggravate the still healing scar. "I'm feeling a little sore today, but it's nothing to worry about."

"Are you sure?"

Regina nodded and wrapped her arms around the fretful blonde. "I'm sure, darling. I'm ready to go home," she whispered before kissing her again, letting her lips linger for a moment before she deepened the kiss.

It made butterflies take flight in her stomach just kissing Emma like that and she had to force herself to put a stop to it before her libido reminded her that it had been two weeks since she'd last known her lover's touch. She stepped back with a slight shake and lifted a hand to run it through her hair that was still damp from the shower she'd taken almost an hour before.

"I should go and say goodbye to my mother before we leave," Regina said and Emma just nodded and wiped at her lips idly. "I shouldn't be long, darling."

"Okay," Emma smiled at her. "I'll be outside by the car waiting for you."

Regina watched her head down the stairs before she made her way to her parents' bedroom at the end of the hall. She knocked tentatively before she heard her mother answer and she opened the door and stepped inside the room.