A/N: Hello dears! In honor of the end of an era on our screens, I have decided to post this little story I have been sitting on for a while. I hope you like it. It will be a multi-chapter story. No promises on how soon I will update but the second chapter is already written if that helps.
I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart how much I love SwanQueen and Swen! It has been an honor to write stories that these characters deserve. I hope to continue doing that as long as you continue to read them. Remember, SwanQueen belongs to Swen! Always has... always will.
Housekeeping-I do not own these characters and mean no harm by using them, however any OC's and the story itself are mine.
Thanks as always to Jenn for reading and helping me with my thoughts and thank you to Teresa... for your seemingly endless faith in my abilities. I adore you!
"Thank you for meeting with me Ms. Mills. I was afraid you wouldn't." Bud Hollingsworth took a seat and blew a cooling breath across his much too creamed coffee. He may as well have ordered hot milk.
"Well, I admit, I was skeptical at first. I'm not really sure what Wish Granters could possibly want to talk to me about." Regina sipped her vanilla chai and studied the man across from her.
When Bud had called last week, asking to meet with her, she had turned down the request outright. But after researching and finding he was indeed a representative of the Wish Granters of America organization that was responsible for giving children with terminal illness the one thing they longed for as they battled disease, she had accepted his request to meet.
Still, research or not, she had decided against having him to her home a few blocks from White Point Garden in Charleston's historic district. She wasn't a complete idiot. Meet strangers in public places or not at all. That was just common sense.
So they had opted to meet up in a coffee shop. Tourists were few here. Most of the folks lounging in over-stuffed chairs or seated at small tables in mismatched chairs, hunched over laptop computers were locals—writers, students and the like. Regina liked to come here to write while Henry was at school. She liked the feeling of people all around and yet complete isolation as she withdrew into the worlds she created in her short stories.
Regina waited for the man to begin. He was short and stout, wearing a suit that seemed overly formal for the exposed brick and copper tiled ceiling of Bluestone Café where they were sitting. She pinched the corner off a lemon square impatiently while the man cleaned his glasses with his tie and fumbled with a folder in his tattered messenger bag.
"Mr. Hollingsworth, I don't wish to be rude, but I do have other appointments today." Regina said with her most neutral smile. Not too warm, not too distant… just the sort of smile that had won her the political hearts of her town in Maine. Just the smile that had made her PTA president three years in a row when Henry started school after the move south. Just the sort of smile that those who knew her well knew not to play around with. It seemed to do the trick.
"Yes, of course, I'm sorry. I know this must seem quite cloak and dagger to you. I really do have something to share. I just seem…" He tugged on the folder. It was hung on something. "I just… seem…" Tug. "To be…" Tug. "Having some trouble…" Tug. Finally it was free. "There we are. Now. The reason we are here."
The man laid the maroon colored folder on the table and his soft hands atop it. Regina wrinkled her nose unconsciously. She didn't trust men with soft hands. Daniel had calloused hands. He worked hard to make a good life for them and he was a whiz with money and numbers but he still managed to work with his hands enough so they felt rough in her own. Why had that always been a comfort to her? Strange.
Daddy had rough hands too.
"Do you recall a girl you went to school with in Storybrooke by the name of Emma Swan?" Hollingsworth's voice cut through her thoughts and pulled her back into the moment.
She frowned in concentration. "Emma Swan? No. I don't think so. Should I?"
The man shook his head. "Not really. She tells me she was a year behind you and was not exactly in your social circle. I take it you were quite popular." He smiled, meaning no harm.
"Homecoming queen, class president, most likely to succeed. I suppose some would say I was popular. But being the top dog in a small school like mine was a little but like wetting yourself in dark trousers. You get a warm feeling but the rest of the world scarcely notices." Regina winked a little awkwardly at the man. For all her charm and appeal, winking wasn't her strong point. But her awkward attempts she had even found useful in her arsenal of manipulations while clawing her way to the top in life. It was disarming, endearing and set people at ease.
"I believe Miss Swan said as much. About your long list of accomplishments. Not about… wetting oneself." A hint of an embarrassed blush appeared on already too rosy cheeks.
"So what does any of this have to do with Wish Granters or with me? I thought you only did things for children. What am I missing?" Regina pressed on with the conversation.
"First of all, in the interest of full disclosure I must tell you that, while I am an agent and employee of Wish Granters of America, I am not acting as an agent of WGA today. This meeting is strictly off the record. We do not grant wishes for adults. However, when I spoke to Miss Swan, there was just something about her that… Are you sure you don't remember her?" He held out a photo of a blonde woman, perhaps thirty-five years old. She was very attractive and smiling. Regina looked longer than was strictly necessary to assure the man she was taking this seriously.
"I'm afraid I don't know her. Perhaps she's changed since high school?" She pinched another corner from her square and licked it from her finger.
"I did try to find a photo from your yearbook but it seems there is no record of her, pictorial record that is. She was indeed a classmate. You were a senior when Miss Swan moved in with a foster family temporarily in Storybrooke before she was placed permanently in a group home until she was eighteen. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Those facts should be things you discuss with her—"
"With her? When would I talk to her? I don't even know her." Regina was growing impatient and her temper was threatening to spill over her amenable façade. "Let's cut to the chase, shall we Mr. Hollingsworth? What is this about?"
The man cleared his throat. "She's dying."
Regina nodded. "I had assumed since that is the nature of your business." Seeing the man eyeing her with judgement, she went on. "I do not mean to sound indifferent to her plight. I am not. I am sorry she is sick, but I don't understand what that has to do with this meeting or with me."
"Eight years ago, Miss Swan was diagnosed with an aggressive ovarian cancer. With surgery and treatment she was able to beat the odds and has been in remission. However, the cancer… well, it has returned. She hasn't been given much hope." The man took a sip of his hot milk coffee. "She has decided to forgo all treatment and enjoy her remaining days without the, as she called it, hell of healing with modern medicine."
Regina frowned. Why wouldn't the woman at least try to live if that was an option? But then, she had almost given up when…
No. You wouldn't have given up because of Henry.
"That's terrible. I'm so sorry." Regina softened to the story of the stranger in the photograph.
"Well, now I come to why I am here. Miss Swan came to our offices on a last chance mission. She had been searching for you for some time with little luck. We, of course, could do nothing to assist her officially, but I have been, on my own time, doing what I could." Bud Hollingsworth suddenly became more than an overdressed man with soft hands and Regina felt a mild pang of guilt for her judgment.
"Ms. Mills, please hear me out before you say anything. This young woman is living her last moments and the only thing she wants in the world is something only you can give her."
Regina shook her head, bewildered. "But what can she possibly want from me?"
Hollingsworth let out a long, slow sigh. "To be perfectly honest, she… well…" He steeled himself and finally said what he'd come here to say.
"Her last wish is to spend the night with you."