Missed Opportunities & Wonderland
Jefferson had a lot to think about in his manor in Storybrooke—or at least a lot of time to think. To remember. What else was he supposed to do? Watching his daughter wasn't something he could do all day, and sleeping only brought nightmares of Wonderland.
His memories were all that he had. At least in the waking world he had some control over what he thought about.
Sometimes he thought about things that could have been.
Rumplestiltskin could have been Regina's father.
Snow White could have been her daughter.
Jefferson could have been her friend.
Her peer.
Her shoulder. Her rock. Her anything that wouldn't end with her smile slipping away to the depth's of hell, and his head getting cut off.
Instead, he had been foolish enough to become her lover.
There had been too much laughing and too much smiling for him to realize the mistakes that he was making—that they were both making. What they were doing (the affair) was wrong, of course. That much was obvious.
How were they to know that the queen cheating on her husband with a good-for-nothing thief would end in disaster? Well, maybe if Jefferson had thought about it in those words at the time, they wouldn't have had an affair at all.
Who was Jefferson kidding?
Of course they would have had an affair. He would've run around the world just to see her smile, whether or not The Dark One stuck his nose into the future and said that what they were doing was a terrible idea.
Maybe the problem wasn't been that he'd loved Regina.
Maybe the problem was that he'd lost her.
Jefferson's thoughts back him back to Wonderland, before the place had been poisoned for him forever. He'd taken Regina there on a whim to show her someplace beautiful. She'd been crying when he jumped out of his hat and into his chambers, and it had been the quickest fix he'd been able to think about to make her happy.
The bright colors and dancing flowers had made her smile, and she'd even laughed when they'd been invited to tea by a walrus. In this world, so far away from Regina's responsibilities, he could walk with his arm around her and not fear discovery by the royalty of The Enchanted Forest.
Regina could lean her head on his shoulder, and they could kiss each other in front of an especially pretty grove of trees for no other reason that they were terribly young, and hopelessly infatuated with one another.
The end of the day, if Jefferson recalled it correctly, had taken them back to near where the door back to the Enchanted Forest was watching for them. They were enjoying the last of a picnic that Regina had packed them from the castle kitchens (even then, Jefferson knew not to trust the food of Wonderland) and he was making her laugh with an old story about things that he'd seen before meeting her.
It was then that he missed an opportunity.
As she sighed happily and pressed her face into his shoulder, Regina spoke.
"I wish that we could stay her forever." She murmured.
"Oh, I don't know." He put an arm around her. "I hate Wonderland, really."
He felt her tense and frown against his shoulder, and hated himself for, in a moment of cowardice, swallowing the words that he really wanted to say.
Then run away with me.
In Storybrooke, in the present day where he had to live with everything that had gone wrong, Jefferson wondered if he'd made a mistake.
