A short, little story about the future. Enjoy.
She was old and brittle now, Snow realized, as she listened to her feet tapping on the floor. One relatively quick tap and then a slow one to follow, a hearable proof of old age. Yet she smiled. Her skin was grey and wrinkled, her bones hollow, her thick ebony hair now white, thinned and dying. Soon she'd be bald, Snow'd joke, a bald, old lady. But David always exclaimed that maybe then, her name would finally fit. She missed that man. Her memories of him are amongst the only ones she recalls clearly. How they met, how they fell in love, how they ruled and grew older together. She remembers Emma and Neal and their children. But slowly her memory had started fading. Memories that weren't as dear as others had become colorless and soundless, quietly disappearing until they were actually gone. It crept up on her. The first time she realized was a couple of years ago, when she couldn't find her room in the castle she grew up in.
She stood and watched the ocean-waves, smelled the salty air and felt the wind blow it through her ever diminishing amount of hair. She loved moments like these. And when Emma interrupted them, she loved it even more. Emma was old too with her blond hair now and then highlighted with grey, her own set of wrinkles and the first signs of deafness plaguing her.
"Hey ma." She said, joining her mother. "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"
"Yes." Snow agreed. "Beautiful."
It was smalltalk, they both knew it. But they also knew that everything had already been said. Life was perfect as it was, yet soon it would end for the elder one. The magic that had kept Snow frozen in time for twenty-eight years had taken it's toll a decade or two ago, rapidly aging her. David passed away, as did Regina. The woman, who looked as though she couldn't be a day over forty, mother to four young children, suddenly became tired. She fell asleep on the couch and not an hour later, she stopped breathing. David grew tired but it took almost a day before he joined Regina. Gold told them, in his final, short little minutes, that everyone was given a certain amount of time. And theirs was over. Along with them, Hook, Granny, Archie, Whale and a lot of others passed too. Those who remained found themselves to be the age they should've been, if not for Regina's curse.
"Are you thinking about him?"
Snow smiled. "Regina, actually."
"Would she have liked being back?"
Snow shook her head. "No. She would've hated it. Especially this palace." She smirked and took a breath. "She tried to burn it down once, you know. But ancient magic protected it. She was so mad she turned around and set the sea on fire. It burned for a day."
"How?"
Snow shrugged. "She just did."
"I miss her." Emma said.
"I do too."