WANTED: email pen-friend, preferably female, no pictures, no private details exchanged, willing to pay $100/month for substantial conversation. Contact at Her-Majesty .com
The advertisement, in retrospect, is a mistake – but Regina is aching for company. Sixteen years under the Dark Curse and she's ready to go mad. Everyone is terrified of her and if they aren't, well, that's only because Regina knows how to reward her loyal guards. Frankly however, if Regina becomes insane enough to seek out those people – knowing that they're simple guardsmen or she actually has the potential to enjoy their company because she liked their true selves – then there really is something wrong. Even an insane Regina should know not to approach her subordinates in such a manner.
The first week, there are spammers, sending her viruses or thrice-daily offers on deals for things like lawnmowers and insurance. Regina had made a new email specifically for this endeavour and is glad she did – deleting it will at least stop her inbox from filling up so quickly, easily outnumbering the actual emails she gets, no different from yesterdays, literally.
Then: an actual reply.
Dear Her-Majesty,
Hi. I saw your ad in the paper and I hoped the offer was still available? I'm female, but because you asked for no private details to be exchanged, is that okay? Sorry if this is too short, you probably have so many other people asking for a hundred dollars a month for some emails.
From, swanknightforever
The email is from swanknightforever and it surprises Regina enough that she actually decides to reply.
Dear swanknightforever,
Thank-you for replying to my advertisement. The offer is available, though I would hope that for the money I'm offering, there would be more than just 'some emails'. I work as a high-ranking town official in a small town where everybody knows my name and what horrible a fate I could bring them should they anger me. I do not have friends and my family has long since left me, one way or another.
By 'private details', I was referring to details that could potentially reveal who either of us are – so no names, places or other such specific pieces of information.
If you would like to go through a trial period of back-and-forth emails, involving at least four substantial emails per week for a fortnight, then please reply to this email appropriately.
Regards, Her-Majesty.
Swanknightforever takes exactly two minutes to reply. Her answer is long and spiralling. It starts by agreeing to the trial period, before – as if she were speaking rather than typing, with thankfully few spelling mistakes – going on about having her first pizza in three years from a takeaway on a bus stop, only to be shouted at a bus-driver when one stopped in front of her. They'd mistaken her intentions, ranting and raving at her for wanting to bring food on their bus and she throwing a piece in their face in retaliation.
Regina replies, detailing her amusement but adding that perhaps, she should refrain from eating at bus stops from now on. Swanknightforever, heartily agrees, though notes that bus-stops are usually drier than walls. She goes on to tell another story – I've got LOADS, don't worry about me running out of material! – about the one time when her foster-brother convinced her seven-year old self it was a good idea to pretend to be falling out of the window. She'd climbed out, hanging on by the tips of her fingers, before calling for the foster-mother, who screamed upon seeing her dangling, startling her into actually letting go.
To Regina's annoyance, she leaves it at that and later, when she's home from the town hall, she replies with gusto, asking what happened and the next day, getting a reply informing her that seven-year old self had taken a trip to the emergency room and then to another foster-home, after the foster-parents discovered that she'd deliberately climbed out. Swanknightforever doesn't know what happened to her foster-brother, but they'd been on the verge of adopting him, so he might have stayed.
After a fortnight and a half, Regina replies with a post-script, giving swanknightforever a new email to reply to and asking for her bank details so she can send her fifty dollars and after another four weeks of emailing, a subsequent hundred.
Swanknightforever then handily informs her – via her new email, Queen-of-Evil .com – that she doesn't have bank details.
It presents a conundrum that swanknightforever handles herself, providing a drop-box address and telling her to take the postage out of her payment. Regina takes a few days to get that sorted out on her end, however, as Storybrooke is, of course, cut off from a lot of major systems. However, adding a drive to the nearest town every fourth Tuesday to her schedule gives Regina the chance to test her limits.
The emails continue, swanknightforever providing her some entertainment and Regina experiments with her ability to leave town – but she isn't like Ruby Lucas, who throws a temper tantrum every few years and gets herself into a car crash, along with giving Granny herself a heart-attack. It's a cruelness that Regina didn't ever expect but, well…
How would they stay in town otherwise?
There comes a point where Regina realises there's a trend in swanknightforever's emails. Looking back at their emails – rereading them, laughing a little but eventually falling quiet as her suspicions mount up – the former queen realises that her friend has had as hard a life as she has. Stories about being yelled at, tricked, manipulated by both strangers and people she should have been able to trust inspires Regina to write far more carefully than she has before.
Swanknightforever, a far more perceptive person than Regina thinks, points it out and asks what's going on.
Regina replies truthfully, that all of swanknightforever's emails point to an unhappy life, no matter how interesting it might be to a complete stranger. She apologises, making sure to explicitly say that she does not pity her – Regina's own life has been far from happy and she knows that pity is far from anything she ever wanted or still wants, to this day.
Swanknightforever's email back takes a long time, technically breaking the rules she'd set up about emails per week – though certainly, she'd broken them before, but she still always gave Regina prior notice about the lack of internet – but eventually, she replies with a new story, absolutely disregarding Regina's previous correspondence. Keeping the peace between them, Regina doesn't mention it again, but rather than simply express her thoughts and amusements in her replies, she gives her own small stories, telling swanknightforever about living elsewhere and adapting to America.
At one point, she even mentions her mother's treatment of her – of being emotionally abused, in less damning words – and if that doesn't show trust from Regina Mills, nothing does.
Swanknightforever inspires her outwith snappy retorts and pouring her heart out, though. Hearing about foster-care and what can happen even to the prettiest, the most blonde-haired and blue eyed girls – swanknightforever learns that Regina is a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl in reply – causes a different kind of unrest from loneliness. Eventually, she goes to Gold, who arranges the paper-work and argues his way around her supposed Latina designation, single relationship status and even how many hours she works. Despite how they hate each other, the man – somehow – appreciates the need, the want for children.
In the millennium, swanknightforever warns that her drop-box location is going to change a lot. Regina doesn't particularly mind, though she wonders if her friend is homeless, which truly, would be the least of all the things that have happened to her friend in the past. She even ramps up her hundred dollars a month to five, which swanknightforever appreciates more than she can articulate. She's in no way strapped for cash, her salary repeating over and over again in Storybrooke from a seemingly unknown source and her bank balance resetting- or maybe not even changing when she takes out swanknightforever's money. It's one of the things Regina doesn't take for granted, despite Storybrooke's closed-loop economy.
December: complete silence.
Regina gets worried, then angry. When February comes with no word – almost three months of no emails, no replies – Regina cuts off swanknightforever from her precious five hundred dollars a month. It takes another three weeks for Regina to regret it, frequently panicking that maybe the lack of money is ruining her life, that maybe she's stuck somewhere, that maybe she's even dead. She gets all the missing money and posts it to swanknightforever's drop-box, continuing to both email and post the money as the year progresses. Her only distraction – the only thing to take more of her attention – is the adoption agency she's signed with alerting her to a possible child.
On August nineteenth, he's born. Three weeks later, Regina takes him home from Boston, unable to stop smiling.
Henry Daniel Mills, my little prince.
It takes a lot of her attention and briefly, she stops emailing swanknightforever, for a few months. In late November, Regina starts again, writing to her friend and apologising for the stop in emails, though informs her that – still – she's been sending her money, worried about her. Regina, however, does not tell her about Henry. Henry is hers and she…she can't call him by another name for the sake of a privacy agreement.
It's best to not mention him at all.
February, Regina receives her first email from swanknightforever in over a year.
Dear Her-Majesty,
I am so sorry. Things happened, really bad things. My ex-boyfriend framed me for a job he did involving some stolen watches and I got eleven months in prison, though two of those months were spent being locked up still, while they argued my sentence. My lawyer tried really hard, but they lost. I had to get together some money to make the drive to my last drop-box – I nearly forgot where it was, I had to look really deep through our emails, which are all really, really sweet and nice (your ones, I mean, the new ones). I hope you can still forgive me, despite all the effort you've made over the last while. I'm really, REALLY sorry.
From, swanknightforever.
Comparing it to their previous emails, it's fairly short but Regina still sucks in a breath and puts a hand to her mouth because how? How could her friend be framed and still get chucked in prison? She emails back frantically, asking all her questions and ignoring all her work as she waits, looking after Henry and stressing. Swanknightforever doesn't reply for another two days, though, telling her about the entire thing and how she's only just tracked down another library to use the internet from – she has a car now, the same one she and her boyfriend apparently stole, but made legal now.
Regina's blood boils a little.
She's best friends with an actual felon?
Regina fumes over her replying, getting angry and ranting, but as soon as she goes to review the email for spelling errors, she deletes the entire thing and starts afresh, dictating her thoughts in a far more pleasant, if formal reply. She writes to swanknightforever and tells her about worrying, about thinking she might be dead or in a coma, about going through an entire year without contact.
Swanknightforever replies and at the end, she signs her name, Emma Swan.
"Hello," Regina starts when the phone picks up. "Is this Emma?"
A breathy, crackly laugh comes through the receiver. "Hi."
She has a deeper voice than Regina had imagined. Upon telling her so, Emma laughs again before agreeing, vice versa. Regina asks her about her day, Emma humming before replying.
"It's rainy, here. Sort of muggy. I'm in Tallahassee, that's in Florida."
"That's very far south of where I am," Regina notes quietly, before hearing Henry crying through the baby monitor. She listens to Emma describe it and her day, how she'd seen over four alligators and screamed each time, going up to Henry's room and interrupting Emma before she opens the door. "Sorry, but you might hear my son crying, just keep talking."
"You have a son, now?" Emma questions as she goes inside, putting the phone on speaker as she sets it down, picking Henry up. "Wowza, that's a screamer."
"Yes, he is," Regina says, leaning him on her body, over her shoulder. He keeps crying, a heavy, warm weight on her. "I adopted him, before you ask about a mystery partner I've never mentioned."
"Wow, god, I didn't- you, you adopted him?" Emma's voice is plain awe. She's quiet as Regina starts singing softly, voice deep and soft, Henry falling into a doze. "Regina?"
"Yes, Emma?"
"Why did you adopt him?"
"Your stories," Regina admits, picking up the phone and taking it off speakers, sitting carefully on the nursery's rocking chair. "I've always wanted to be a mother, but I can't – it was voluntary, because of how terrible my situation, at the time. I've told you how my mother arranged my first marriage?"
"Yeah- yeah, you did. Good thing you don't live in that country anymore."
"Very good." Regina feels something in her throat stick as she keeps going, Henry curling into her chest. It's still time for him to sleep – he's supposed to wake up at eight, with a second midnight bedtime so he sleeps nights. "I've been alone so long. You were, are my friend, but…I just wanted someone. Your stories of living in foster-care inspired me. I wanted to be a mother and I could be, a different way. Henry's the most important thing in my life, now and I've only regretted it enough to consider bringing him back once."
"Once is all it takes…" Emma says and Regina might have gotten angry, had she not understood how lonely Emma actually is – has always been.
"Henry Daniel Mills. I named him – adopted him as soon as I could. When he was born, I got a notification and I met him three weeks later for the first time. I took him home and I didn't want to ever let go…except that once, but when we pulled up outside the adoption agency, I couldn't do it. He's mine, my son, I'm his mother and I am never going to give him up, ever. He'll always come first, always."
"I hear you, I've got it. Henry comes first, always."
"Always."
In the summer before Henry's third birthday, mid-two thousand and four, Emma makes the drive up to Storybrooke, Maine, leaving Florida behind after two and a half years of waitressing and night-classes that Regina insisted she take after learning Emma was eighteen. Regina has a picture Emma sent of herself – the first one she'd ever seen of her, holding up her small graduation diploma, listing her twelfth grade-equivalent qualifications – and she has it framed, hanging on the wall near the fireplace, on the edge of a giant collage of pictures of Henry.
They meet on her doorway, Emma tugging nervously on the sleeves of a red leather jacket, blonde hair pulled back in a braid and Regina in a crisp black blazer and red dress, Henry on her hip, clinging like a limpet.
"Hi," she breathes, staring at her.
Regina stares for a long moment, feeling slightly overwhelmed at both the fact that she is finally meeting Emma Swan and that a stranger from another realm is in Storybrooke at her behest. Henry waves upon seeing her, peering at her curiously.
"Hello!" He says, before Regina quickly copies him. Emma chuckles, obviously tense. Regina can see a yellow Beetle in front of her gate and thinks, that's the car Neal left her.
"U, it's nice to finally meet you, I guess."
"Yes," Regina agrees, before motioning inside, "Would you like to come in? Do you have any bags?"
"Yeah, I'll just- I'll just go get them, if that's okay?"
Regina has already made up the spare bedroom for her, dusted and opened the window to air it. Showing the obviously impressed Emma around the house, Regina makes sure she knows where the bathroom is and where both Regina and Henry sleep before inviting her to help make dinner, having expected her a little later when she'd already finished. Henry gets sat in front of the television with his toys, Emma following Regina's instructions, setting out the table and stirring white sauce.
"You're all so put together," she mumbles at one point, when Regina is adding steamed vegetables to mince, garlic and chopped tomatoes.
"I suppose I am," Regina replies casually. "But I'm older than you. I've had time to get things organised and trust me, Henry keeps surprising me. Last week for instance, he decided he didn't like vegetables."
"I think every kid decides they don't like vegetables at some point."
"Yes, but this comes from a child who was only introduced to meat a month ago. He's developed an obsession for German sausage."
Emma gives an incredulous look, "Last month?"
"Yes. He's got enough teeth and is old enough to know not to swallow grapes whole. It was his favourite pastime," Regina rolls her eyes, as if each time he did it didn't give her a heart attack.
"I think you told me, over the phone once," Emma shakes her head, stirring the white sauce. "I used to do that, I think. I don't like grapes anymore."
"That's something we can agree on. Henry cries if we pass them in the supermarket, without picking them up."
Emma's lip quirks, "Kind of like me and pizza."
Regina gives Emma a serious look. "I am not buying frozen pizza for you while you live in this household. It's either home-fresh or nothing."
Emma's eyes widen. "Home-fresh?"