Hello! Just a random little oneshot that came into my mind after watching episode 2x17 Welcome to Storybrooke [SPOILER FROM EPISODE 1X18 TO PRESENT]. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Sadly I don't own anything but my old little laptop and my brain.

When is it that you change?

That from being a daughter you start becoming a mother? I had never known, never understood.
Never, until that day.

When I was a child, my mother never enjoyed being with me, just as I never enjoyed being with her… I could spend long hours with my father and never tire of him. We could go walking, riding, or even just sit in front of the fire and talk: we never ran out of things to tell each other; if we stopped it was either because my mother called for me or because he had taken me in his arms and I had drifted off to sleep, my head abandoned on his chest, listening to his steady, comforting heartbeat.
Cora and I were never this close. Of course, she was the one who taught me most of the things I know about being a woman but for her, or at least so I believed, our relationship was never about love. I was her apprentice, the one she had to always force one way or another. I didn't know what having a mother was supposed to feel like and nothing in her suggested that being one is one of the best sensations in the world.
This is one of the reason I had never desired, or even considered, motherhood.

If I ever thought about children it was during my brief, yet wonderful, relationship with Daniel. But I didn't really want a baby to call my own: I wanted to give my fiancé a family, something that would have made him happy and even more in love with me. I wanted a happy ending.
When he died, all these wishes, all these dreams, died with him.

For a long time revenge was all I had, the only thought in my mind. It consumed me and made me forget everything else. A child, either the king's or, later, the huntsman's, would have been in my way.

When I woke up that day, in a different bed, in a different house, in a different world, I knew something inside me had changed. For a few days, seeing that all the people I hated were where I wanted them to be, doing what I wanted them to do, made me happy. I was finally free: the urge that had eaten away my heart for years had finally been appeased. However, as a wise man of this land once said, fulfilling a wish may give you a pleasure that can, for a little while, make you able not to feel any pain; but life is a circle: pain will come back and with it a new wish.
I started to feel bored, seeing the same day and night repeat themselves over and over, so knowing I needed something, but not knowing what, I clung to the only shred of novelty in the whole town: Kurt and his son Owen.

If in my desperation I hadn't found the red and green scoubidou in my pocket I would probably just have wasted away. Today I still think it's incredible how a couple of strings tied together, given to me by a boy I had just met , made me realize what I was missing in my life: love. I couldn't love another man, not after Daniel, but loving a boy would not mean I was betraying his memory, right?

I invited Kurt and Owen to dinner. Maybe the child's dislike of my cooking should have put me off, but it didn't. he didn't cower before me like everyone in town. He was real. Preparing dessert with him I had more fun than I'd had in years, until, innocently he asked me the question: "So… how come you're not a mom?"

Could I tell a child I'd never thought about it? Could I tell him that the only one I could have pictured myself starting a family with had been killed in front of my eyes by my own mother?

"Just… didn't work out that way, I guess"

It was that day, that moment, actually, that I understood that I would have like it to work out that way. That I wanted to be a mother, more than I had ever wanted anything.

But I knew so little about love, for so long I'd been incapable of it… I tried to take the boy away from his father and he rejected me and ran. Sometimes I still feel the tears burning my cheeks, while I watch him be escorted away by two policemen.

Little Owen, where are you now? I followed your suggestion, I am now a mom to a fantastic boy, Henry.
Although my mistakes have driven him away from me, just like they did you, I know that somehow he still loves me and he is the world to me. I will keep trying hard so that one day I will be worth of him.

Dear Owen, wherever you are, thank you, for my change, my road to become a mother, began with you.

Hope it was all right! I really think Regina's born to be a mother, she has so much love to give... even if her mother and dear old Rumple have fucked her up pretty badly, I still think she will be able to redeem herself for her boy.
In case any of you were wondering, the "wise man from this land" is philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Since I'm by no means an expert in his philosophy, let me know if I got it wrong.
As you may have noticed I'm not a native speaker and I don't have a beta. I apologize in advance for any typo, grammar or vocabulary mistake you'll find, I know how unpleasant they can be.

Review and let me know what you think!
Until next time! :)