Disclaimer: They are not mine. All plot holes, poor storyline continuity, and money belong elsewhere.
My most infuriating Swan,
At some point, dates begin to lack meaning. The minutes always turn into hours, which turn into days, which become decades. One passes to the next more quickly than you could hope to blink, and, if you try to linger to long on any given second, your life is nothing more than a never-ending game of catch up. But, there are moments, thankfully few, which grab hold and shake you loose. They dig and burrow beneath your skin, making a home for themselves in your gut, in your heart, until they're as much a part of you as the very air you breathe. They sear themselves in your consciousness, and you could spend an eternity trying to scrub them clean without success. After twenty-eight years, I had forgotten the day. The day the curse began no longer mattered; it became the ephemeral 'beginning' that mother's whisper to children in the dark, that pastors speak so solemnly of from their perch. The day no longer mattered because it just was.
And then you came. You turned up and from the first moment I laid eyes on you, the date had weight. You smiled, and I was lost, despite the unfettered terror and rage that such an intrusion wrought. In one fell swoop you destroyed everything, threatened everything, and yet, and yet I couldn't dig you out. I couldn't pry you loose. My son pulled further and further away, and I hated you for the way you still made my chest ache. It has been one year to the minute, since I first laid eyes on you, and in three hundred and sixty-five long days, I have thought of you on each of them. And I have hated the weakness you bring out in me on each and every one of them. You stole my son, took the very thing you threw away as if you had some right, a right you waived with the swipe of a pen. And I hate you for it. I hate you for being yet another White that forced themself on me; it has become a most unfortunate family trait. However, despite all of it, I yearn for you. You have lived under my skin for one full year and I can no longer imagine a world without you there. And I loathe myself for it. But an unpleasant truth its still just that, a truth. I know full well nothing will ever be. Your parents, our past, Henry, who I am and always will be; all of it acts to destroy the small flicker of hope his light brought to my life and your sheer presence fanned so carelessly. And perhaps, if I am very lucky, this will be the end of it. Perhaps, with this finished, I will be fortunate, and my heart will shut. Perhaps this day can become just some other day again. Perhaps. Though, to be fair, fortune has never been on my side, I will let myself hope just this one last time. Perhaps tonight I will sleep free of your infuriatingly beautiful smile. Perhaps tomorrow my heart won't race when you barrel into my office, demanding time with my son, eyes blazing and flushed. Perhaps I will wake up and this entire year will have been a nightmare and I go can back to being moderately content. Perhaps tomorrow I will love you no longer. A fool's hope is better than no hope at all, and so a fool I shall gladly be.
Forever and non-consensually yours,
Regina
"Ms. Swan! Just because my son let's you into my home does not meet you can just make yourself at home in any room of my hou—"
Emma looked up, red rimmed and jaw wide, the loose-leaf paper limp in her twitching hand. She lifted it up, her name hanging over her wrist, smudged under the rub of her thumb.
Regina looked at her desk, saw the riffled papers, and looked back again. "Fuck."