AN: I don't own Once Upon a Time or it's characters. As I don't know what is going to happen in Season 3 this is completely take from my own imagination.
Okay. So I mentioned something in my Final Curse story which stuck in my head about Neverland and the Lost Boys. As I thought about it I realised that technically the Accidental Curse story could be preceding the Final Curse one (I won't know until I finish writing them, so don't take it as written in stone that it will happen) and therefore there was room for another story in-between. I don't know why I write things darting between the past and present but that's not important.
This story starts with Regina being left in Neverland - her choice - but may end up back in Storybrook. If it doesn't, then I'll probably be writing a fourth OUAT story on here because the ideas are just multiplying.
All mistakes are my own - let me know what you think!
She had been rejected by Owen, rejected by Henry and now she was being asked to allow herself to love an entire island filled with boys? Never mind that they had probably been living there for longer than she had been alive. They said they needed her and that they wanted her to stay and be their mother.
Regina looked towards Hook's ship. That was the alternative. To go back to Storybrook with Emma's happy little family reunion, and be pushed further out of Henry's life by his brand new parents. And the journey! Could she face another month or two just to get back there with the entire Charming family? No.
So she stood on the shore, bare feet against the golden sand, and waved goodbye to everyone she had ever known, the last reminders of her old life.
She had allowed her hair to grow long again, using magic to speed it up after they reached Neverland and it's amazing anti-aging effects. It streamed freely away from her face in the refreshing wind as she climbed back over the rocks towards the children waiting for her. They seemed a little in awe of her, partly because she was a grown-up and partly knowing that she had been a mother to Henry. For once she didn't want to be the parent who scolded and made the rules. As one of the smaller boys reached out for her hand, she smiled. Perhaps she didn't have to be the same type of mother to them as she had been to Henry. They had all shown that they could survive without parents. They just needed someone to love them and to care for them. She could offer to teach them whatever they didn't know, she could tell them stories – like the real version of the fairy tales, not the lies – and maybe this would be her happy ending.