AN: Set vaguely in Season 3b with some unspecified adjustments to overall plot and timeline. Title from 'Some Nights' by Fun.
For Lolly and Justine; happy late birthday, lovelies!
she stops my bones from wondering just who i am
She reads him their story.
"In case I forget," he says, offering her a small smile.
He'll forget, though.
He always does.
.
It's only a little at first – just bits and pieces of the past week that he can't quite grasp. She thinks perhaps he's just getting old, that they both are. They've spent so long suspended in time that maybe their years are finally catching up to him. Anyone could forget to buy milk at the store, or who's taking the night shift.
Little lapses in memory are normal.
She tells herself this, repeats it over and over again as she slips into the shower and lets the hot water wash over her skin, soothing the aches and pains of pregnancy. It's normal to need to tell him that his shaving cream is under the sink; normal for him to stare vacantly at his wedding band, as if trying to remember when it had been returned to him. Normal.
"Snow?"
She peeks around the shower curtain to find him examining his face in the mirror, razor abandoned on the counter. "What's wrong?"
He prods at the familiar scar on his chin – the scar she'd given him, all those years ago – tracing the line with his fingertip. "When did I get this?"
.
Turns out, it isn't normal after all.
It's a side effect, Snow and Regina decide; the price of the magic that returned Henry's memory. "There's always a price."
"I know," Snow sighs, and strokes her hand over the swell of her belly. "I know. He knows. He'd do it again, even if he knew-" She bites her lip. If he knew this would happen; if he knew the price for Henry's memory would be his own. He'd do anything for his family – even forget them. "Can you do anything?" she asks, putting on a brave face, even though she feels anything but.
Regina smiles sadly and squeezes Snow's arm, looking nothing at all like the woman who spent so long vowing to destroy her, and so much like the one who'd saved her life all those years ago. "I can try."
.
He doesn't quite understand why Regina is there, poking and prodding at him like some sort of experiment, but he endures it, grunting as she plucks a strand of his hair and stirs it into a vial of potion, turning the liquid as dark and thick as ink.
"It's okay," Snow soothes, sliding her hand into his. "She's here to help." Regina can fix him, she thinks with all the foolish optimism she can muster. If anyone can fix him, it would be Regina.
Emma hovers over Regina's shoulder, and they speak in hushed tones, their backs turned as they rifle through a collection of potions. "... broken it before," she hears Emma say.
"... not a curse."
"But there has to be something …"
"… I can't …"
Snow's heart sinks at that, and she wonders how much longer this will go on; how much he'll forget before he's lost to her forever. He wouldn't regret it, she knows. He's proven time and time again that he'll give his life – charge headfirst into danger with no heed for himself – to protect his family. He's been lucky – lucky to be saved by the curse, barely clinging to life; lucky to have returned from Neverland unscathed. It was only a matter of time before the world caught up with him, and now, Snow thinks as she swallows past the lump in her throat, while he may not have lost his life, instead he's slowly losing himself.
"So?" Snow prompts impatiently.
Emma bites her lip, looking just as hopelessly lost as Snow feels, and as Regina turns, she looks genuinely sorry.
"We knew there'd be a price," Regina sighs. "And the price of magic – it can't be reversed. There's nothing I can do."
"A price?" Charming frowns. "Price for what?"
.
Time passes, and just as their child grows within her, the gaps in his memory grow as well. Each morning, there's something new missing, some little piece of him – of their life – lost forever.
They have a plan though. One afternoon when he takes Henry to the stables, Belle brings over every book she can find on Alzheimer's, and they pore over them together – Snow, Emma, Red and Belle – four women learning any and every trick there is. The symptoms aren't exact – magic doesn't bother itself with the laws of medicine – but they're close enough.
They write scripts, pages and pages of notes on their life, of the things he's forgotten, or might forget tomorrow.
They never know.
.
"Maybe you should read him the book?" Henry suggests one evening when the rain is pounding hard against the glass.
So she does.
But it isn't just the two of them. Before she knows it, they're in bed with Henry wedged between them and Emma curled up by their feet, the quilt around her like a cloak.
"Once upon a time," she reads, "there was a shepherd who became a prince …"
.
They never know what he'll forget next. The progression isn't linear, follows no patterns laid out by magic or science. Some days, nothing seems to change, and others …
"Snow?"
"Mm?" she hums, stirring awake and squinting against the mid-morning sun.
He draws his hand over the generous swell of her belly, something indiscernible passing over his face as a tiny foot rises to meet his palm. Their child is growing within her; a fact he'd still been very aware of the day before – hovering over her protectively as he pressed delicate kisses to the skin below her navel.
But now his face is lined with confusion, his hand trembling against her, staring at her just as he had that first morning they'd woken in Storybrooke, memories wiped clean of any trace of their new addition.
"Is there something you want to tell me?"
.
At first, she enjoys it - telling him every morning that he's to be a father (again). Every time – once he's passed the point of dumb confusion – he wraps her up in his arms, pressing joyful kisses to her face, then bends to do the same to her growing bump. It's a surprise wonderful enough to bring light against the shadow of his ever-worsening condition; a glimmer of hope in the darkness.
And then one morning – not even a week later – she doesn't wait to tell him, doesn't smile through tears as she recites her script, her explanation of what has happened, of what their life is now. She doesn't get the chance. No, instead they wake to the sound of a baby crying, and the confusion on his face is enough to break her heart.
" 's that?" he murmurs, voice thick from sleep as he blinks against the early morning glow. "Is that a baby?"
She smiles sadly, and pushes herself from the bed, suppressing a groan at the soreness weighing on her body. "Come on," she says, and strokes the hair from his eyes. "It's time to meet your son."
.
He doesn't get better.
Not that she ever really thought he would, but Snow has always been firm in the belief that combined, hope and true love create the most powerful magic of all. Unfortunately, there are some things even magic can't fix; some things just as irreversible as death.
He forgets Henry first, frowning as he finds the boy pouring himself a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. " 'morning Gramps," and Charming blinks, his mind working through the story, the cast of players in his life.
"Hey kid," he replies uncertainly, then looks to Snow for confirmation.
But Henry just frowns into his breakfast.
He knows.
.
It isn't soon after that he forgets Emma too.
It isn't long before there's nothing left of what their lives had been; before everything's changed.
.
He isn't lost, though. Not entirely. Just as there had been that ache of something undeniably Charming in David Nolan, in that husk of a man she'd found by the toll bridge; just as Charming was never really gone, there are some things that never change.
There's the sound of his voice as he coos softly to his son; the deep laughter that fills the room as he and Emma share a bottle of whiskey. There's the inevitable crash of whatever he and Henry have broken in their most recent adventure; the comfortable silence of doing chores side by side. There's the unmistakable, almost tangible love he has for the family he can't even remember.
(There's also the rough groan of her name as his lips press against her ear; the sensation of skin on skin, of him on her and her on him and of two becoming one. There's the pounding of his heart beneath her palm, beneath her ear; the ridges of his spine beneath her fingertips and the taste of his mouth on hers. There's Snow and Charming, and Mary Margaret and David; there's them, undeniably and unendingly finding one another in the dark.)
There's love; strong, true and eternal.
Love; constant and real.
.
And so she reads him their story.
"In case I forget," he says, and his smile nearly breaks her heart.
"It's a very long story," she says, the weight of the book familiar in her lap, the heavy leather binding cracked and torn. She thinks of nets and bridges, of apples and coffins. She thinks of a tiny baby cradled in her arms, of the beautiful young woman watching from the doorway. "Where should I begin?"
"At the start," he replies. "You can finish – when I wake up."
When he wakes, she thinks. When he wakes frightened and confused. She'll finish when he wakes, and then she'll start again as if it's the first time. Over and over, she'll tell him the story of the Troll Bridge; of the apple and the fall. She'll tell him of a curse and three realms, of a child that would be a savior, of the family he loves enough to forget.
She's barely made it through one chapter when he drifts off against her shoulder; another day lost, and yet another to come.
"… for it was here, in the shadow of the Troll Bridge, that their love was born; where they knew, no matter how they were separated, they would always find one another."
.
"Snow."
She wakes, the sound of his voice pulling her from sleep. "Charming," she breathes, and reaches out to touch his cheek. "What do you remember?"
"You," he says, and turns to press a kiss to her palm.
And she smiles, because even when all else is lost – when his life is nothing but a forgotten dream – he remembers her.
He always does.