Hi!

So to save any confusion, I posted this story a year prior to me writing this now and I ended up stopping when Robin died because of one thing and another.

So here I am, hopefully a better writer than I was then, and taking each of these chapters down, fixing the many mistakes, putting them back up, and hopefully, finishing this story for you. :)

This one is for Lindsay, Millie, Chelsea and Verity.

Regina Mills is a powerful woman. She has always been a powerful woman. She was a powerful woman when Cora helped her to follow in her footsteps and begin buying property across the city, and she's still a powerful woman as she stands face to face with her ever growing son.

"Henry, you have four chapters of Wuthering Heights left and then you can put it down forever."

"But mom, Heathcliff is so.." he begins, before Regina cuts him off,

"Four chapters. That's it." She has to fight to hide her smile now, she knows Henry is about to begin a rant about the many flaws he feels the characters in Wuthering Heights have as proof that him finishing the book is some form of torture. A thought that makes her mouth tug at the hint of a proud smile because she knows, despite his protests, the very fact that he can have this argument about the characters in the Bronte novel at all proves he is reading it closely and understanding the plot line.

Henry lets out a loud, over exaggerated sigh to prove he still isn't happy, but slumps off to his room nonetheless. Regina doesn't chastise him for his dramatic behaviour though, she's too distracted by the teenage attitude he seems to be expertly developing every day. She casts a glance at the pencilled-in height chart she can see on the edge of the open kitchen door and gives a matching sigh to Henry's. How has he suddenly got to 14?

Regina's alarm goes off at 6:45 am. She rolls across her King sized bed, with a frustrated grunt. Of course being single and owning a king sized bed has benefits, but she struggles to see any of them as she has to roll all the way across it to be on the side where the alarm is angrily chiming at her. How does she always manage to end up on the side opposite to where the blasted thing sits? She reaches to turn it off and rubs her eyes. At least her morning fight with her quilt to find the alarm woke her up anyway.

She swings her legs off the bed to stand, ouch. Apparently not only has she travelled across her huge bed in the night, she has also hurt her neck in the process. She stretches it out as she stands, hoping it won't bother her all day. She knows she is a restless sleeper. Despite her efforts, she always wakes up with scatter cushions having fallen to the ground, pillows across the sheets and if she bothered to tie her hair up for bed, she would wake up with that everywhere too. She hadn't slept completely soundly since Daniel had died, and that had been 11 years.

Once she has showered and dressed, her and Henry sit at the table for breakfast. Boiled egg and toast cut into slices (or soldiers as they like to call them) to dip into the egg, and greek yoghurt with fruit and granola. The latter for Regina, of course. There's no way Henry would pass on his hearty breakfast for a yoghurt. Regina knows this is Henry's favourite breakfast, he'd loved it when he was little too. He went through a typical picky eater stage and runny boiled egg and soldiers had been the way to break it in the end. Regina achieved this by telling him his favourite story, the one she created about a queen and her prince, and how he needed to eat the meal because a prince always needs his soldiers. And, despite how old Henry got and how mature he began to act, he would always think of his Mama queen when he dipped the buttery soldiers into his egg.

Regina leaves the house half an hour before Henry does, and as always they are heading to the same destination, Storybrooke Forest School. Storybrooke Forest is the biggest school in the city, split into two halves. One half covers ages 4-11, and has its own deputy head, Miss Emma Swan, and the other half, Henry's half, covers ages 11-18, with Mr David Nolan as their deputy head. At the top of her two deputy heads is Regina. Although the institution basically runs as two schools, running them both is a job Regina knows very few people could do, and without infinite organisation and patience, she couldn't do it either.

She pulls into the carpark and reaches into her bag, wincing when her neck gives a sharp jolt of pain, she grabs her planner and sets the bag down again. She smiles at the cover, and touches the soft leather. Her initials are etched in gold in the top right hand corner and there is a gold feather across the centre of the cover. A gift from Daniel's parents, Henry's grandparents, when she had started the school term;

"To keep you more organised than our boy!" Catherine had said,

"Not that you'll need it, Gina, you always kept him straight" Robert then added, chuckling.

She flicks her thumb through the pages and turned to today's date,

"Okay, meeting at 11 with Mr Gold" she mutters, absent-mindedly massaging her neck with her free hand. "Then to prepare a short speech for Prize Giving evening this afternoon" she mumbles, making a mental note of her day, knowing full well that there's no way her day will only consist of these two things.

She pops the planner back into her bag and reaches into the passenger footwell to grab her black patent stilettos, making an effort move her neck as little as possible in the manoeuvre. She smiles as she recalls hearing some of the year 10 girls gossiping about Miss Mills and her work clothing. Regina always looks sharp for work, being a strong believer that her attire most definitely affects her attitude towards work as well as other's attitude towards her. Dress sloppy and get treated sloppy, she believes. No expense is spared when it comes to Regina's well tailored blazers and matching skirt/trouser combination. She always wears tall heels, making her feel a little stronger than her petite 5 foot 3 frame, and she teams this with either a cotton fitted button up blouse, or a silk one of the same style. She takes this belief right down to her underwear. If she is wearing a skirt, then she always wears a garter belt and suspenders. She knows this fashion seems to be reserved strictly for lingerie that has every intention of being seen by a member of the opposite sex, but she maintains that wearing the belt attached to black suspenders is the proper way to wear stockings. There's no ungainly wrenching up of the waistband mid afternoon when they've begun to lose their initial elasticity after a days wear.

She stalks across the car park and into the reception, greeting Ashleigh on her way in. Ashleigh gives her a smile but Regina knows that they aren't really friends. Regina feels an odd pang of emotion she can't quite put her finger on as she opens the door to her office. Running such a big school comes with a big number of staff; teachers, teaching assistants and then cooks, a librarian, the receptionists, there could be infinite possibilities for Regina to make friends with at least one of them. But she never has. Sure, there are staff members Regina would talk to in the staff room or on their christmas nights out or the odd leaving do, but never anyone Regina would send a text to or meet out of work.

She doesn't often linger on it, but when she does she decides that it's down to the combination of being a single mum to her ever demanding little prince, and the slightly frightening work persona she adopts while in the perimeters of Storybrooke Forest. As the head of a school half full of teenagers and half full of not-quite teenagers, she finds it's a very effective tool to have someone in the school that they can fear. Even if it does give her the nickname 'The Evil Queen,' a name she found out about and made her own, revelling in the power it brings.

Regina stops typing when she notices Henry's bus is due to arrive. She wheels her office chair away from the desk slightly and looks out of her window, kneading her neck with one hand. She watches parents come and go, dropping smaller kids off ready for the day. She sees a flash and searches for the source of the sudden light. On the second flash, she locates it. A man, about her age is taking a picture. She watches him expertly hold the camera to his eye and focus the large lens on what must be his son. His son beams back up at his dad under a mass of chocolate brown curls and when the picture is taken, the boy runs up to his dad, begging to get a look of the picture. The man calms his boy and kneels down to his level. He is wearing forest green khaki trousers and a light grey jacket with a hood of another jumper sticking out over the collar. His hair is a golden brown and even from the window Regina can see despite his casual choice of attire, his hair and stubble is all neatly kept which subsequently ends up accentuating his strong jaw and wide, inviting smile. She finds herself smiling too, watching the man be a dad to his son. Something she finds heart breaking and heart warming simultaneously, and it is former that tears her away from intruding on the precious moment she was witnessing. She chuckles to herself at the ache in her heart paired with the smile on her face, and wonders how someone could possibly feel both those things at the same time.

please leave me a review if you have any thoughts!