Hello all! I have this lovely little story for you. It is a crossover between Once Upon a Time and Titanic. The characters that will be appearing throughout are: Emma as Jack, Regina as Rose, Leopold as Cal, Cora as Ruth, Belle as Molly Brown, Mr. Gold as Mr. Andrews, Ruby as Fabrizio and Neal as Tommy. There are also new characters that I added to spice up the plot. Mary-Margaret is her own character and so is Henry. Both are considerably younger than they are in the Once universe.
Chapter 1
The day opened brightly on April 10th, 1912 in Southampton England. It was nearing noon and the pier next to the Titanic was packed full of people embracing, shouting farewells and waving bon voyage wishes to friends and relatives on the decks of the enormous ship. Two cars pulled slowly through the people and stopped among the masses. The driver scurried to open the door for a young woman to step out.
Seventeen year old, Regina Mills, heir to the Mills' debt exited the car dressed in a stunning white and purple pinstriped dress. She had long black hair tied in an intricate up-do and she looked up at the ship, taking it in with cool appraisal.
"I don't see what all the fuss is about. It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauretania." Regina said. She was determined to be as cold and unhappy about this arrangement as she could afford to be. The valet opened the door on the other side of the car and Regina's fiancé, Leopold White, stepped out with his young daughter, Mary-Margaret, leading the way.
"Oh, Regina! It's such a big boat!" She grinned. Regina glanced down at the girl with mild disgust.
"You can be blasé about some things, Regina, but not about Titanic. It's over a hundred feet longer than Mauretania and far more luxurious. It has squash courts, a Parisian café, even Turkish baths." Leopold said turning back, giving his hand to Regina's mother, Cora. She was a society empress, a widow and a ruthless mother.
"Your daughter is much too hard to impress, Cora." He sneered. Cora ignored his remark and looked at the ship.
"So, this is the ship they say is unsinkable." She commented.
"It is unsinkable. God himself could not sink this ship!" Leopold grinned. He was prideful to be the host of the special experience of the Titanic. Regina rolled her eyes as Leopold handed money over to a porter to take their baggage to their rooms in the ship. Mary-Margaret skipped over to Regina and grabbed her hand.
"Isn't it just beautiful, Regina?" She asked brightly looking up at the woman to be her new mother.
"It is just." Regina sighed.
"We'd better hurry, this way, ladies." Leopold led the way forward through the crowd toward the first class gangway. They passed between vehicles and handcarts, hurrying passengers, mostly second class and steerage, and family members wishing goodbye. Most first class passengers avoided the dockside crowd by using elevated boarding bridges, twenty feet above.
"Steerage swine." Leopold hissed as a man bumped into him chasing after his son.
"Honestly, Leopold, if you weren't forever booking everything at the last instant, we could have gone through the terminal instead of running along the dock like some squalid immigrant family." Cora admonished.
"All part of the charm, Cora, at any rate, it was my darling fiancée's beauty rituals which made us late." He glanced back at Regina who held onto Mary-Margaret's hand.
"You told me to change." She grumbled at him.
"I couldn't let you wear black on sailing day, sweetpea. It's bad luck." He said too sweetly.
"I felt like black." She commented.
"Here I've pulled every string I could to book us on the grandest ship in history, in her most luxurious suites and you act as if you're going to your execution." He shook his head and Cora glared at her daughter. Regina looked up as the hull of Titanic loomed over them. A great iron wall, black and severe. Leopold motioned her forward, and she entered the gangway to the D Deck doors with a sense of overwhelming dread. Leopold took Mary-Margaret's hand and she released Regina's. Leopold grabbed Regina's arm in his free hand and escorted her up the gangway. The ships triple steam horns blasted, bellowing their departure warning.
The steamer's whistle echoed across Southampton. All the way to a pub a few blocks away. It was crowded full of dockworkers and the ship's crew. Just inside the window that had a view of the massive ship there was a poker game in progress. Two women and two men, dressed in working class clothing, played a serious hand. The two women, Emma Swan and Ruby Lucas, glanced at each other as the men argue in Swedish. Emma was American, a tall and skinny blonde drifter. Her blonde curls hung around her shoulders in a lanky mess and her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them. She was an artist, and very sure-footed for a twenty year old woman, having lived on her own since she was a young girl.
"Hit me again, Sven." Emma smirked. She took a card and slipped it into her hand watching the rest of the table. Ruby licked her lips nervously and glanced down at the pot in the middle. Coins and bills littered the center and two third-class tickets for the RMS Titanic rested on top. The Titanic's whistle blew again in the distance.
"The moment of truth, somebody's life is about to chance." Emma said. Ruby put down her cards and so did the two men. Emma held hers close.
"Let's see, Ruby's got nothing. Olaf, you've got squat. Sven, uh oh, two pair." She turned to Ruby. "Sorry, Rubes."
"What sorry? What have you got? You lost all my money?" Ruby stood up and started shouting. That was her monthly earnings.
"Sorry, you're not gonna see your Grandmother again for a long time." Emma grinned slapping a full house down on the table.
"Cause you're goin' to America!" She shouted. The tabled exploded, shouting in several languages. Emma raked in the money and the tickets.
"Sorry boys, three of a kind and a pair. I'm high and you're dry and we're going to America!" Emma said and Ruby cheered. Olaf balled up his fist and swung towards Emma but instead punched Sven. Emma kissed the tickets and then jumped onto Ruby's back.
"Going home! To the land of the free and the home of the real hot dogs! On the Titanic! We're riding in high style now. We're practically goddamned royalty, Rubes!" She yelled.
"I am going to America and I'm going to become a millionaire, then Granny won't have to run her bed and breakfast!" Ruby turned to the pubkeeper. "I'm going to America!" She said proudly.
"No, mate, Titanic is going to America. In five minutes." He pointed to the clock.
"Shit." Emma said. "Come on, Rubes." She grabbed their satchels and ran out of the pub. Emma and Ruby carrying everything they own in the world in the bags on their shoulders, sprinted toward the pier. They tore through the milling crowds next to the terminal. They were shouted at as they jostle slow-moving people and dodge piles of luggage. They ran up to the third class gangway and reached the bottom of the ramp just as the officer detached it.
"Wait! We're passengers!" Emma yelled. She was flushed and waving her tickets at the man but she couldn't get her grin off her face as her heart pounded hard in her chest.
"Have you been through the inspection queue?" The man asked.
"Of course!" Emma lied joyfully. "Anyway, we don't have lice, we're Americans." She looked back at Ruby. "Both of us."
"Right, come aboard." The man gestured. They jump across the gap and hand over their tickets. Emma and Ruby whooped with victory as they ran down the white-painted corridor grinning from ear to ear.
"We're the luckiest sons of bitches in the world!" Emma laughed. They ran up to the deck and Emma leaned over the rail and started yell and wave to the crowd on the dock.
"You know somebody?" Ruby asked from behind her.
"Of course not. That's not the point." She turned back to the crowd. "Goodbye! Goodbye! I'll miss you!" She screamed. Ruby laughed and jumped up beside Emma. She started to yell as well and in that moment the exhilaration filled both of them and they could've been the richest people on the boat for all they cared.
"Goodbye! I will never forget you!" Ruby cheered.
The huge ship pulled away from the dock and the crowd continued to wave. Emma and Ruby grew bored of waving and decided to go find their rooms. They walked down a narrow corridor with doors lining both sides like a college dorm. Total confusion enveloped the hall as people argued over luggage in several languages and wander through the labyrinth. They passed emigrants studying signs over the doors, and looking up words in phrase books. They found their room eventually. It was a small cubical with four bunks and exposed pipes overhead. There were two guys already settled in. Emma threw her bag onto an open bunk and Ruby climbed onto the top.
The one man turned and looked at his companion.
"Where is Sven?" He asked in Swedish. Emma shook hands with both of the men and then turned back to find Ruby sitting smugly on the top bunk.
"Who said you get the top?" She pinched the woman's arm.
Several floors up in the Millionaire Suite, Regina stood in the sitting room looking over her collection of paintings, making sure none were harmed. Leopold stood outside on their private promenade deck with his daughter. He talked through the doorway to Regina.
"Those mud puddles were certainly a waste of money." He told her. Mary-Margaret leaned over the edge of the ship and watched the waves, the white ribbons in her hair blowing in the wind.
"You're wrong. They're fascinating. Like in a dream, there's truth without logic. What's his name again?" She glanced at the bottom of the canvas. "Picasso." She nodded to herself. "Yes, that's right."
"He'll never amount to a thing, trust me. At least they were cheap." Leopold walked into the room as a porter wheeled his moss colored private safe into the room.
"Put that in the wardrobe." He instructed. The man nodded and pushed it passed Leopold. Regina carried a painting into the bedroom. She set it on the dresser, her servant was hanging up her clothes in the wardrobe.
"It smells so brand new. Like they built it all just for us. I mean, just to think that tonight, when I crawl between the sheets, I'll be the first –"
Leopold entered the room and glanced at Regina.
"And when I crawl between the sheets tonight, I'll still be the first." He said to her.
"S'cuse me, Miss." Regina's servant ducked and edged around Leopold, blushing at the innuendo. He came up behind Regina and put his hands on her shoulders. It was an act of possession void of any intimacy.
"The first, and only. Forever." He said to her. Regina stared forward blankly.
At Cherbourg a woman came aboard named Isabella Brown, but everyone called her Belle. She was what the first class natives would call "new money" because her husband had struck gold someplace out west. She dressed in the finery of her peers but would never be one of them.
It was dusk when the ship had made its final stop and was heading west from the coast of Ireland with nothing ahead of it but ocean.
Emma and Ruby were standing at the bow of the ship, gripping the curved railing and Emma leaned over, looking down fifty feet to where the prow cut the surface like a knife, sending up two glassy sheets of water. Ruby leaned over as well and she pointed out excitedly as two dolphins appeared out of the glassy water. They jumped clear of the water and dove back, crisscrossing in front of the bow and dancing in the water. Ruby looked out across the Atlantic.
"I can see the Statue of Liberty, already." She joked winking at Emma. "It's very small of course." Emma laughed. This was the life.
Are you ready for the emotional ride of your life? Please be kind and review.