Summary: She knew it was Wednesday, because it had been Wednesday every morning for the last four days, and she was the only one who seemed to notice. AU for the end of 3.11; Regina stops the curse, but there are consequences.

Note: This was supposed to go along with the first part, but it didn't work out that way. So, the next part will not be up this quickly. :) Thanks for the great response so far; I hope you'll like what I've got planned.

Granny's was completely hushed, disturbed only by the sound of someone — Hook, she thought — banging a coffee cup on the counter.

It took a moment for her to process everything; it was just too much. She just could not handle this. How could he even think …?

Note to self: DO NOT come into Granny's before lunchtime tomorrow.

"I …" She realized, for the sake of peace, that she could accept. Or she could let him down gently; regardless of what she did, no one would remember this tomorrow.

But if nobody would remember this tomorrow anyway, she might as well give it to him straight.

"I can't believe you have the nerve to ask me that," she said softly, aware that everyone in the diner was listening. "I can't … Neal, do you even remember what I said to you in the cave? That was a terrible, terrible thing to say, but even more terrible is that being with you is so painful to me that I would rather see you dead!"

She wrenched her hand away and stood up. She felt a twinge of guilt at his stunned face, but another part of her was even more annoyed that he could be surprised by this. "Do you even live in the real world? After what you did to me, if we got back together, I would just be waiting for you to leave when things got tough. And, news flash, my life is never not tough now!"

Emma glanced around the diner at all the shocked faces (and was Ruby covering up a laugh?), purposely avoiding looking at Hook.

She cleared her throat and turned back to Neal. "No," she said firmly. "No, I will never marry you."

Then she made a run for it.

She spent a couple hours walking, trying to burn off some of her mad, before she returned to the waterfront, her favorite place in town.

Being by the water always helped her think.

Now, she could think about what a rotten person she was, thankful for the first time for the rewind button at midnight.

She'd yelled at her parents, embarrassed Neal in front of a diner full of townsfolk and now had blown off lunch with her son without even calling him.

God, she was seriously losing her shit. She felt a sudden wave of sympathy for Jefferson. No wonder the guy was a nutjob; he'd gone through the same thing for 28 years, and she was falling apart after four days. Next thing you knew, she'd be waving a gun around and taking hostages.

"That was quite the show, Swan," Hook said, dropping onto the bench beside her. She didn't look at him, but she couldn't even pretend to be surprised that he'd found her. "Are you all right, love?"

"I …" Her eyes on the water, she sighed. "I am the worst person in the world."

He huffed out a laugh. "I can tell you from experience, that's not true."

"He just lost his father."

"Aye. But obviously you're troubled as well. He'll forgive you."

"It doesn't matter," she said dully. "Tomorrow, he won't even remember."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed and finally looked at him. "You have your flask on you?"

He pulled it out and shook it. "It's empty," he said. After a brief pause, he continued. "I've more rum on my ship, though."

She stood up. "Let's go, then."

"So, tomorrow, we'll live this same day over again?" Hook took another sip of rum from the bottle they were sharing. Though he had chairs (and a bed, though she was definitely not thinking of Hook and a bed in the same sentence), they were sitting side-by-side on the floor of his cabin. "And you're the only one who'll remember?"

"Yup," she said, popping the P, then following that with another healthy draw on the bottle.

"Well, if it's a curse, there must be some way to break it," he said reasonably.

"Yeah, but with Gold gone, Regina is the only one I know of who … wait, you believe me?"

"Of course."

"But … but doesn't it sound crazy?" She curled her legs under her and turned to face him.

"Of course," he repeated, shrugging. "But so does a curse that can bring an entire kingdom to a different realm. So does a magical pirate ship. So does —"

"Okay, okay," she said. "You're right. That just makes me more mad that nobody else believes me."

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "they don't want to believe. It gets to be a bit much, doesn't it? Always facing one crisis after another."

"Damn right it does," she said grumpily. "Look, I wouldn't want to believe, either, but I'm the one going crazy living the same day over and over and over."

"I'm sorry, Swan," he said, taking a drink before passing the bottle back. "But there must be a way to reverse this, and if anyone can, you can."

They talked for hours.

Killian Jones was a very interesting man, and he had loads of stories about his pirate adventures. She wasn't sure how many of them were true; as far as she could tell, he wasn't lying, but she'd had more than enough alcohol to cloud her judgement. And, truthfully, she didn't really care if they were true; she found that she just kind of loved hearing him talk.

She told him stories as well; he watched her, wide-eyed, as she told of some of her toughest catches as a bail bondsperson and related the story of how she came to Storybrooke in the first place and how she broke the curse.

"But Henry, does he not believe you?" Hook asked, circling back around to her current problem. "Seems like the lad would be the first person to believe."

"He probably would," she said. "But I haven't ever told him. He's been through so much, and I don't want him to get upset over something that I don't know how to fix."

"Yet," he prompted.

She nodded. Something about his faith in her made her believe there was a way out of this mess. "Yet," she repeated.

"Until we can find a way to break this curse, perhaps you should try looking at the bright side."

"The bright side? Okay, Pollyanna, what the hell is the bright side in all this?"

Hook looked a bit confused at the reference, but then shrugged. "Well, until the curse breaks, you can do whatever you please, with no consequences whatsoever." He smirked at her.

"I …" she trailed off, thinking about it. "It's possible that it's just because I'm a little drunk, but that actually does sound like a bright side."

She already knew she'd be glad people would forget how awful she'd been today. And, hey, she could drink all she wanted to without having a hangover the next day. She'd just shaved her legs Tuesday, so she'd never have to do that. She'd never have to have to have a period. Forget ever going to work. She could do whoever — whatever — she wanted with no consequences.

"What would you do?" she asked suddenly. "If you were in my position?"

He avoided her eyes, staring down at the bottle in his hand. "I'd wait until almost midnight, then I'd kiss you," he said. "That way … that way, if you didn't want me as I want you, I'd never have to know."

She took the bottle from him, setting it carefully on the floor beside her, then shifted closer to him. "Well, that's just silly," she said. "Then if I did want you, you'd never know that, either."

He looked at her then, and their eyes locked. "Emma …"

"Hook," she whispered, moving closer, leaning her forehead on his. "That kiss in Neverland, that was —"

"Hook!"

She pulled back from him at the sound of her father's voice on deck. What the hell?

"Hey, Hook, are you here?"

He glanced at her lips, then sighed regretfully. "Down here!" he yelled.

David, followed by Mary Margaret, came into Hook's cabin, obviously startled by the sight of their daughter on the floor next to the pirate.

"I … we came to find out if you knew where Emma was, but …"

"But she's three sheets to the wind!" Emma chirped, then frowned. "What does that even mean? Why three sheets? Why not two, or four?"

"You're drunk," Mary Margaret said.

"That's what I just said," Emma rolled her eyes and looked at Hook, who smirked back.

"We need to talk," David said.

"We better sober you up, first," her mother nodded. "Both of you, come with us."

A couple strong cups of coffee and an excellent omelette later, Emma was feeling more herself. Well enough, anyway, to be amused by the sight of her father serving up a second omelette to his new best friend, Hook, who'd all but inhaled his first one.

"This is fantastic, mate," Hook said. "Even Granny's isn't this good."

David looked so proud of himself that Emma had to swallow a laugh. She exchanged a look with her mother, who rolled her eyes at the bromance.

"Okay," Mary Margaret said seriously. "What with all the … startling revelations you dropped on us this morning, it's been a little difficult to sort everything out."

"We want you to know, we do believe in you," David chimed in. "We're sorry if we made you feel that we don't. Please, just tell us what's going on."

Emma sighed and drained the last of her coffee. As quickly as possible, she gave them the basics. Pan's curse plus Regina's curse equals Emma's curse.

"And nobody's willing to believe me," she finished. "Except Hook. I mean, I told you guys every day, and this is the first time you've even asked for more details."

Her mother stared thoughtfully at Hook, then redirected her focus back to Emma. "Emma, honey, did you really give us a chance to process it? I mean, it takes a while. I admit, my knee-jerk reaction is to not want to believe it; I just want us to be able to go one day without some kind of crisis."

"Fair enough," Emma conceded. "The first couple of days I just followed the same routine, since I didn't know what else to do." She decided not to mention the dozens of phone calls from her parents that she had ignored those days.

Clearing her throat, she continued. "Then yesterday, I made it about halfway through the day before realizing there was no reason to do anything, so I hid out. I guess I kind of did that today, too."

"The trouble is," David said, "we don't know what it is, exactly. A curse? A spell? Some kind of mix of the two?"

"We need Regina," Mary Margaret nodded.

Emma glanced at the clock. "It's too late to worry about right now," she said. "By the time we got over there and told her about it, it would be midnight."

"That's when the clock turns back?" David asked.

"Yep. Look, I'll try her first tomorrow. She's definitely my best hope for figuring a way out of this."

She took her coffee cup to the sink, then let David pull her into a hug. Mary Margaret soon joined in. Clearing her throat, Emma pulled away first and returned to sit next to Hook.

"If you just give us a chance, we'll believe you," Mary Margaret said. "But if you're in a hurry, I'll tell you something you wouldn't otherwise know."

"Oh, a secret?" Hook asked, smirking. "Do tell, your majesty."

Mary Margaret laughed. "Well, you won't remember it in a few minutes anyway."

"Well, I will, so please, nothing that will scar me for life, okay?"

"It's nothing like that," Mary Margaret smiled. "Just something from my childhood that you wouldn't know. When I was a little girl, my favorite thing in the world was a pink stuffed rabbit in a light green dress with these ridiculous earrings in her rabbit ears. My father got it in some far away kingdom, and I loved it. Her name was … Chicken."

"The rabbit's name was Chicken?" David asked.

"Hey," she smacked his arm. "Don't mock; I was 4."

"OK, Chicken the rabbit. Got it." Emma turned to face Hook. "I just want to thank you, for believing me. It makes me feel slightly less crazy."

"I always believe in you, Swan," he said softly. "Listen, Emma —"

Midnight.

Rewind.