I apologize deeply for the wait if anyone has been attached to this fanfic already so soon into the progress of this story. Chapter 3 really kicked my ass and the way that Once Upon A Time has been going hasn't necessarily helped. I can't say that it won't happen again with college life. However, here is another chapter to the story of Regina's missing child.

As usual, I chose a song for muse as well as a title. While I particularly love, Sigma - Find Me ft. Birdy, it didn't particularly fit like I wanted it to. So, the song I've chosen fits the story-line much more perfectly. By the same title, Find Me by Kings of Leon. It's super difficult to find a discovery song that isn't about romantic love. ( watch?v=Ec92Wa8zJs8)

Anyways, here is the new chapter. Don't forget to leave feedback in the comments. Follow and Favorite the story if you really like it.

Regina felt herself retreat from her mind in that very moment as her eyes glossed over with a film of tears. An anguish and sense of guilt rushed through her veins as her mind repeated the same mantra through her brain, "how could someone just forget?" Then again, nothing was quite impossible in a land, even without magic. It didn't take long before her mind crossed over the possible perpetrators of this horrible tragedy. It wasn't like Regina to act out and choose to forget of her own flesh and blood by potions work, so who was to blame?

The name almost audibly dripped from her lips like a dark venom that made her mouth go dry and taste bitter- Cora. The very reason that she dropped the miserable woman in the middle of wonderland with twiddle-dum and twiddle-dee was for manipulating the entirety of her life. Who was to say that she wasn't capable of giving off her own flesh and blood to complete strangers.

Her hands ran rigid and cold through her raven locks as the tears finally escaped the outer corners of her chocolate orbs. With a heavy huff of air, she stepped out from the diner without another word in edgewise to her son, who sat idly by, scrolling through the storybook infatuated with the illustrations decorated on the pages detailing this untold story of his lost sibling. He knew better than to bother his mother in deep turmoil like this, but he knew best to call who was always bold enough to approach the teary siren of a woman- Emma.

In recent weeks, Emma Swan and Regina were off to a decent start to a decent friendship. They shared shots together in the middle of the night when one of them needed it the most in their life. They even shared a smile once or twice which instantly closed Regina off from the intimacy from their relationship each time.

As he lifted his gaze from the rustled pages of this new storybook, Granny met his glance from behind the counter with a warm half-smirk of understanding and proceeded with her daily chores as diner owner. Henry smiled softly in return as he retrieved his phone from the depths of his pockets and lit the screen with a single tap at the home button. Emma should be nearby dealing with a few scoundrels with untold stories of their own, he thought. He tapped at her name on the screen and typed in a simple message,

"you're needed at the diner."

He pursed his lips with the simple roll of his eyes as he sent the message and as usual, she was always within perfect distance of her next necessary battle. This was a dragon that she wasn't ready to conquer without another quick chug of the cup of joe clasped comfortably in her hands. He watched through the blinds from his stool at the picture before him as Emma hesitated in approaching his mom.

However, if anyone knew how to handle a forgotten child, it would be Emma. While, it wasn't her intention or within her control, she let her son be raised by someone else entirely. Something Regina was just learning to fathom. This is something that they could handle together and he knew she would be there for her every step of the way through awkward shrugs and distant eye contact.

It wasn't a surprise to Emma when she received the sudden ping in the pocket of her jeans. Her brain was already performing a balancing act between the Three Musketeers and the Old Lady who Lived In a Shoe. It was still difficult to process that the four fictional characters were standing before her. It was a never-ending surprise once one found out that their parents were Prince Charming and Snow White. A small chuckle fell from her lips at the thought as she slipped her hand into her pocket to retrieve the phone.

"Alright, what is it now?" She uttered in a grunt to balance both a coffee in one hand and a phone in the other as she tapped through her phone to get to the unread message. Henry. "Ah. Diner...on my..way..now." She repeated aloud as she typed in the digital message and sent off to the nearest boy with a storybook and hot chocolate in hand.

"Well, it's been fun and I'd really be thrilled to discuss the occupant limit to our cottages, but I think that'd be a job for the mayor to handle with you on a different day, Miss..?" She cringed inwardly at her attempted politeness.

The old lady who lived in a shoe glanced back at her with doe eyes and a gentle smile. Her gray, coarse strands of hair woven into a simple and heavy braid that fell down the mid of her back. Her overall dress a stark contrast to her actual age of seventy-nine. "You can just call me, Georgina."

A half-smirk passed over her lips without hesitation and gave a simple nod of her head in their direction as she dismissed herself from the group conversation, "I've got something to handle with my kid, so I'll..talk..to you all..later!"

She shuffled along from the edge of the park onward across the street to the diner where she found a visibly disheveled Regina on the brink of a mental breakdown. It was a worrisome sight, she wasn't going to lie, but she always thought her simple charm could muster a glimmer of hope in the bitter-hearted mayor. No matter what the issue seemed to be that day.

That was, until she saw the look held deep within Regina's eyes. She had never seen the woman that she had grown to find friendship in seem so broken over the demons she was battling. This was a different Regina, entirely. Emma grasped the arms of the older woman and shuffled her off to the side of the building away from prying eyes. Regina let out a chortled cry at the sudden tug of her body yet didn't pull back. That especially surprised Emma, she knew she was in something deep. It was just a matter of pulling information out of her.

Regina released a sudden gust of air that she held in her lungs for the past few moments as she attempted to grapple her emotions into their neat, usual bow of orderliness. She was battling demons aloud with Emma Swan, of all people, to watch on. She had never felt quite this low, but it wasn't long before Emma shook her from her sorrowful stupor. "Hey, Regina?"

Her eyes welled with tears once again as Emma grasped her cheeks with each hand on either side of her face. "Listen to me, what the hell is the matter?" She pondered for a moment, what could possibly make Regina this upset. She knew Henry was completely fine with his text message, so it had to be something else entirely. Just as she was about to speak again, Regina responded with a mixture of emotions bursting at the seams of her lips.

"It's Henry's stupid storybook- the untold stories!"

Emma wasn't following and that much was clear with the bewildered expression painted across her features as she tucked a long strand of her blonde waves behind her right ear. She was determined to not look away from Regina and make sure she knew she didn't have to do this alone, that she had a friend.

"Okay?-"

"No, Miss Swan! It was my untold story." Silence tackled the pair of women standing arms-length apart as Regina's arms clasped at the buttons of her shirt in anguish. "My dau-" Her voice crackled and broke as the word dared to cross her lips and her next cry only came out as a croak. Miss Swan's expression only grew more bewildered and comical. At which, Regina rolled her eyes heavily in the sense that Emma was now following the same page and was nevertheless annoying in doing so.

Emma had to think of a game plan to this problem and quickly before Regina found her own way of figuring things out. Those plans always omitted her and she was hellbent on making sure she had no need to go through this journey alone. She understood the troubled feeling of not knowing a piece of you is out there wondering why you abandoned them. This was no different from her own experience with motherhood and she was going to be the poster child of abandonment issues for Regina to look up to as they find her daughter. But, where to start?

"Okay. Okay. Have you talked to Gold yet? Maybe, he knows the bottom of this, he was your mentor, after all. He had to at least been there for the tail end of it, right?" Regina shook her head lightly, but knew it was a better start than she, herself had.

"Yes, Gold. I'm not sure. I just know I can't face him like this. It would only amuse that sick bastard more and give him the upperhand in all of this." She mustered some sense of herself before she broke through a small glimmer of hope and thanks to the younger woman standing next to her, "I just need some time...to think, Miss Swan..." She inwardly cringed at her next thought, "...Emma." She corrected herself with a slight grimace on her lips as she found a smooth, clean spot on the concrete lining that outlined the foundation of the diner.

Emma was taken aback with this overload of information as she found herself sat next to her on the concrete slab- a safe distance. She didn't wish to scare the mayor off anymore than she had in the past with her friendship. The both of them sat there for a time at a loss for words to explain this predicament that they found themselves in.

Gold's Pawn Shop

A distinct chime alerted Rumple to his unwelcomed visitors just as he was about to close up shop for the afternoon with all the untold characters roaming about this world curiously. He wouldn't put it past any of their new residents to go picking through his inventory for some safe-keeping, however his back was turned towards the pair when a a cloud of vanilla intruded his nostrils. Regina's scent was always far too strong not to pick out from a crowd, or lackthereof.

"If the sign outside wasn't hint enough were clo-"

Emma huffed a bit, "Cut the crap, Rumple. We need answers."

Her hands found her leather jacket's pockets comfortably before finding home inside the silk interior. The grimace on her face was enough to catch Rumple off-guard when he turned around to face the two intruders and without surprise, Regina stood there with her arms crossed and a scowl to poorly hide the tears that had been previously shed. However, she could never put it past her former mentor when something was in disarray in her life. She had come to him all those times before. He remembered those moments well.

Just as he was about to return a snarky comment in edgewise to the rude interruption, something told him otherwise. He neatly cleared his throat with balled fists at his sides, "Very well then, on with it. What can I be any assistance with?" He waltzed around the display case grazing his finger across the surface. His eyes tried to reach Regina's until she turned away as she spoke.

"What do you know about my daughter?"

The question certainly took him for a loop, but none the more surprised. He knew eventually Cora's dark secret would have caught up to her, it was just a matter of time before it was uncovered. He was only guilty for the part that he actively played in this distorted situation. He nodded softly to himself for a moment, something that caught Emma's attention rather quickly.

"So, you do know something? What is it?" Emma took a step closer between Rumple and Regina with her eyes set on him as he halted in place.

"If you'd let me speak, I could cut to the chase. I was there for the time that you were pregnant, yes." His sudden disclosure of information pricked Regina's eyes in curiosity as she watched him slowly pace the shop, fixing trinkets in their places on the cases. "However, I wasn't in the particularly best place to stop your mother from removing your daughter from the situation."

This time, it was Regina's turn to take a step closer to Rumple with a steadfast alertness that made her spine rigid in appearance. "So, she's out there? Alive?" A sudden wave of relief washed over her body and mind. There was a doubt that her mother may have been evil enough to, she wasn't sure she was strong enough to muster the words, but Emma seemed to understand her concerns.

Without hesitation, Rumple's eyes pierced into Regina's apologetically before continuing on with his details of the situation, "All I know is I made sure she ended up in a good home with a band of women on the outskirts of a Parisian town. If that's all you two are here for, then you're out of luck. That's all I know." Gold clicked his tongue against the inside of his mouth as he plucked his cane at the wooden floor.

"Now, if you'd excuse me. I have some business to take care of and you've taken already enough of my time." That was all it took for the pair of women to waltz back out onto the streets of Storybrooke onto their next quest for more information.

"So, I'd say we found what we were looking for." The blonde chimed hopefully, much like her mother's usual antics. Emma remembered the apologetic glances of guilt and remorse for his actions, it was unlike Rumple. There was something much deeper going on behind the curtain, but she wasn't going to push her luck with Rumple today. That was the only reason that she was being hopeful for Regina in this very moment, but she was sure to get to the bottom of it eventually.

Regina rolled her eyes as she discarded her leather-gloved hands into her pockets and followed alongside Emma in path to the diner, "But, it still doesn't explain where she is? What's her name? What's her family like? I have so many questions still."

"Well, you can't expect to figure out this entire life of a story in one day, progress." Regina inwardly cringed at the similarities between mother and daughter in this very moment. Charming was always the more charming of the group. Emma clutched at the lapels of her favorite maroon-leather jacket watching the way the tip of her boots seemed to barely graze the cracks in the sidewalk as they walked side-by-side.

"All I'm saying is don't expect this to turn into an epic road trip where I'm squeezed between a storybook and Henry with you driving the yellow death-trap on one of his little operations. This is not one of those and I'm never stepping back into that tin on wheels." She bit back with a stifled fire, not her usual fiest, but it did the job.

Emma was just about to find the words to respond to the sudden dejection when Henry rushed to the rescue. She didn't have the heart or the actual fighting words to bite back at Regina and she wasn't kind on embarrassing herself when she couldn't with Regina. "Moms! I did a little digging, and by digging, I mean read a bit into the back story there and some Youtube videos on Disney history." Emma smirked at the sudden rush of sentences thrown together by his excitement. He was always one for stories, after all. He rolled his eyes at his mother's baited looks and proceeded smugly.

"Anyways, it seems like you are now officially the proud mother of a gypsy."

"A gypsy?" She practically laughed out in disbelief at the word, the granddaughter to a former prince, now called herself a gypsy. Mother did have a twisted sense of humor, she was sure that she'd go to nothing but the worst of them. The anger rising inside the small, petite frame for only a moment before Henry brought her back down to earth.

"That's not all. I also talked around to a few of the untold story characters and they seem to know a thing or two about Esmeralda, but they weren't keen on sharing the details. She might have been a part of some bad history in the town itself." He pursed his lips waiting for their reactions. Regina's mind was wrapping around all the details perfectly while Emma did not disappoint.

"Esmeralda? As in, the gypsy? Quasimodo and Esmeralda?" Emma's jaw fell slack with dismay, her hands flying each and every way as she filled her son in on the grandiose tale of Esmeralda and the 'Hunchback'.

"From what I read online just a minute ago, yeah? You know her?" Emma's bewildered expression from earlier returned, full-fledged.

"Of course! You don't the story of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"?" Emma asked with an increased curiosity. What other films and stories had Regina not filled him in on yet? "Regina-"

Regina cleared her throat quietly as she clasped her hands in front of her, "that's not a particular tale that I want my child learning about as a child." She spoke quite frankly about the film. "Well, I just knew if I had to show him the film, I'd have to let him read all of the books as well. That wasn't something that I wanted him- digesting at such a young age. The themes were much too dark even in the film."

Within a single baited breath, Regina reminded Emma just how much she actually missed out on with raising Henry, and how much parenting that she still needed to catch up on. Not to say that she wasn't the parental type, but she didn't have parental controls on his television and she'd already let him watch Poltergeist on a school night. It was safe to say parenting was Regina's wheelhouse and she wasn't ashamed of it. Emma nodded her head quite knowing how that could impression the wrong things on a child's mind at such a young age.

However, Henry's curiosity was just now boiling over in his brain. What was the details of this story? He would have to take a few trips to the library within the next week, he thought to himself. It was Regina who broke the silence once more, however.

"So, how are we even supposed to find her? We've already had our talk with Rumple and that barely filled us in on anything."

"Just calm down, we'll figure something out. I saw a few gypsies hanging around the diner, maybe I can pull some more information out of them. In the off chance, maybe, Mary Margaret knows a thing or two. I mean, she was just a child, but she was there. The only other two involved are dead, so that's not going to help anyone."

"Meanwhile, I'll be at the library doing some of my own research." Henry smoothed into the game plan quite proudly with an impish grin spread across his porcelain cheeks that made Regina barely chuckle as she caressed his cheek before he dismissed himself from the group chat conveniently close to the library. It seems they weren't who Henry, or might say, what, Henry was looking for. Emma rolled her eyes at the young kid as he skipped off through the doors of the building, leaving Regina and herself back to their awkward silence.

"So, I'll go talk to Mom and then maybe.." Emma's jittery hands found solace in the warm pockets of her jacket where she didn't have to worry what to do with them. She no longer had her cup of coffee to occupy her idle hands.

Regina nodded lightly to herself more than Emma as she tucked raven strands behind her ear and procured a small smile in the blonde's direction, "thank you- for your help, I wasn't quite sure how to do this alone, but you were really here for me today. I just want to say thanks." This was honestly the most open that Swan had seen the Mayor in the past couple of months and it was actually rather nice to see her so calm and serene even for a moment.

"No problem. I just know how it feels, ya' know, being alone and all when you find out your a mother. It's hard." She pursed her lips in the way that Henry tends to and Regina found a smile rising upon her face at the recognition in similarities between the two in that moment. "Yeah.." They say in an awkward unison.

"I actually have to find something in my vault for any clues that my mother may have left behind. Even dark sorceresses make mistakes, sometimes. If all else fails, I'll find a way to procure a potion to have a talk with my father." It's not that she didn't trust to talk to her mother, now that she was finally redeemed from their hellish relationship of the past. Regina didn't quite trust herself to stay calm and collected while talking with her mother about such a touchy subject, she did kidnap her child after all and forced a potion down her throat. The thought of it made her rub at the core of her neck and sent a cringe down her spine.

"See ya' later, okay?" Emma headed off across the sidewalk to her yellow bug quickly thereafter once she saw Regina nod in response and they headed their separate ways.

"Later." She muttered under her breath before starting off into the direction of the cemetery.

Regina's Vault

She found herself at a loss for words as she sat there sunken into the button love seat that she had too many experiences with in its short history. As much as she was amused by the thought, neither a smile nor a chuckle reached her lips. She was far too gone from herself to react in the moment. This day was far too much for her and it was only the afternoon. She shuffled her fingers through her locks of jet-black hair out of habit and exhaustion, waiting for something else to just hit her. It was only silence. A much needed silence between her and herself.

She knew exactly what she had to do and how to procure a potion much like the content that resided in the bottle in the Underworld, but suddenly she felt a heavy weight residing deep within her bones. She hadn't the energy to resist the temptation of just settling there for the day on the love seat seeded in deep thought. However, she knew it would be best, otherwise.

So, she stood to her feet with a simple shrug of her shoulders and waltzed to the vanity of potions settled in a little nook in the wall. Her slender fingers grazed over the top of bottles here and there, scattered across the surface of the counter. It had been a time between the last time that she felt necessary to use magic. She was actually quite proud of herself for that simple fact.

Her bottom lip jutted out in sudden curiosity as she traced her fingers around a certain bottle on the counter. A small plant that resembled tumble weed on a branch. It only grasped her interest, because she had never seen this ingredient before. She would have at least remembered what to particularly call this specimen had she seen it before.

Regina lifted the bottle and released its content into the black cauldron below with a simple smile. One ingredient down and several more to go. Maybe, she would talk to her father sooner than she expected. How she missed her father's gentle smiles and warm hugs. She was convinced that man was made purely of the purest things in the world. He had not a cruel bone in his body, unlike her mother.

Just as she lost herself in the gentle memories of her father, she was startled awake with a hazy reflection in the mirror in front of her and sudden snap of a voice-

"Regina!" A warped tone, nonetheless familiar, the voice and hazy reflection belonged to her mother. Just as clear as it was, it disappeared within a second, leaving Regina alone to her surprise.

How was she going to explain this to the ever-so-charming Charming's?

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