Yet again a long pause between updates. I really am sorry. In good news though, I have been watching Season 1 on dvd (there were several episodes I missed when it was on tv because I was overseas, and I thought that my Tumblr addiction meant that I hadn't missed a whole lot, but seeing the entire series in correct order is giving me all sorts of motivations to remember why I wanted to write this), and it is winter and dark and I have time to curl up in front of the fire with wine and chocolate while I write.

As a reminder of where we were up to, it was the early 1980s. Regina was happy in Storybrook, making friends and learning about the 20th Century, until she saw someone who gave her a shock...

CHAPTER 4

1984

What the fuck was Rumplestiltskin doing in Storybrooke?

Once she'd recovered enough to stand without gripping the edge of the nearest building she thought that she would walk the opposite way. There was no need to go all weak; he need not have seen her. And, if the curse had been as successful as it seemed to be, maybe he would call her Mayor Mills? Maybe he would walk right past and she could go back to being a young woman with a house of her own and a beautiful garden and time to cook and to make friends, and who was helping people every single day.

Of course it can't possibly be him. It was an illusion. It was her own mind playing tricks on her; it was her inability to believe that she deserved anything as wonderful as this chance she now had to live out 28 years in peace. (This was the sort of shit that happened to ones brain after accepting a drink with a bug who had magically acquired a PhD.)

So Regina Mills kept walking. She went back to her office. She sat at her desk and - and leant back in chair, surrounded by reports that she couldn't bring herself to read. All she could do was keep running the scene of that little man, disappearing into a shop, through her mind. The old, impetuous Regina would have marched right around there to that pawn shop and found out if it really was him. This one? This one really was the same person, it was just that she was trying very hard to be someone different. However she had already put a lot of effort into controlling her desire to tell people exactly how she felt today, so not reacting was testing her.

Off with his head! Out with his heart! Regina got up from the chair and paced heavily back and forwards across her office. Relax, she told herself. Look in the mirror. You're not an Evil Queen; you're Regina Mills.

Moving her head slightly she felt her cropped hair against her cheekbones. She looked down at her legs in tailored black pants. Running her hands down over her hips she felt Dr Hopper's card in her pocket. Looking down at the desk beside her she saw a note from Michelle reminding her about watering the rose bushes. There were her keys too. She had a house of her own now. It had a lock on the door and she could got here and be far away from anyone and anything that was able to hurt her, and she could only invite people she liked and trusted. She didn't need to go seeking out old friends. Or old enemies.

She had achieved a lot. She had a lot to lose.

The curse had worked. She didn't need to go backwards. She the ingredients of a successful life. She didn't need more. She did not need Rumple-fucking-stiltskin. There were budgets to balance and meetings to chair. She went back to her seat, called to order lunch to eat-in and began to read the reports.

-x-

Regina never tired of learning more about this amazing world she had come into. There was food for breakfast that came in boxes made of very, very thin wood and which was served with milk and which everyone ate (she had asked). And a 'machine' that washed clothes and linen (and wasn't washing linen the most awkward thing ever? Regina felt as though she has escaped from the clutches of a giant damp clinging sea monster after wrangling ever load between the washer and the dryer). Most of all she loved the ideas: the Magna Carta with its plans for freedom from tyranny; all those planets around the sun making up the Solar System. No wonder the public buildings like the schools and library and the museum were the biggest buildings in the town; there was so much information to store and to share.

Regina particularly liked the museum, with its focus on objects. She found time at least once a week to visit. This Saturday she was expected to attend the opening of a drinking fountain, and as it was only a block from the museum she figured that that was her afternoon planned out.

-x-

Regina stood in front of the (strangely large?) crowd ready to make a brief a speech, cut the ribbon and declare the thing open. She had chosen to wear a shirt that was open at the neck, and scarf that was more form than function, but now felt the biting wind cutting right through to her bone which, combined with the staring crowd, was making her wish that the whole thing was over. She hadn't come to Storybrook to stand up like this and be pompous in front of crowds. She wasn't sure why a drinking fountain needed such a pretentious beginning at all. Her assistant had said that it was a "triumph over bureaucracy," with at least three different departments having been involved in designing and approving it and, judging by the number of business owners lined up to her left, it was funded by half the town. It was ridiculous to have so much fuss over such a tiny thing, unless... Regina suddenly looked around the crowd in horror. Here she'd been, assuming that everyone in Storybook had the same sort of lifestyle that she did at 108 Mifflin St, but supposing that they were all excited by the drinking fountain because this was where they had to come to to get water? Were they all living a peasanty life still?

In the middle of this potential revelation Regina was nudged forward to the front of the platform,

"Ladies and gentlemen," she began, then paused before beginning again, "You do have running water in your houses, right?"

The laugh from the crowd buoyed her. "Excellent. Then aren't we all fortunate to live in a place where a drinking fountain like this is for convenience rather than necessity and," here she gestured to her right, "to have so many dedicated to trying to make this a better place for us all to live." She cut the ribbon to a round of applause. After a show of handshaking and a few photos for the newspaper Regina made her way down the block to the museum.

At the museum they knew the Mayor by name and welcomed her in. Regina, feeling at home in the familiar environment, made her way to her current favourite room, the geology room. Pressing the button on the display in front of her she switched on the ultraviolet light and watched innocuous lumps of brown and grey shine purple and green and opalescent. She'd owned a lot of jewels in her time, and vaguely knew that diamonds were mined, whereas garnets came from the Garnett Mountains, which was an entire mountain range made of the red crystals. Wasn't it? There was nothing in the geology room that made Regina sure if garnett mountains were possible. If they weren't possible here, then had they possible before? Was it possible to have geology in the Enchanted Forest that made garnet mountains real, but not in this land? Or had it been untrue in her own childhood, too. In which case where had the garnets come from? And why did people tell the story of the shining red mountains?

The ideas tangled her mind, and she resolved to find a book on the subject. In the meantime she went back into another of her favourite of the rooms, the history room. There was something comforting about this space full of photos of men and women, of all different ages and colours, who had done something worthwhile. Being only a small town, the objects that Storybook had to illustrate each person's story were sometimes almost comic, but they seemed Regina looked through the glass at them with a kind of reverence. There was a boot worn by the first women from the region to have walked the Appalachian Trail, and next to it a bible supposedly once owned by the president – apparently sometimes even very strong people in this world needed belief in something they couldn't quite see.

Regina reached out, as if she would be able to put her hand through into the cabinet and caress the objects. She read every word on the little paper tags, even though she had read them all before.

Once her feet began to tire Regina found her way to the cafeteria to have lunch. She preferred to cook for herself, but enjoyed the atmosphere in the museum cafe. She took a seat at a table by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over a courtyard, and ordered an apple tart (the chef here managed to make them crisp up in a way that Regina couldn't yet manage), and opened the only book on geology that gift shop had had.

The book fell open in the middle, at a glossy spread on diamonds. It was Rumplestiltskin had tuahgt Regina about diamonds. Not the children's stories about how they were mined by cheery dwarves, but how they could be used to lock-up ideas. Being the strongest, strongest substance, they were the only things that could be used to hold something as strong as True Love. They worked effectively to keep unhappiness away from people too.

She closed the book. There was so much that she knew that she would never again be able to talk about. Once upon a time she had known things, and been respected. Rumple had given her knowledge, and asked her questions and made her into someone who had achieved a lot.

Was it really him in the street?

Could she go through this alone? She thought of Michelle, and Archie – could they be enough? Oh, she knew what it was like to be alone. She knew what it was like to have people turn on her.

Was it really him?

She knew who it was who had always been there. It hadn't always been perfect. But he had kept her from having to be alone.

Was it really him?

Regina put the book in her bag, tucked a five dollar bill under the plate and stood. She straightened her dress and walked out of that place like she was someone who knew exactly where she was going and why.