Author's Note: Muahaha! Y'all thought it was over, but there is one last installment. That said, if you liked the way the story ended without it, feel free to ignore this. Otherwise, enjoy!
Epilogue
At the fringes of the forest, Ruby clambers atop a small rock out cropping. Upon her perch, she gazes up at the harvest moon hanging stark and enormous, a pale orange sentinel in the northeastern skies. Everything is so clear out here so far from Storybrooke and the pollution of a rapidly modernizing town. She inhales deeply, allowing the crisp air to flood her lungs, then releases it slowly. Serene contentment penetrates down into her bones and settles in her marrow as she begins a cautionary survey of the area; she has to keep her family safe, after all.
No movement is detected within the field spanning as far as her keen eye can see. Blanketed in a fresh layer of snow, the innumerable crystals glimmer with rainbow brilliance due refraction from what pale light the moon affords. It's a glorious night, and peaceful. Ideal weather for the next to last Wolf's Time of the year.
For some time she loiters atop her unadorned granite throne, quietly contemplating the myriad blessings so graciously bestowed upon her since Regina's spectacular reentry into her life. The last thing Ruby had been expecting that autumn day was for the woman she'd pined for nearly three decades to magically poof herself and Emma Swan right into the throne room of the Royal Palace of Oz. As if she owned the place, Regina marched right up to Queen Ozma, introduced herself and her companion, and declared her intention to track down her True Love, whom she boldly claimed to reside in Ozma's castle. Ruby, being over the moon at not only seeing Regina again but Emma as well, immediately volunteered her help. She had no idea the entire thing was a ruse so that Regina could cozy up to her. Nor would she have cared one whit when the tiny lady with the larger than life personality was showering her with the lavish attention she'd so long, and in secret, craved.
It didn't register until weeks later that Regina's arrival instigated a steady decline in her previously solid relationship with Dorothy. No matter how fervently she labored to maintain the shine on their love, no matter how frantically she attempted to fan the flames of attraction that had once driven her to the Underworld itself in a reckless gambit to resurrect Dorothy from Zelena's curse, her efforts were to no avail. It was as if that blazing inferno was quenched by a sudden gale wind, which just happened to be scented with the intoxicating fragrance of apples and coconut and oh-so-tempting dark magic, smells she'd long associated with her former muse whom she soon discovered was not so former as she'd believed.
Sweet and earnest as Dorothy was – is, even – she simply couldn't compete with the gargantuan gravitational field Regina produced, which seemingly existed solely to lure Ruby into its inescapable web. There was always some intangible quality about Regina that held sway over Ruby's heart, and unidentifiable factor that appealed not only to her human side but to her wolf as well. With Regina daily in torturous proximity, that invisible force constantly beckoning for her to give in to their undeniable connection became increasingly impossible to ignore. Dorothy never really stood a chance. Not when Regina could, with a single smirk or touch or wink or deliberate sway of her hips, make Ruby feel things, want things, need things that Dorothy never could. The battle was over before it really began, which only made Ruby feel all the more guilty for her sad ineptitude at resisting Regina's queenly charms.
Ruby tried, though. Oh, how she tried! Obstinate as she is by nature, she was reluctant to let go of Dorothy, especially when she'd fought so hard to get her. But how was she supposed to prevail against destiny? She'd already been half in love with Regina when she left Storybrooke to find her pack, and even though she wasn't ready to admit it, by the time she was shown the miraculous jar containing their magically bonded hairs, she was already right back there again. The was no use denying such indisputable proof. Tangled fast together, the hairs danced within the glass container to the energy of the cosmos, proclaiming for all to witness that she and Regina were quite literally born to love each other. The next day, Ozma, at Ruby's insistence, confirmed Regina's story about their innate connection via personally testing fresh samples of their hair. When the result was the same, it was all over but the crying.
And God, did Ruby cry. Buckets, really. She cried every night for a week at how horribly Dorothy was hurt, at how the impossibly strong woman had seemed to shrivel in upon herself upon realizing the end was at hand, that their relationship was doomed from the beginning. They'd been set up to fail, and had only been playing house, biding time until they inevitably fell to pieces because fate does not tolerate True Love couples being kept apart for longer than necessary. That she was able to salvage a friendship with her former lover was a miracle in and of itself, especially seeing as Dorothy could hardly look at her for years without tears springing up in her eyes. It was only after Dorothy discovered her own True Love that the longing glances ended and they were able to move past the heartbreak that hung like a pall over their every interaction for eighteen months.
Mostly, though, Ruby cried because that first kiss with Regina fixed something in her that she hadn't even known was broken. The entire time she spent in Oz she'd thought she had a handle on the self-recrimination and the self-loathing she'd once nearly drowned in after Peter's death. She'd convinced herself she'd moved on from the suffocating guilt of being a ravening beast who not only killed her first love but her own mother, too. In embracing her genetic condition and her surprisingly fluid sexuality, she let herself believe she had at last completed the torturous process of binding up the wounds left behind by cascading tragedies that began the moment she was born. She was sorely mistaken. Especially about the lycanthropy.
Were it not for Regina's unceasing encouragement, she would never have felt secure enough with her lupine half to experiment again. The path of unequivocal acceptance of the wolf Ruby started down upon her reunion with her mother was one she'd abandoned after Anita's demise. Sure, she'd retained control of the wolf, but since that day, she has refused to wholly succumb to the untamable instincts of the animal, instead preferring the civilized restraint unique to being human, even whilst walking upon on four legs. More than anything, she was scared of becoming her mother, a woman for whom nothing was off limits because she'd essentially gone feral. And not just that, but she didn't think her friends, Snow especially, could ever understand how it good it felt to turn loose, to just exist and feel and indulge to her heart's content without once contemplating the consequences. Dorothy, with her unshakable moral foundation, wouldn't have understood, either.
But Regina was right there with Ruby, delighting in her wolfen savagery every bit as much as her pup-like playfulness as she kept pace alongside, transmogrified via magic into a sleek black pantheress. They made quite a sight, the two of them, romping through the forests of Oz, slaughtering beasts to sate their hunger, terrorizing villagers for fun, and making a general ruckus that could be heard for miles in every direction. When that first Wolf's Time was over, Ozma, red-faced with indignation, had chastised them for their childish behavior only to lose steam when they could no longer contain their laughter. Two more such Wolf Time's passed before Ruby was finally unable to deny the truth anymore, that she'd never felt complete with Dorothy, never felt her lover could ever fully embrace the wolf and it's insatiable appetites. That, she'd realized, isn't what True Love should look like.
The night after that last tear through Oz's forests, Ruby found out why she'd only ever felt partially invested in Dorothy. When Regina dropped the bomb about their destiny along with conjuring up evidence to support her claim, the illusion of her happily ever after was forever shattered. The jar containing their hairs was a Pandora's Box, which once cracked opened could never be resealed and which wrought much destruction in the wake of its opening. But from the devastation came revelation. Free to entertain thoughts she'd buried when she turned her back on Storybrooke, she inevitably came to the conclusion that everything Regina was saying was logical, and that their bond was not the arbitrary decision of some supernatural force beyond the scope of human understanding. On the contrary, they were just that perfectly suited to one another; two halves of one whole, Ruby thought, in the same way Snow was to Charming. And they'd been kept apart long enough.
Ultimately, it was coming to terms with how seamlessly compatible she was to Regina – and in every possible aspect from the physical to the magical – that enabled her to forgive herself for ruining Dorothy's life. Because how could they have ever worked when, unlike Ruby, Dorothy didn't struggle between dual aspects of her own nature? Dorothy was all human, and being from earth she couldn't even wield magic without the use of enchanted artifacts. Ruby could, though, and did after Regina taught her to harness the ancient energies that fueled her transformations. How, therefore, could someone so plainly confined to only one form possibly sympathize with what it's like once per month for her? The pain of having her insides rearranged and her bones reassembled is unimaginable unless experienced firsthand. And there was simply no way Dorothy could ever understand the compulsions produced by that primordial part of her brain that in humans has been tempered by evolution, but as the wolf is once again given precedence over her behavior.
But Regina? Regina gets it, and that without being an actual werewolf – well, for the first few years anyway; eventually Ruby reluctantly caves in to Regina's monthly requests to be turned. Most of Regina's friends, Emma being the notable exception, still think of her as just that. Just Regina. Even when referring to the Evil Queen, they assume that the tyrannical monarch is who Regina used to be. That assumption is such a gross oversimplification that Ruby often wonders how they can claim to know and love Regina when they are so reductive concerning her personality. When Regina reabsorbed the Evil Queen, that facet of her character wasn't destroyed, nor was it merely assimilated into her mind, heart, and soul to merge with her more palatable traits, thereby creating some uncomfortable conglomeration that was everything at once. It isn't like that. Not at at all.
The Queen is a part of Regina in nearly the same way the wolf is Ruby. She is always there, always lingering in the background, prowling the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to slip free of the collar Regina has carefully buckled around the neck of that consuming darkness to segregate it from the constructive light she has painstakingly rediscovered. Regina knows the struggle of balancing her own opposing desires, knows the temptation of the beast and the weakness of the fleshly woman to resist those primal wants and needs. Regina gets Ruby, gets her like electricity gets magnetism, like the sun gets the moon, and that makes them so uniquely suited for another that it's a wonder it took them so long to see it. She supposes they'd blinded themselves to what was in front of them, that their mutual fear of trust precluded them from exposing to one another the delicate inner parts that are unbearably soft and fragile and so easily destroyed when mishandled.
Now that the blinders are off, though, Ruby is able to freely marvel at the harmonious partnership that sprung forth from their union. Sometimes it hurts to look at it's so beautiful, and those are the moments she realizes how close she came to missing out on something she wouldn't trade for anything in the universe. What if Regina hadn't severed herself in two? What if her evil half hadn't banished Emma to the Wish World and Regina reacted like she always does to run to the rescue? Would they have made their way to each other eventually? And if they did, what kind of shape would they both have been in? Those are questions with no answers – none that Ruby is comfortable considering anyway.
In the distance, to the west, a long, triumphant howl trumpets out into the brisk night air. Ruby's ears perk up, and she cranes her neck in the direction of the sound. A wolfish smile of recognition spreads across her lips at the report of an equally enthusiastic reply. Mireya and Ella are taking their thirteen year old daughter out for her first run, just as Ruby and Regina had done for their now grown daughter when she was the same age. Apparently Annika has nabbed her first rabbit. Ruby's heart swells with pride. She has to force herself not to climb down from her perch and break into a sprint toward her energetic and ambitious grandchild. As much as she would like to tackle her grandpup and bathe her face until she's squirming, she has other duties to attend to. Duties that she is all to happy to keep.
She turns back then and, after climbing down from the rock outcropping, makes her way to the den she built some three decades ago for her expanding family. Tucked into another, larger outcropping a few hundred meters away, it had immediately caught her eye as she was scouting for a place to claim as her own, a place apart from the local wolf pack where she could stay with Regina during Wolf's Time since her soulmate had joined the exclusive ranks of werewolves inhabiting Storybrooke. The snow crunches under her paws as she lopes toward her occasional home, and she nibbles at it as she goes, having always loved the taste of new snow.
Upon reaching her destination, she ducks inside and stops just within the entrance to take in the gorgeous sight of Regina and their second pup, Nadine, just turned of age like her niece. Nadine was a bit of an accident, but a happy one, seeing as neither of them should rightly have been able to conceive at their ages. But there is some strange interaction between their True Love, lycanthropy, and their innate magicks that will prolong their lives far beyond a typical human lifespan. It's not that they aren't getting older; they are, just at a rate that is borderline negligible. The only way she can tell either of them are day over forty-five is by their subtle laugh lines and the streaks of silver in Regina's hair.
Of course, the boon is not without it's downsides. It's been hard to watch their loved ones grow old as they have stayed relatively young. Were it not for the fact Mireya and Ella are equally afflicted, Ruby is pretty sure she might have gone mad by now. They've already buried so many. Villains just keep showing up, seemingly at regular intervals, meaning there have been protracted wars, pitched battles, and countless skirmishes in the decades since she came home from Oz. Granny was the first casualty, having passed five years after Mireya was born. Thankfully Gran went in her sleep peacefully. But Zelena died saving Dorothy's life when Mombi visited town nine years later. Their little girl, Selene, just turned twenty-one, and Robin, now thirty-three, is married with a kid of her own that Dorothy was not alive to see. She got herself killed being needlessly reckless in battle not long after Selene graduated high school. It had come as no surprise to Ruby. At the graduation, she'd seen how tired Dorothy was, and noticed that longing in her old friend's eyes that never went away after her True Love sacrificed herself to save her.
Belle and Rumple live on, and though Belle has aged well, she's been wearing her years evermore of late. What Rumple will do after her passing is anyone's guess. The man who had finally found his courage to give up power for love is cursed to an eternal life without the first person who ever saw the man inside the beast. Ruby hopes Gideon sticks close by. The once scrawny, bookish boy has grown into a strong young man of character, much like his mother, and he helps smooth out his Papa's rough edges. Ruby thinks there's a high chance he will stay since he is engaged to be married to Emma and Elsa's youngest.
Speaking of the Charming's, they all lived long, full lives. David and Snow went on to have two more children after Neal, Ruth and Lance, both of whom left Storybrooke for the world abroad. Sadly, David died of cancer six months ago. Snow, Ruby expects, will join him soon. Her oldest friend has been frequently muttering their standby line in her fitful sleep. "I'll always find you, Charming." Honestly, Ruby cries just about every time she hears it spoken with such paradoxically anguished hope. As does Emma, who moved her mother in with her and Elsa after her father died.
Emma Swan, the once muscular bastion of feminine heroic virtue, has defied Father Time as well as she's able. She still works at the Station, mostly paper pushing now, but just as bossy and sassy as ever. Ruby reckons they'll have to wheel her out of that place feet first. That, or Elsa will have to work a little magic and freeze her out. Their True Love, Emma and Elsa's, isn't quite as woven into their magicks as Ruby and Regina's, but it has sustained them with strength and endurance beyond their years. Ruby is glad of it, too. Losing David, Snow, Emma, and Elsa in so short a span would have tested her mental and emotional fortitude to the limits. As it is, they are showing their age, both silver-haired and gracefully wrinkled, but still beautiful and totally devoted to each other. Regina often tells Ruby they need to do better about spending time with their closest friends, that they ought to go on more double dates like they used to when they were all young and energetic and head-over-heels in love.
Not that they aren't just in love now. Rather that the love has done a little maturing for everyone. Used to Ruby couldn't handle going more than two days without getting her wife's clothes off. And though they are still spry enough to make love for hours, weeks can pass these days before one or both of them are hit by the urge to engage in some bedroom gymnastics that don't necessarily take place in the bedroom. Come to think of it, that was how Nadine happened. When Wolf's Time rolled around that month it had been a week and five days, and when they both got home from work, their eyes met, and that magic that has always existed between them flared up white hot, and before an eye could blink they were at each other right there in the kitchen. Thankfully Henry was on yet another adventure – he has since slowed down some to enjoy his own teenage children with another version of Cinderella that Regina almost had a conniption over – while Mireya and Ella were celebrating their two year anniversary. Nine months later Ruby was screaming the vilest curses she'd picked up over the years from Emma at a smug Regina, who just held tight to her hand and kept reminding her it was her turn to experience the joys of labor since she'd already done it once and that was quite enough for her, thank you very much.
Nadine is a quiet, introverted kid, nothing like her rambunctious extroverted sister. And whereas Mireya had been climbing the walls half the night after her first outing as a wolf, Nadine all but collapsed the second they reached the den. Poor thing wore herself out. She'd cornered a rabbit and was just about to pounce when she got distracted by a deer prancing mockingly nearby. As any respectable wolf would, she tore off after the larger prize, but the deer had the advantages of age, stamina, and being accustomed to four legs. Nadine had made Ruby proud, though, and got in a good bite or two to the deer's hind legs before it escaped through a thick bit of underbrush. She hasn't told her daughter yet, but her older mother had also failed the first attempt at bringing down one of the swift animals that sometimes even gave Ruby a run for her money at her peak.
She amuses herself remembering how Regina had sulked for an hour afterward as she tucks herself against their daughter, sandwiching the smaller fuzzy form between the sizable heft of her parents. Once she's curled up along the length of her pup's back, she lays her head on her paws in the direction her mate. Fur dark as midnight with v-shaped patch of silver down her chest, Regina is perhaps the most handsome wolf Ruby has ever laid eyes on.
When Regina first turned, Ruby had stayed on two legs to help with the transition should the need arise, and she'd had been so awestruck that she just stood and stared until a wet nose nudged against the palm of her hand, an indication that Regina was fine and ready to play. The hours that followed were some of the funnest of her life. They'd ran, wrestled, hunted, and caroused with the local packs until they both passed out in utterly, deliriously joyful exhaustion. When they woke up, the sun was high above the horizon and they were human again, surrounded by at least a dozen normal wolves they'd relocated from the Enchanted Forest, some lazing about and some sunbathing but all patiently waiting for their magical kin to awaken. They'd had to indulge their four-legged friends with a few more hours of exuberant interaction before they ambled back into town to resume their regular schedules.
Upon glancing at Regina, Ruby finds her mate no longer fast asleep, but gazing back with lidded amber eyes tinged with tendrils of violet. Without prompting, Ruby shuffles forward until their noses are brushing. After rubbing them gently together, Regina huffs out a contented sigh and then her eyes slide shut once more.
If werewolves could cry, Ruby thinks, I'd be a blubbering mess. Only not just because of how happy she is, but because the moment is the literal fulfillment of a dream she'd once had. She'd dismissed it as mere fancy because she didn't know what she was at the time, and then had forgotten about it until that very moment. She can remember it so clearly now, though.
She was sixteen at the time and had the dream the night after a visit to the local village with Granny. Every month, they made the trip into town to restock on supplies and sell the wares Granny produced – such as the garments she darned or the crossbows and bolts she crafted – as well as firewood Ruby had chopped and the berries she'd foraged Granny didn't turn into preserves or pies. That particular visit was a memorable occasion because it was the only time in the village's history a monarch passed through. It just so happened to be the notorious Evil Queen.
Ruby can remember watching Regina step out of her carriage, legs wrapped in supple leather, bodice bedazzled with onyx gemstones, hair piled on top of her head in an intricate bun atop which rested one of her famously ostentatious hats. She can also remember how her breath caught in her lungs. How she'd stood gawking so obviously that the Queen noticed and ambled over.
"My, my, aren't you a pretty, young thing," the impossibly alluring woman said as she tipped Ruby's chin with a gloved index finger.
Ruby was too awestruck to do much more than stare like an unsophisticated oaf, which frankly she was at the time. Still is somewhat frankly, as all of Regina's class and elegance have only marginally translated into Ruby via marital osmosis. Back then, though, she'd been little more than a grubby peasant in rags next to the splendor of her Majesty the Queen. And yet Regina had seemed as unaffected by their disparate social statuses as she is today whilst slowly and heatedly perusing Ruby's blossoming figure and aesthetically pleasing face. She'd felt things under that dark, hooded gaze that she forgot about until Regina came to Oz and righted the world she hadn't even realized was upside down. If it weren't for one of Granny's friends appearing out of nowhere and breaking the spell being woven between them, Ruby is pretty certain Regina might have made a move, although she can never be totally sure because Regina doesn't remember the interaction at all.
In retrospect, it is so easy for her to see – by that interaction and the countless others between it and Oz – that Regina has been right all along, and that her own alternate in the Wish World, whom she has encountered a number of times over the years, wasn't lying about their bond being predestined. They were, she and Regina, written in the stars. Like Perseus and Andromeda, only without the Kraken and the whole Medusa thing – though they have met Pegasus and hang out with him in wolf form whenever he visits, which is cool as hell!
Anyway, the whole True Love thing is surreal and hard to grasp for someone that grew up as fundamentally ordinary as a girl could. Reconciling herself to the idea that some mystical energy had known how perfect they were going to be for each other and planned accordingly for their lives to intersect isn't easy even now. There was a time Ruby would have laughed such an assertion to scorn. But those days are gone, relegated forever dim in the rearview mirror as she traverses the happy ending presciently paved out for her in eons past. Whatever hand laid the cobblestones, be it god or kismet or whatever else the limited human brain can conjure, she's more thankful than she can ever express that hers lead to Regina. Their life together isn't without it's ups and downs, but every day is better than the last, and she's more in love today than she was yesterday. And the best part is, she doesn't think that trend is ever going to end.
And to her endless delight, it doesn't.
