2038

Henry felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow. He kept it locked firmly inside of him as Regina left for work and he took the children to their respective schools and daycare, but once he was alone inside the car, he could no longer stop the tears that had been building and pushing at the floodgate ever since his argument with Regina the night before.

Henry parked his car in an empty parking lot. His tears became too thick to see through. He wiped furiously at his eyes as he drew out a small bag from his pocket. He had every intention of storing them safely away, but he was not able to. Instead, he transferred the two rings into a small pouch and stored them in his pocket. In the light of day, he studied the two rings on his palm. He wiped away his tears, and though they kept coming, he saw enough to see the large and small ring, the former a simple band of white-gold and the latter adorned with small yet brilliant diamonds. Through the blur of tears, he barely noticed the engraving on the inside of his ring. He brushed away the water long enough for him to see H&R — amor vincit omnia inscribed inside both rings.

He recognized love but he did not know what the later words meant. He took out his phone and quickly looked up the translation. Love conquers all.

And that was when Henry knew he could not give up on her. Because he loved her. Because she loved him. Because they worked well together, and in some universe she loved him enough to marry him and carry his five children. There is always hope. There is always a way. Those were the very values his grandparents instilled into him, and though he was young and had little experience, he knew with certainty that he could not give up on her. His brief bout of acceptance was a futile attempt to protect his heart from further heartbreak. If he kept pursuing her, he risked the pain of being hurt even more, but if he did not try, what then? He had to know what could happen between them. He needed her with an intensity he did not know he possessed.

Love conquers all. He could not give up on her yet.

Henry drove to Alex's house. Cher was gone, thankfully, because Henry was not in the mood to encounter Alex's wife for the first time. Alex, upon opening the door to see his distressed friend, ushered Henry inside.

"What happened?" he asked, deeply concerned at seeing Henry's tear-stained eyes. He'd seen Henry in numerous stages of worry, but he'd never seen him this upset before.

"It's Regina," Henry said, quietly, "She doesn't love me."

Alex gasped and ushered Henry to the couch. He was unsure how to deal with his best friend. It would be awkward to hug him, but touch was comforting. Alex compromised by resting his hand on Henry's arm in comfort and reassurance but little real physical closeness.

"That's ridiculous," Alex argued. He wanted to tell Henry everything he knew about Regina, but he was sworn to secrecy. If he did there would be no doubt in Henry's mind that Regina loved him every bit as much as he loved her, but Alex could not betray Regina's confidence in such a way. He had told no one what she confided in him all those years ago, not even his own wife. He could not break her trust now, even if he was tempted to upon seeing Henry's distress.

Henry was not in the mood to talk, and Alex did not want to give false reassurances, so the two friends sat there, Henry taking strength from Alex's presence, before composing himself enough to leave.

Once Henry was gone, Alex wondered what to do. His best friend had an argument with the woman he'd come to know as one of his closest friends, and it was a severe enough one to make Henry doubt her love. He had work, but his best friend needed him more. He might not be able to revel Regina's secret to Henry, but he could go talk to the woman in question.

After calling in sick from work, Alex went to Regina's office. Regina was not having a very good day. After the event at the breakfast table, she'd had self-incriminating thoughts the entire day. She'd not wanted to kiss Henry, and she was disappointed it had not lived up to her oh-so-high expectations of kissing her son. Something was wrong with her that she felt disappointed the kiss went as badly as it did. She should not want to have had a good kiss, because that would imply feelings that were not there. They loved each other as family, but nothing more. She raised him as a child, and that made her his mother. Nothing could ever change that. No amount of love could ever overcome that simple obstacle.

She poured herself into work because it allowed her to forget. She found herself rubbing at the spot where her wedding ring had been. The weight on her finger had felt odd, and now it was gone after less than a week of wearing it and she already noticed it's absence. The small ring was light-weight but it seemed as if with it she carried the weight of the world. Without it, she was relieved of a burden she never knew she had, and one she wanted back. She was not married to him, and it was irrational to want the ring back. It did not belong to her. She should not want to wear it.

It was in that frame of mind that Alex entered her office and closed the door behind him. Henry had come to him upset in a clearly visible manner. Regina, too, was distressed despite her outwardly calm projections.

"What is it?" Regina snapped without looking up from her work.

"We need to talk," Alex said calmly. Being brusque with Regina never worked. She needed slow and gentle before anything said would get through to her. Which, Alex thought, was ironic considering her harsh and caustic personality.

"I'm busy," Regina said harshly.

"And I don't give a damn." Old Alex would have been terrified taking such a tone of voice with Regina, but over the years he'd come to know her, to be her confidant, he lost his fear. "What I do care about is that my best friend came to me crying because he's convinced his wife no longer loves him."

Regina winced at his emphasis on the word 'wife' but otherwise she was more concerned with the news that Henry cried. Henry rarely cried, and the mention of his distress was enough to pull her, at least a little bit, out of her bad mood.

"He's upset?" she asked for clarification.

"Yes. So please, tell me what happened? Do you love him?"

"Yes," Regina said automatically. She loved her son no matter what happened, and she could not forget that amidst her self-hate. "I love him."

She inhaled a shaky breath. She did not want to tell Alex about her problems, but he seemed concerned, and he quietly waited for her to talk. He did not push for details as Emma would have, and she appreciated the distance he gave her. He demanded no answers from her and simply waited for her to tell him what she wanted to. He had a non-judgmental look about him, and his uncomfortable silence prompted Regina to speak further. "We had a fight last night. He asked for my wedding ring back." That was all she could tell him, because anything else would risk revealing to him that not all was as it seemed.

"I see," Alex said sympathetically and he took her smaller hands in his. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. Reassuringly.

Regina did not know how it happened. One moment they were sitting there in complete silence and she was silently listing all the reasons she could not tell him anything else and then she was revealing everything to him.

"This can't be happening. This isn't real. The last thing I remember he was seventeen and in high school, and then we are here and married with children, and I'm his mother and this is so, so wrong, and I can't help but wonder how I screwed up so badly that he would delude himself into thinking he loves me, and I must be sick to think I could love him as well, because I'm his mother, but I have these conflicting feelings and I don't know what to do dammit."

Alex was not entirely certain what she was talking about, and he was sure she was too upset to explain clearly. However, he got the gist of what she was saying. "So," he said just to confirm, "you somehow lost all your memories of the last twenty years?"

"Traveled forward in time," Regina corrected.

"Right. Traveled forward in time." Alex would wonder the weirdness of the situation later. "You have no memories of falling in love with Henry and him with you?" Alex felt very sympathetic for her. Though he could not begin to understand what she was feeling, he knew it must be hard for her. To wake one day and suddenly find her life entirely changed, and then to keep it a secret from everyone, could not have been easy on her.

"No," Regina said sadly. She felt guilty for telling him more than she should have. She could have just ruined the timeline, not that she could have possibly made it worse than she already had in marrying her son. In having children whose father and brother were one and the same. "I'm sick. That's what I am."

"No, you're not," Alex said firmly. "You're in love."

"How can that be?" Regina asked. She wanted to understand. She did not know why she did, but she wanted to understand. "How could I be?"

Alex knew that no amount of telling her she would love him and that it was alright would fix her problems. That would take longer. That would take both her and Henry. But he could tell her the one secret no one else knew. "When you were younger, you took an infertility potion to spite your mother. You would never have children," Alex said bluntly.

Regina looked at him in shock. "How did you know that?"

"You told me." Regina narrowed her eyes in suspicion. She told no one about what she had done. She doubted she ever would have told anyone. She did not even know Alex, so how could her future self have told him. "Henry still doesn't know. You asked me never to tell him."

"Oh." Then it became clear to Regina that must be the secret shared between her and Alex, the one that transformed him from being afraid of her to being at ease and friendly. Things were staring to fall into place, questions being answered, yet she felt no better about herself. She was still a monster.

"You told me that when you found out you were pregnant. You were in disbelief, because you'd accepted that you could never have kids. I probably shouldn't be telling you about your future, but your inability to have children was the one thing preventing you from marrying Henry, because you knew he wanted children and you could not give them to him."

Regina was startled to realize those were the very same thoughts that kept her from becoming closer to Robin Hood. They were the same reasons that made her push Robin Hood towards her sister, Zelena, who she hated above anyone else, because Zelena could give Robin Hood what she could not: a family.

"I told you that?" she said incredulously, but she must have, for there was no other way he could have know.

"You did. You were so surprised you were pregnant. You thought it was impossible. You thought you were going mad and imagining things. And then you realized that what you and Henry shared was true love. The infertility potion you took was strong magic, but true love is even stronger. It was strong enough to give you and Henry not one but five children. That's how much you two love each other."

"It's wrong of me to love him." Regina did not want to accept Alex's explanation, because it would open up a whole realm of possibilities she did not want to explore.

"True love is never wrong," he argued. "Nothing that pure is."

Pure. True love. It did exist, because Regina had used true love's kiss to break a spell before. Because her love for her son was true love. And then the answer came to her. The way to send them back should have been clear to her all along. Magic always comes with a price. She now knew what she needed to do.