AN: Thanks to my beta, LMPsisterhood, for doing the editing that I don't want to.


2038

Regina sensed Henry's now familiar presence from the moment he entered her vault. She was also able to anticipate the question she knew he was going to ask. "No. I don't have it yet."

She did not try to stop the frustration from sounding in her voice. She heard the echo of footsteps as Henry approached her, and despite her tension induced by her failure to create the cure, she relaxed back into Henry's arms as he hugged her from behind. She pulled her hair to the side so Henry could rest his chin on her shoulder and observe her work.

"I thought you said this should work?" he asked. He worked hard to make sure his question did not sound like he was blaming her for her failure; he wasn't, but with Sam's life in danger they were both on short fuses set to blow. An argument with her would be damaging, not helpful.

"It should." Now Henry could hear Regina's frustration, but more than that he heard her anguish. She was not saying it aloud, but she was blaming herself for her failure.

He also heard her pain, the pain he, too, was feeling. How he wanted to kiss her senseless until they forgot anything but each other.

He could not afford to be that selfish, and he knew deep down such attempts at distraction would only fail in the end.

Henry and Regina both watched as the potion in the cauldron darkened to a deep black, and then vanished entirely as if it had never been there. Regina hissed in frustration. "All the ingredients are right, and I've gone through all possible combination of steps. Nothing works. And it should."

As Regina expressed her frustration, Henry felt his gaze drawn to the blue flame still burning beneath the cauldron. He had a suspicion as to what was wrong, but magic was her area of expertise; if she had not thought of it then surely it was not important.

But something in his gut was telling him that the flame was important. He might not be trained in magic, but as the author he'd witnessed plenty and had a greater grasp than others who, like him, could not practice magic.

"Have you tried changing the flame?" he asked, because they were already out of ideas and it could not hurt to voice his instinct.

He felt Regina tense in preparation to rebuff him, but soon she was relaxing back against him in defeat.

"Yes," she answered quietly, and he would not have heard her except for the echo in the stone room. "But it's no good. We'd need something like the flame of Prometheus."

Neither Henry nor Regina needed to voice why that was not a possibility, not since Emma as the Dark One had used the flame.

"There aren't any other magical fires that could do the job?" Henry asked, wondering if the fire in the burning room would work.

Regina considered his question, coming up blank until all of a sudden the answer was so startlingly clear she wondered why she had not thought of it before.

"That's it!" she exclaimed, spinning around to face Henry. He looked at her in confusion, waiting for her to explain.

"Haven't you wondered why they brought us right to this point in time? And why they pulled us forward from the time they did?" Them: their counterparts, as Henry knew.

"Not really?" Henry answered honestly, though now she voiced the question he, too, was curious about why their future selves had manipulated time exactly as they did, but looking at her now excited and hopeful expression—a vast improvement over the anger and disappointment of earlier—he knew she had the answer. "Enlighten me, Hermione," he joked.

Regina flashed a smile at him. "Because the flame we need comes from the past. More precisely, from a few days from before we first appeared here."

"I don't get it," Henry said, still as confused as before.

"I didn't tell you about Rose," Regina said. It had not been all that long ago, a few weeks at best (as far as her memories went). She recalled the encounter, and how she had not told Henry about it. That was when he was in his mood. Someday, she would have to ask him what had caused it, but for now, there were more important things for her to ponder.

"A few days before we appeared here, Emma and I found a girl with matches."

"The Little Match Girl?" Henry supplied, for his job meant that he knew his stories and fairy tales well. Then, he caught onto what she was saying. "One of those matches—if we use them as the fire—"

"—I should be able to finish the potion." Regina finished his sentence impatiently.

However, Henry was still unclear as to why the whole time travel fiasco was necessary. "Then why bring us here? If they needed the matches, then why bother with time travel. Why not simply send us a note telling us to save the matches? It still doesn't make sense."

Regina found the answer obvious, but then she realized that because she had not told Henry her full interactions with the Little Match Girl. He could not know that all the matches were gone, that the girl had lit and wasted the last match right before she died.

"She lit all the matches. They're gone."

Regina's face fell as she realized what she had just said. Just like the flame of Prometheus, the matches that could have saved Sam were also gone. She stumbled backwards and slouched against the table behind her. It was only by luck that she did not knock over the empty cauldron. Hope, she thought, was more pain that it was worth. She'd allowed herself to hope there was still a solution, but just as quickly it was removed.

Henry's attention was no longer on Regina, but rather on a small safe in the corner of the room that he could have sworn was not there before.

"Regina. Look." He pointed to the corner.

"I haven't seen that before." She frowned as she approached the safe. She had spent much time in her vault. How had she not noticed it before?

She waved her hand over the door, infusing the motion with magic, but nothing happened. The door stayed firmly locked. She made as second pass of the lock and this time she felt the push of her own magic protecting the lock. She had made it so the safe could not be opened by magic. How was it that she had foiled her own plans or her future self? Time travel really was a pain to wrap her mind around.

Regina watched as Henry tried a combination, the one she normally used. "How do you know my code?" she asked and tried to think of a time she had given Henry her combination and coming up blank.

Henry only rolled his eyes. "You use my birthday for everything," he explained as if it should have been obvious.

While there were much more urgent, life-or-death matters to attend to, she still asked suspiciously, "How long have you known?"

Henry shrugged nonchalantly. "Since I was nine or so," he said like it was not a big deal. Regina made a mental note to find a new combination for later, one that would keep Henry out. But then again, it seemed to her as if now she had little reason to prevent Henry from knowing her passwords. Still, the idea of having her privacy invaded made her want to change it on principle.

"That explains a lot," she mused, and Henry smiled guiltily at her. Now she knew he had broken into places she kept locked before; and to think she had suspected Zelena at the time.

She wanted to scold him and determine exactly when and how he used that particular piece of information before, but her curiosity won over as the safe door opened after Henry's fifth try.

"Sam's birthday," he said as if it should have been obvious from the start.

Regina mentally noted it never use a birthday as her combination again unless she wanted Henry, and who knows who else he told, to be able to break in.

"We'll discuss your . . . habits later," she said, and Henry was certain they would be having an unpleasant conversation in the future after Sam was safe again.

Now they were more focused on the note and two small vials in the safe.

Regina unrolled the note and they both read over the short message written in Henry's hand:

If you can see this, it means you now know what must be done. The blue will send you back and the gold will send us forward. You must find us and have us drink the potion for the spell to break. Do not fail.

"If I understand this," Henry guessed, "we drink the blue and go back to our time. We have to stop Rose from lighting the last match and save it for them to use."

Regina nodded in agreement. "But that will only work if we have them drink the gold potion, or all this will be for naught."

Henry and Regina looked at each other with wide eyes.

"It's amazing how oblivious we were to all that they planned," Henry said. If he were not so worried about Sam, he would have been very impressed with the intricacy of the spell their past selves created. All that happened was planned down to the last. He suspected that even the last few missing pieces to the puzzle had an answer, and that he and Regina would soon discover them.

Regina uncorked the vial containing the blue potion and clenched the other tightly in her hand. "No time like the present."

Henry winced. "Bad pun," but he took the vial after she drank her half and finished it off.

Their visions were clouded with purple smoke, and then they were standing in front of the library.

They looked at the familiar town, and then at each other. Regina noticed with a pang how much younger Henry looked. They were not in the future long, but she'd become accustomed to seeing him in his thirties. But he was a teenager again; there were still remnants of his baby fat and only hints of stubble on his chin. He was not yet fully grown.

She felt the guilt she thought she'd banished reappear, but she pushed it to the side. Nothing mattered at the moment except saving Sam. Guilt and self-reprimands could wait. She could scold herself for her perversions later. Seeing him now, much younger, she realized that a large part of what had allowed her to move on with Henry — to explore the idea of a relationship — was the fact that he looked much older. That he looked too old to be her son. But that changed nothing.

While Regina did not exhibit the same vast physical changes as Henry, Henry still noticed she looked young. With surprise, he found that the imperfections of her older self enhanced her body's natural beauty.

He pulled out his phone, a familiar piece of technology that he did not have to struggle to use. He checked the calendar, and he felt the trepidation start up again.

"Umm, Regina?" he asked nervously.

Regina looked sharply at him. "What?" she asked intently.

"When did you say you found Rose?"

She thought for a moment, glad she was good with dates. "The 8th," she said.

"What time?"

"Just before ten in the morning, why?"

Henry turned his phone calendar so she could see what was displayed on the screen. The blue indicating the current day said it was the 8th. The time read 10:06.