Operation All Realms Chapter 10
Henry sighed inwardly. New Year's Day, and he was catching up on grading his students' papers. With all the insanity going on, there'd been no time for mundane things like this. So now, here he sat, doing this before school got back in session Monday. Zita and Dylan were over at mom's and Robin's house, probably having fun out in the snow. So it was just Violet and himself here right now. Violet was probably enjoying the time to herself to talk to friends over the Storybrooke app.
He caught a flash of light from the corner of his eye. Henry swiveled his chair around to the storybooks. Sure enough, one was faintly glowing. The one he knew was from the now former chaos reality. This time the glow was a soothing deep blue. He pulled out the volume and let it flip open to what he knew would be a new page.
"Hey, other Henry" The text began. Henry smiled faintly. "Thought I might catch you up with what happened here after you helped us. It was 2026 then, think we've about caught up with you now. Think you told me it was December 2031 in your reality. It's December 31, 2031 here now."
Henry nodded, just a day behind now.
"I seem to kind of be the author since you all broke our authors' curse. But I don't have the power level you have. Figured you probably stopped looking at the book after we all got back home. After you helped the good part of Robin have a body again. Did you see what happened after that? Everything happened so fast I didn't even think about other realities."
Henry wrote- "yeah, I only saw what happened in your book up to when Roni/Regina married Robin."
"That helps where to start. My book only lets me record our history occasionally. Don't know if it even transfers to your reality's version of our book. "
Henry flipped back the last few pages. The images were more like sketches than paintings and the text was sparse. "Not much detail, just some sketches and a bit of text.
"Afraid of that. Why I decided to wait till we caught up you, year wise with you to try this."
"So what happened after the wedding?"
"My other mom and Killian had a little girl, she got the name Hope in our reality. But Emma's just not that maternal and Killian's not that consistent as a dad either. They tried, but after a couple of years, grandma and grandpa started helping out."
"The authors' curse caused your Emma to believe she wanted a kid. When the curse broke she went back to her true personality."
"Yeah. This is kind of like texting."
"Except we're writing out real words and there's no emojis." Henry chuckled, he didn't think the storybooks magic would react well to attempts to write in texting speech.
"Yep. "
"So what about the rest of the family?"
"So Roni and Robin married, you know that."
"Yes."
"Well, Robyn started spending more time at mom and Robin's house."
"How did Zelena react? Not well I'm guessing."
"Thankfully she doesn't have her magic, so that helped. She insisted on being a part of the next family therapy session."
"Glad mom got everyone to go to it. I bet Rowan and Roland have a lot of stuff they needed to talk about too."
"Me and Lucy too."
"Does Jacinda come?"
"Once, but we figured how to work things out in that meeting so after that, she just picked up Lucy, or I drop her off at Jacinda and Sabine's place afterward. Once I got my life in order here, Lucy and I mostly stopped going to their sessions. Lucy and I have our own sessions occasionally, along with Violet. Violet and I had a reunion. You probably saw that."
"I did."
"We married a few months after mom and Robin did. We have a son named Nathan, he's three now."
"How did Lucy react to having a younger half-brother?"
"Really well. She was excited. They get along well now. Apparently Roland was similar with Rowan. They are still pretty close."
"What about Roland and Robyn?"
"Not quite as close Rowan and Roland but after they adjusted to having another sibling it's gone pretty good."
"So what happened about Zelena?"
"Like I said, she came to the family session. I was glad Lucy wasn't at that one. "
"So really awful."
"You know Zelena."
"Unfortunately."
"So she started off by accusing mom and Robin turning "her" daughter against her. That got Robyn mad and she shouted that her aunt Regina and her father had said nothing about her mom at all. Robyn had come to hate her mom all on her own from the way she talked and acted about everything."
"Uh oh."
"Uh oh is right. Archie tried to calm things down by getting Robyn to admit she didn't hate Zelena. Robin was saying nothing, but he wasn't happy about Archie making his daughter have to say this. But it did calm Zelena down. Zelena then tried to bribe Robyn to come back home by promising her stuff that everyone know Zelena would never do. Robyn insisted that she wanted to stay with her father and her aunt, not her mother. Zelena stood up then and said she was going back to Oz and they'd never see her face again. Robyn didn't say anything to Zelena, but her mother saying that did hurt."
"Did she go back to Oz?"
"Roni advised her against it, what with the people there hating her. She recommended trying the Enchanted Forest, as they have gotten used to former villains returning and showing they have reformed... "They accepted me when I worked with the Charmings, they accepted the semi reformed Evil Queen and Robin's darker half. They'd at least give you a chance to show you've changed."
"Too primitive, sis. I won't live in some place that isn't at least on Oz's technology level."
"Maybe Cruella's reality, then? You haven't been there before, have you?"
Zelena shrugged. "Don't think so."
"Perhaps that's your destination, then." Archie offered.
"Maybe, at least as a first stop." Zelena smirked, then sailed out the door without another word.
Henry was surprised that this part of the retelling came through with a clearly defined picture. He replied to the former chaos reality Henry "So I take it she's never been back."
"Nope, no word sent either, even to her daughter. Maybe her Kelly persona was closer to Zelena than most of our personas. Kelly wrote off Margot permanently once she did something Kelly didn't want her to do. Wrote off Roni too, blamed Roni for Margot's choice."
"So even reformed, she doesn't hold much to family bonds."
"No."
"Well, I'm glad our Hope didn't have to deal with Zelena being like that. She's a sweet kid with a gentle heart."
"Margot is similar, but with a bit tougher side."
"By necessity, it sounds like."
"Yeah."
So, not long after Zelena left, Roni found out she was pregnant. With twins, no less."
"Pregnant with twins? That's dangerous for her!"
"Mom was a bit worried, but it was okay. The one benefit of splitting herself was that it made the infertility spell only half as strong and both mom's and the Evil Queen's uteruses partly healed. The Queen had Rowan with no difficulties at all. When mom & the Queen recombined, it weakened the spell even more."
"So she was okay?"
"Yeah. The babies came a month early and she had to have a C-section and it took several months for her to recover, but she did, with the help of our reality's Rebecka of York. She's a healer and midwife like in your reality. But she came over with Mulan with some folks from Avalon's help."
"Did your Regina and Robin break the curse on Regina's family?"
"The Queen and Dark Robin did when she was pregnant with Rowan. Roni has her memories and told me so I could chronicle it in our story book. They went to the Dark One's castle and cleared out all the magical stuff. Either destroyed it or brought it back to her castle. She was reading one of the books and saw mention of the curse and how to break it."
"Since they weren't as light magic as my Regina and Robin it must have been harder."
"Yeah. They didn't have the aid your Regina and Robin had. And our Great Mother Goddess wasn't as friendly either. The curse was broken though."
"Good."
"Oh! The twins are named Wren and Roan. A boy and a girl. They are almost 4 now."
They're your reality's version of my twins. If you can read my reality's storybook in your reality you can see what happened."
"I can, and did. Mom can read them a bit too. I think because the author thing was weakened here because of all that chaos."
"Probably. I think it's strongest in my reality. I'm keeping special watch on it now, because of that."
"Good. I don't know if I'll be able to contact you again. If not, Just want to thank you all again, you literally saved our lives, saved all realities."
"Hope we can speak again, time to time, not just see what happens in our books."
"Me too."
The light faded. Henry smiled faintly and decided he could take a break from grading his student's work for a few hours. He texted Violet and in a half hour they were on their way to Regina and Robin's house. On the way he told Violet what had happened in the former chaos reality.
"I'm so glad they finally got their happy endings."
"Or beginnings."
"Yeah beginnings sounds better."
As they got out of the car Zita lobbed a snowball at her dad.
Violet grinned and playfully grabbed up a loose handful of snow and dumped it on Henry's head.
"Hey! What's all this ganging up on me?"
As he said that Dylan's snowball splatted on Henry's back.
So all of you?"
Then the snowball fight was on.
Regina and Robin chuckled as they observed the fracas from a window in their warm, dry living room.
"So glad we have this."
"Grateful every day, my lady." Robin pulled her in for a kiss.