Hi, so here is another chapter and i apologise for the incredible lateness of this chapter but work has just been insane right now. I will try and do a double update nearer Christmas and hopefully bring this story to a conclusion sometime in the new year.
Also a new and very welcome point of view in this chapter and some dialogue and events of episodes changed around.
The next few chapter will be in the Enchanted Forest only and then we go back to Storybrooke for the rest of the chapters.
Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.
Enjoy.
Old Scars, Future Hearts.
Chapter 7-Staring Blindly Into The Future
Regina attempts to foil another curse and in doing so loses the one person that she loves above all else. Meanwhile a man is trapped in another realm living day by day trying to find a way back to his son when he hears news some people has arrived…as if by magic. (And yes we have a point of view different from Regina for this chapter and for the next couple!)
"So let me understand you" Regina said as they were standing in the square. It had gone rather quickly all things considered (and by that she meant the Charming's and their happy do goody feelings had not slowed them down) and now she was standing in the square feeling her head throb in agony. How had it been that this morning she had been indulging in a hot bath and nursing a slight hangover from the white wine before—Regina had never learnt from the last time she had indulged in that—and now she was standing in front of the town square watching the man who had made her who she was today stab his father in the back. Literally and figuratively if she knew Rumple.
Pan was gone, Henry was back in his own body. The world should be righting itself as it had seemed to do just the other night when she'd had both her son under her roof and this little boy who had come to mean so much to her in those precious moments where she had been the closest thing to a mother that Roland had had, and he had been the closest thing she would get to a second child.
And Rumple was dead of course.
Belle was sobbing and Regina supposed that if she was a better woman, a good woman then she would care. But there was a part of her that was still the Evil Queen and the Evil Queen wanted to snap at the bookworm to shut up.
It was not just Regina of course. She'd never had much patience with crying women before. Cora never accepted any weakness in either her child or her ladies in waiting and Regina had only cried once in her mother's presence and that was over Daniel. Even at the end with her heart back in her chest her mother had refused to cry. Regina wondered weather Cora simply had it in her.
And there was a part of her that was simply grieving. For all his teasing and prodding, for all the grooming and the manipulation Rumple had been her teacher and her friend. There had been something simmering between them for years that she had never acted on and even when they had not been close there was always a sense that they were on the same side even if they hated each other. She had always counted on Rumpelstiltskin being there when the shit hit the fan, with a snide comment of course, with a favour attached no doubt but always there, inflexible, indomitable, a solid presence in her life in a way her own parents and certainly her husband had not been.
He had been her enemy, but he had also been her teacher and dare she say it now she was gone, a friend. She would mourn his loss, Regina knew but she would not descend to tears.
Indeed she thought with a wry smile, he'd be mortified if she did.
So standing there in the middle of Main Street, Henry in Emma's arms, the Charming's clutching each other (and Regina had to work hard to resist her eye roll) and Neal and Belle disintegrating while a rather nauseated Hook looked on, all Regina wanted to do was to take Roland back to her house with Henry lock the door and pour herself another drink.
But of course it was not as simple as that or as simple as Regina and the rest of them going back to Granny's (the Charmings and Emma nothing but unoriginal) and getting cocoa—or in her case a dark coffee—because the curse that Pan had originally wanted to cast, the one that he had casted in Henry's body was now sweeping over the town and Regina knew what that meant.
The laws of magic were at times blurred and at other times crystal clear. Rumple had been the one to tell her that. A price would always have to be paid, a life could not be taken without consequence, a heart shattered and so forth. And curses were a practitioners pride and terror. To cast a curse of such magnitude meant that you were powerful above all others but the consequences were severe.
There was a pause as she stood there and tried to sort through what she knew and what she was so desperate not to believe. Because believing meant a pain the likes of which she'd have never known before and she was not sure she could stand it.
But there was never enough time to contemplate one's own personal agony…especially not when one was standing next to Emma Swan who had on some days all the tact and patience of a rampaging rhinoceros in a house made of glass. Regina felt herself explaining through numb lips and she looked at her son. She did not want to look at Emma as she explained that Emma was getting all she had ever wanted at Regina's expense. That she was getting Henry and a normal life and Regina was getting her heart ripped out.
Roland who had been listening to all of this with wide eyes from where he had half been hiding behind Regina's leg—for some reason she did not know and did not want to think about right now he had fled to Hook's side when she had tried to help Rumple deal with the menace that was his father—slid a hand into her own and she grasped it uncaring that the boy was five and did not understand this. She needed the comfort and right now she would take what she would get. If that made her pathetic then so be it. Personally Regina thought it would be a miracle if she got through this without collapsing in a fit of grief.
They got to the town line with a puff of magic and she turned to her son. Every second was special with him and she could curse herself because even as she was committing his face to memory she was losing sense of what she was saying to him and what he was saying back. Regina looked once at Emma who was speaking with Hook her face unnaturally open for a second and together there seemed to be an unspoken communication between them that she would keep Henry safe, that Regina would ensure that the Charming's did not cause chaos looking for loop holes (as if Regina did not know that there were none) and then a deep desire between the two of them to get this parting over with before either one of them crumbled.
Neither she nor Emma Swan were women to be overcome by a sentimental moment but Regina suspected that they were both feeling the same thing right about now.
Henry got in the car, Emma followed. The purple smoke swirled around them as Roland gripped her coat and Regina used her magic to take them home.
She did not remember crashing in the Enchanted Forest or that her coat and dress had been changed to her old outfit with her hair tied high upon her head, long instead of short and layered. She knew that two other royals were there, that the Charming's, her dratted daughter in law and that gormless husband of hers had stepped into their roles as naturally as humanly possible, of leaders and royals and harbingers of hope. What she did remember was waiting until she could see a clear exit and then walking into the woods a way away in order to gain control of her emotions.
She sat on a log for a second and tried to remember how to breathe.
Regina heard the snap of a twig and she turned around fully prepared to blast the person (mostly likely her step daughter) into oblivion but she paused her fire dying out in her hand as she saw who it was.
It was not Snow White.
It was Roland.
She watched slightly stunned as the boy hooked one leg and then the other over the log so they were sitting next to each other looking around at the trees and the woods and the sky (well it wasn't like Regina had much experiences when it came to forests was it?).
"It's ok Gina" he said silently his cloak wrapped around him and looking more comfortable in this world, his own world (up until a week or so ago when he had been taken from it), than he had ever done in hers.
"You've still got me"
Regina couldn't help it, she laughed, it might have turned into a sob halfway through but it was better than nothing all the same.
He had been half poured over a fire, staring without seeing when he heard the crackle of twigs snapping.
A lifetime it seemed or so in the forest had made him aware of his men and the sounds that they made so he knew it was Little John long before the man came through the woods breathing heavily as if he had jogged the way back from the small town where he was supposed to be gathering supplies—or was it firewood? Robin Hood hardly knew what he was asking of his men these days, or if he was actually doing the asking. At this point they could have simply starting running their own gangs and he would not have been any the wiser.
It had been exactly seventeen days since he had lost his son.
He had taken to keeping count of them
There was nothing much to do beyond that.
They had taken that castle to bits trying to find a way to cross realms, Mulan had gone back to her friends to try and find more information but had yielded nothing. For two days after she had told him this he had hardly been able to get out of the bed where he had taken Roland from the night that he had lost everything and anything that had ever meant anything to him.
The third night he had cried.
The fourth night Little John and Allan had both come to see him. The men were getting restless. Robin could see why, they were outlaws without a purpose living in a castle that boasted much in comfort but not in money. And he knew his men wanted something to do, all of them had known Roland since birth. He was not so alone in his grief to not acknowledge that his men had been grieving with him in the loss of his son.
John had suggested going to the Evil Queen's castle. Apparently she was the only woman who could hold a candle to the Dark One and if there was any way of getting to Neverland she would have something written down. Or at least that was how John had proposed it and Robin had been forced to admit that he was right. There was no point in wondering what Roland would think if he came back and found them gone because Roland was dea—
He had to stop himself there least he throw up what little food he had managed to keep down. He could not think of that scenario though the rational part of his brain told him it was the most likely outcome. The other part of his brain and his heart and his whole body screamed at even a whisper of the outcome.
One thought of his boy as cold as Marian had been, as still, as lifeless and he wanted to curl up in the dirt and die himself.
"We have a problem" Little John said wiping his brow. "A big problem. Allan says people have arrived. Just popped out of thin air like magic"
"Allan has a flare for the dramatics" Robin said his voice horse. He could not remember the last time he had used it.
"Perhaps" John said nodding. "But you might like this one" Robin looked up at the tone of voice then and paused. John was smiling, not his usual kind smile but a smile full of a dark promise.
"Neal Cassidy or Baelfire is with them"
Robin blinked and then a white hot fury suddenly seemed to seep into his bloodstream as if like poison.
"Where?" he snarled reaching for his bow. John jerked his head and Robin was off leaving John behind and streaking through the forest barely leaving marks behind as he followed the trail his friend had left.
He knew what this meant.
Neal Cassidy, Baelfire or whatever his name was had taken away Robin's son, perhaps forever.
Neal Cassidy or Baelfire, or whatever his name was, was going to die.
And there you have it a nice little cliff-hanger for you that will lead to the next chapter.
Next Chapter-As Regina and Roland set on a path towards the rest of the group they run across flying monkeys and a man with a bow and arrow who gets the shock of his life. Some episode cannon divergence.