A/N: Welcome back!
10 years ago at Harvard…
Mal always thought that college would be fun. All those years in Storybrooke, she kept imagining nights spent out on the town, meeting girls, attending interesting lectures. But most importantly she imagined doing all of it with her best friend by her side. Her and Regina. College was always supposed to be about the two of them. Getting out of town together, discovering something better had been their plan since they were 10 years old.
She supposed the plan succeeded. Just not in the way she'd expected.
It'd been a month since Regina's miscarriage and things were still tense in their dorm room. Regina had barely spoken two words to her - or anybody - since that night. It was like living with a ghost.
The first few days Mal treaded on eggshells, doing everything she could not to upset her. She erased all evidence of what happened before Regina got back to the dorm. Had her bed stripped of its bloody sheets, had the shower cleaned. Whispers had spread through the dorm about what happened, but she'd been glaring all the other residents into silence, making sure no one dared to pester either of them. By the time Regina checked out of the hospital, there was no real evidence that she'd been pregnant at all.
Regina didn't talk about what happened. Mal knew the school had arranged for her to go to therapy, but Regina never mentioned her sessions. She just woke up, went to class, studied, and that was it. Mal could barely recognize her. She'd seen Regina sad before, devastated even, but nothing close to this. No tears, no smiles, no anger. It was like she was running on autopilot.
Mal tried to let it be, but truthfully, she was concerned. It was only when she saw Regina sitting in an off-campus coffee shop during what was meant to be her therapy appointment that she decided to address her concerns.
It was a week before Thanksgiving break when she finally cornered her. She'd just gotten back from a talk with her professor and Regina was laying on her bed with a text book in hand, studying for an economics test.
"So…" she drawled, tossing her backpack onto her own bed. "I talked with Ursula and Carlotta. They're coming down from Boston to join us for Thanksgiving. Looks like they don't want to head home, either."
"Sounds good," Regina mumbled, not even looking up from her book.
Mal pressed her lips together, trying not to unleash her frustration. She was getting really tired of her best friend not looking at her.
"I think they're really looking forward to seeing you," she added. "Especially after what happened…"
Regina's pen went still in her hand and Mal tried not to take satisfaction out of getting her attention. "Yeah, they've just been so worried ever since I called them from the hospital."
Snapping her textbook closed, Regina stood from her bed. "There's no reason for that."
She started shoving her materials into her backpack as Mal gawked at her.
"There's no reason for that?"
"No." Regina shook her head. "I'm fine."
"People who are fine don't skip therapy," Mal snapped, before she could stop herself.
Regina paused, staring at her with an open mouth. "Have you been spying on me?"
"You think I need to spy on you to know that you're not okay?" Mal scoffed. "You're my best friend, Regina Mills. I know when something is messing you up. And you have been messed up ever since you lost the baby."
"Shut up!" Regina's face went red as she glared at her. "Just shut up Mal! I don't want to talk about this!"
"But you need to talk about it! With me, with anybody," she stressed. "You are bottling all this shit up and it is gonna rip you apart from the inside out! For god's sake, just let it out!"
"No!" she shouted. "No! If I let it out I will shatter, Mal! Do you understand that? Do you understand that I am barely hanging on here! I don't need to talk about this, Mal! I need to forget it! From start to finish, the whole thing was a dark, numb nightmare! I wanted out of it the entire time!" She paused, taking a shaky breath. "And I don't need to be reminded of that."
Slipping on her backpack, she stomps over to the front door. "You're supposed to be my best friend, Mal. Start acting like it!"
She slammed the door behind her, knocking one of their posters off the wall. Mal watched it fall to the floor as she sat down on her bed. Sighing, she shook her head.
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Present day…
When Mal got the text from Regina to come pick her up, she knew in her gut that something had gone wrong. That feeling was only confirmed when she found her friend on the side of the road with tears running down her face.
"What happened?" She asked.
Regina shook her head. "A whole new batch of shit."
By the time she was finished recounting the story, they'd made it back to town. Mal was in disbelief. Even after she'd confronted him in the bar, she didn't actually expect Robin to come clean. Despite the results, a tiny part of her was proud of him. Holding onto secrets never helped anyone. If only her best friend could learn that lesson.
Regina was solemn in the passenger seat of her Prius. She'd wiped away her tears and gone silent after retelling what happened between her and Robin. Mal watched her from the corner of her eye as she drove. "You want to talk about it?"
Regina shook her head. "Nothing to talk about."
Mal tightened her grip on the steering wheel, gritting her teeth. Of course, she thought. Same old Regina. Retreating away from her feelings. Yeah, not this time, she thought.
Looking out the window, Regina pinched her eyebrows together. "Mal, you just drove past my house."
"Yeah, I'm not taking you there."
"What?"
"We're going to Robin's."
"No!" Regina's eyes practically popped out of her head. "Mal, I don't want to see him!"
"Well tough shit, I'm the driver," replied Mal, keeping her eyes on the road.
Regina glared at her. "Mal… turn this car around."
"No."
"Mal!"
"No!" Slamming her foot on the brake, she brought the car to a screeching halt. "Regina, I refuse to let this night be another thing that you bury and try to forget. Just like graduation, just like Daniel, just like the baby-"
"Shut up!" Regina immediately cut her off. "You damn well know not to bring that up around me, especially not tonight! Not after all of this!"
"You're right, I do know," Mal conceded. "I'm afraid that you don't. It's like you can't even see how much carrying all this shit around has changed you and hurt you. Regina, you have been through so much...and I've watched it all, so I know it started the day he broke up with you." She shook her head. "You finally have a chance to let him know just how much he hurt you. He said his piece. Say yours."
Regina fell back in her seat, shaking her head. "What difference will it make?"
"All the difference in the fucking world," promised Mal. "Believe me. After talking to my mom about all the shit she forced me to go through with my stepdad it was like… I could finally let it go. I didn't know how much I needed her to know."
"That might be true for you, Mal, but it's different with me and Robin." She paused. "He doesn't even know the whole story."
"Doesn't make it any less painful or real," she said softly. "Regina, you have carried around this weight for 10 years. You need to tell him the truth. More importantly you want to."
Regina scoffed, but Mal didn't let up.
"This is the first time you've set foot in this town for a decade. Do you really expect anyone to believe that it wasn't about him?"
"It wasn't!" she protested. "I… I didn't want it to be." Regina growled in frustration. "I wasn't supposed to come home to all this shit. It wasn't supposed to hit me this hard. Neither was he."
"Maybe it wouldn't hit so hard if he finally knew the truth about what happened," Mal suggested.
Regina immediately shook her head. "No. I don't want to talk to him about that. That's… in the past. I just… can't."
Mal nodded understandingly. "Okay,maybe talking about that is too much. But you still need to say something to let him know what happened wasn't okay. If you don't I think you'll regret it for the rest of your life."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Regina's knee start to bounce in the passenger seat. A sure sign that she was truly considering doing as told.
"Okay, fine," she mumbled. "I'll talk to him."
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The Golden Arrow had always been a safe haven for Robin. His father opened the bar after coming home from the war and never shied away from sharing it with his only son. Some of Robin's earliest memories took place there. He remembered washing dishes in the back as a kid, bussing tables in high school. Hell, he was pretty sure he took his first steps behind the counter.
The bar was the first place he went after his father died. And it was exactly where he found himself after hearing that his high school girlfriend had been pregnant.
He didn't know what to do.
It was after closing and he'd been standing behind the counter for the last 30 minutes, wiping down the same shot glass. After filling it with vodka and then downing it, of course. He considered calling David, but if he called his cousin then he'd take the vodka away, and that was the last thing he wanted right now.
He didn't know what to do next. So he poured another shot. He was halfway to drinking it when the door banged open.
"Regina?"
For a brief moment, he wondered if he'd taken more shots than he remembered. But it was really her. The last time he saw her she'd been crying. Standing in the doorway of his bar, the tears in her eyes had been replaced with daggers. She slammed the door behind her and stalked her way to the counter, every step she took carefully and angrily calculated.
Resting her hands against the counter rail, she shook her head. "You don't get to do this."
He gestured, confusedly. "Do what?"
"Come to me and confess your feelings and your regrets about what happened between us," she said, raising her voice. "You don't get to do that. Not now. Not ever."
He realized there were still tears in her eyes as she spoke but they were shining with anger, not sadness.
"What you did to me was the biggest cruelty I have ever endured from another human being in my entire life," she continued. "You made me feel like an idiot for loving you." She paused for a moment to catch her breath. "You know, I was in bed for days after you said you didn't have feelings for me. It made me doubt for years if anyone really could. And now, after I have finally pulled myself back into something resembling a whole person, you've decided it's time to say that it was all a lie? That all the pain and anguish you sent my way was for my own good?"
She angrily shook her head. "That is shit, Robin! It is complete bullshit! You don't get to frame your decision to put me through hell as some form of romantic self sacrifice. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't love. It wasn't fair to me. And I don't care what your reasons for doing it were. It's something I'm not sure I can ever forgive you for."
She let out a deep breath when she was done, staring at him with expectant eyes. "Well… say something!"
He stood behind the bar, still as a statue while she ranted for him. He'd listened to her entire rant, not saying a word, still in shock that she was here at all. Every word she said hit him like a brick, not one of them untrue. There was a lot he could've said to her. Apologies. Rationalizations. Excuses. But they were all overshadowed by the one question that had haunted him since he'd left the dance.
"Where's our baby, Regina?"
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