Old habits don't go down in early graves. They take their time to die. They fester and burn in the back of one's mind. And if by some miracle they go dormant, they don't lay forgotten for long. The entire world could change but those habits still take up space and thoughts, even when it feels like they've shattered along with everything that created them. But they don't shatter. They fade away piece by piece. Like a puzzle slowly being taken a part. One piece gone. Two, maybe three at a time. Slowly over time they fade. And eventually it feels like they're all gone and then one little action brings it all flooding back. Maybe it's just a word. Or the smallest of actions. For Alice Jones, one word brings it all back.
"Alice!"
Alice knew better than anyone that old habits stuck around like a weird buzzing in her head. She took a step back from the person she wanted to run and hug.
"Papa, no. You'll hurt yourself." And then she snaps back to reality. She'd asked him to meet her here. It was okay to hug him.
"Not anymore, Starfish." He was gentle. He understood what that witch had done. It'd take time. It had been nearly a decade of their lives taken away by a curse that true love couldn't cure. She hugged him. A hug filled with love but always with a hidden terror that threatened to break through and show tears on face. But they didn't. They went about their day and it ended with another hug. They both deserved so many more hugs. But those would never make up for the lost time that was so cruelly taken.
"Alice!" Regina called to the blonde as Alice's hand made it's way towards the door handle.
Alice greeted her, happy. She enjoyed speaking to nearly everyone. "Don't go in there."
Alice didn't know what was wrong with going into the diner she told papa and Robin she'd meet them at.
"Why not?" Alice raised her eybrow in confusion.
"Your father, he's in there."
Alice's face fell. Yet another habit that wouldn't take its rest. Everyone had needed to warn her for years. When it was and wasn't safe. Where exactly her papa would be on the rare occasions she came to visit Robin. This habit wouldn't fade out soon either.
"It's fine, remember?" Alice told her. But it wasn't fine. They'd lost so much time. And it felt like even now that they could be together more time was still being taken by the witch that had cursed them. The habit of avoiding each other for his safety had translated into avoiding each other for short periods of time just because they and other people would forget they could be together.
Her old habits lay dormant at times but then they come back. Often in ways Alice wishes they wouldn't.
"I can't." Sometimes Alice forgets about how free she is now. And sits in her room forgetting there's nothing stopping her from leaving. It's a habit she never had a choice in as a child and decades later sometimes forgets the choice she now has. It's once she remebers that she runs around as fast and as far as she can go, letting her suddenly refound freedom sink into her brain and her bones as much as it had that first night she was free. She runs until she can't any more and then she sits down and gazes at the stars as she touches the world she always wanted to touch. Even if it's a different world than the one that was outside of her tower window.
Old habits stay inside their hearts. Even without the poison their hearts are still posioned by a different curse. The curse of their memories. The memories of being torn apart. The memories of being a prisoner. The memories of everything that had ever been done to them.
Old habits don't go down into early graves. They hide their ugly heads long enough to be forgotten. But then they come rushing back in a flood of their memories sometimes. Eventually they die. But it takes time. Old habits don't die easy. They die long, hard, gruesome deaths.