A/N: Slight time leap. Don't forget to review!
Chapter 7
It had been two months.
If you were to ask Henry, it had actually been two months, four days and some odd hours that could vary depending on the time he decided his mother had actually been taken from this world. If you were to ask anyone that saw Henry on a daily basis, they would tell you simply that it had been too long.
How could anyone let it go, though. How do you recover from a loss so great, so traumatic, that it pervades your every thought. How do you tell someone to move on, when there had been no closure, no actual ending, no real death. How, indeed.
The inhabitants of Storybrooke didn't actually like to talk about it, though. Regina's name had grown almost holly and saying it out loud left people feeling fearful and defeated. They went about their own lives and everything had long since returned to its normal routine and still… Still the air felt suspended, as if time had stopped moving again in their little corner of the world. It hadn't, of course, but people felt like it had, for it seemed to await for the return of the Queen to resume.
There was also sadness at the anticlimactic ending of a woman they had all thought, somehow, unbeatable.
If she had fallen prey to tragedy, how could they fare any better.
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Henry had grown quiet in the weeks that followed his mother's disappearance. His frustration at the rest of Storybrooke's willingness to simply move forward had been left in the past, his time better occupied with other endeavors. Like finding a way to bring his mother back. He no longer needed others to believe in him. Henry believed enough for the entire town and for his mother, who may have lost hope.
Gold had proved to be of actual little help.
That hadn't mattered, though. Henry knew how to be sneaky. He had used Mr. Gold's shop as a veritable library, taking and then systematically returning books and magical objects for study and experimentation. Piles of notes now graced his mother's office desk in their home, which no one dared empty in fear of the Queen and in respect to Henry's wishes. His mother's brown leather book with the heart at the cover had also been an object of study, along with several tomes his mother had brought with her from the Enchanted Forest and hidden in a room below the family mausoleum.
Henry liked it there.
The walls had the same white forest wallpaper that adorned the Mayor's Office and his mother's private one. A large tree stood at the center of the room, made of crystals and fake apples that glowed with magic. Clothes from a time long past occupied a corner in the room and they still smelled like his mother. It was such a comforting smell.
He was no closer to finding a way into that other world, though.
Lying under the crystal tree, eyes watching the lights playing at the ceiling, he thought and pondered and forced his mind to find a solution. No idea had led anywhere so far, but he would keep trying.
We don't give up, Henry, because it is hard, do we?
It was his mother's voice in his head that made him sit up suddenly, eyes wide.
We find another way.
Over and over that thought circled his head, as Henry stared intently at the mirror that stood at the hidden door to this room. He had been actively trying to find a way to enter that other land, so he could search for his mom, bypassing that rule of despair and hopelessness that stood sentry at the door. Maybe, he should have been looking for a way to get his mother to come back into this world.
If only he could contact her on the other side.
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"I don't know, guys… I just don't know." Emma rubbed her forehead and released a long sigh of frustration. It was still weird to talk to Mary Margaret and David as her actual, living, same-age-as-her parents.
"Oh, Emma, it'll take time…" Mary smiled sadly.
"I know it'll take time, but he walks around all quiet and, and… dejected! And nothing I do or say makes any difference!" She abandoned her perch at the table and started pacing. "If this is what Regina felt like before the curse was broken, no wonder she tried to kill me! I'm getting ready to commit murder."
"Honey, it's not you. He is just dealing with the loss of his mother and the tragic way she was taken doesn't help either… I… I dreamt about her again last night." Mary whispered the last part almost to herself, fighting a tear that threatened to escape from the corner of her eyes. She had cried so many of them lately. "I guess, I miss her, too."
"I know, Mary Margaret. I'm just so worried and, and… lost." Emma reclaimed her seat by her father's side.
David stayed silent, offering his arms and his silence as support. He still felt like a third wheel sometimes and participating this way always made him feel close to his daughter, even if she continued to flinch a bit every time he called her that.
"It's not about knowing the answers, Emma. It's about being there. Just being there when he needs it." Snow spoke softly, leaning against Charming and sighing into his embrace.
"What… You said you dreamt of her again. Was it the same dream?" Emma asked.
"No… It was another memory." Snow closed her eyes and allowed the tears to flow. "I didn't understand it at the time. I didn't know what it meant…"
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There is a woman in a pale dress that sits on the floor of the garden. Her small waist is tightly enclosed with corsets and rich fabric, made more apparent by the full skirt that is spread in a circle around her. Her dark hair is only half up, shining with the setting sun. Her face is calm and her eyes seem so big, that the last rays of the day glimmer and reflect upon them.
The pair of young, innocent eyes that observe this unmoving angels is sure she has never seen someone so beautiful in the entire land.
Darkness falls slowly, but surely, and still the woman sits unaware and the young girl watches silently from behind a pillar. Something dark is spreading around the full skirt of the woman and the girl pays it no attention, for there are shadows creeping into the garden as night falls. A man dressed all in black and barely visible among these shadows approached the silent woman with long strides and the girl frowns at the interruption.
This man is right next to the unmoving angel, stepping carelessly on her ivory skirt. He does something, touches her carefully and the next thing that the child watching sees, is the beautiful woman in the dark man's arms being led quickly away. Her eyes are still open, her face is still calm and her hair is still perfectly made.
As the pair rushes by the young thing, she shirks away into the shadows cast by a white pillar. Afraid of getting caught out of her room so late into the evening, she tries hard to be invisible and no one pays her any attention. When the garden is silent once more, and no soul can be seen, the girl walks up to the spot underneath the apple tree where the angel had sat. There, she sees nothing, but a small drop of dark liquid staining the green grass.
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"You're not saying that…" Emma stared at her mother incredulously. "Regina would never…"
"The next few days, father told me that she had fallen ill and that I couldn't see her until she got better. I asked Johanna about the guard and Regina in the garden and she talked in circles and never told me a thing. But her face… she had known."
"But…", Emma was opening and closing her mouth in disbelief. "Why?"
"Snow may not have seen it then… she was just a child… but Regina… Can you imagine?" David whispered, eyes glazes into the distance.
"What?" Snow asked, voice hoarse, as she pulled her head from his shoulder. Her brow was furrowed and Emma could see it then, the stubbornness to cling to a child's view of something she now knew to be so much more.
"David?" Emma twisted her head to meet her father's gaze. There was so much compassion to be found there.
The charming man turned to face his daughter and then returned his attention to his wife, who no longer lingered on his shoulder, but hunched upon herself. "Snow… how old was Regina when she married Leopold?"
Snow hugged herself. "Sixteen."
Emma swore under her breath, eyes widening in disbelief. She may not know how old Leopold had been, but Henry's book had an image of him and that… That had been the image of an old man.
"Sixteen…", David repeated. "Sixteen, had watched her mother kill the man she loved, was forced to marry a man so much older than her and care for a child not so much older than herself. Alone and isolated in the palace…"
"No!" Snow rose to her feet and turned her back to both the man and the daughter she loved. "She wasn't forced! And she wasn't alone!"
David rose as well, hands reaching towards his wife in a placating manner. Emma stopped his advances with a hand on his shoulder. A hand she kept there as she forced this man to face her. "You know something."
"I was just a sheppard. And I didn't really have much contact with people outside our village. But, people talk." Hands on his hips and deep breath, his face was like that of a mathematician that finally put the proper equations together to form a bigger, previously unseen picture.
"What were the rumors?" Emma snapped her head to the right, catching sight of Mary Margaret with her arms around her waist and tears on pale cheeks.
"Of how young the new Queen was. Of how she didn't have permission to leave the palace walls. Of her beauty… and her apparent sadness." David sighed again and met Snow's eyes. "When I took James' place, she had already become the Evil Queen, but even then, there had been talk among the royals."
"Talk?" Emma couldn't shake how broken her mother looked then.
"That the Evil Queen may be evil incarnate, but she hadn't always been so. And well…" David looked away. "... insanity was not unheard of among the higher classes."
"None of this was in Henry's book", Emma spoke. "I'm starting to think that book was seriously biased."
"I…", Mary Margaret, Snow and the woman she now was, in between these two polar identities couldn't seem to catch her breath. "I didn't know. How could I not know?"
It was a rhetorical question. And if it hadn't been, well… what do you say in a moment like this? That you would have seen it? That it was so obvious that everyone should have seen it? Empty words. The truth of the matter was that the clues had all been there, witnessed by too many to be ignored. And still, no one had seen it. No one had connected the dots to see the bigger picture. Regina's evil acts and cruelness had been easier to spot.
"We have to bring her back…", Snow whispered at last, determination pushing a little of the crushing sadness aside.
"Yeah… the problem here is not deciding if we want her back or not", Emma answered, returning to her pacing. "The question is how… How?"