Yay, I'm finally back! That season finale had been devastating to my feels, but I've now recovered enough to start writing again. First of all, thank you all for the feedback on the previous chapter. This chapter stays in line with canon and is heavy on Regina & Henry feels - but worry not, there is some OQ in here, too, and plenty more on the way next. Enjoy!

Regina forced her laboured breathing to settle. There was only one thought on her mind: Henry is gone.

She kept her eyes tightly shut as she breathed in the salty air. The longer she kept them shut, the longer she wouldn't have to look at the wretched Enchanted Forest. The exertion of the spell she'd just performed made her chest heave - or perhaps it was the weight of the terrible price she'd had to pay.

Henry is gone. I will never see him again.

A gust of wind ruffled her hair. The road creaked under her feet as she staggered slightly under the emotional burden. A seagull shrieked.

Since when did the birdlife of the Enchanted Forest include seagulls? And since when did the forest smell of sea? This made no sense - she'd performed the spell right, it must have worked. She needed to think straight, to make sure her suspicion wasn't mere wishful thinking. Regina took one blind, tentative step, probing. Her heart skipped a beat.

The Enchanted Forest wasn't paved with asphalt.

Regina didn't need to open her eyes to know where they were. She didn't need Snow White gasping and breathing, in a voice filled with wonder to match Regina's own, the inconceivable words Regina had never hoped to hear again:

"We're...back?"

"We should never have trusted her in the first place," Leroy bellowed. "She screwed us all over again!"

"But where's Emma and Henry?" Charming interjected.

"Ask her! Ask the Queen!"

Regina was barely listening.

They were back. Here they all were, standing at the infamous town line of Storybrooke - her town, the town she'd created many years ago and then dismantled again. Storybrooke should be no more, and yet here they all were.

Maybe Emma and Henry had somehow been returned as well?

But how was this possible? Had something gone wrong? No, that's impossible. Regina shook her head. Self-assurance wouldn't do now, she needed more than just her pride speaking. Pressing her fingertips against her temples, she forced herself to remember, painstakingly recalling every little detail of the moment she'd been putting the magic to work. There was no doubt now: she had indeed done everything right.

"The magic worked." She remained with her back to them and hadn't raised her voice, yet everyone seemed to hear her perfectly well. "It must have returned us to the Enchanted Forest."

"Oh, really?" Leroy's voice dripped sarcasm - and open animosity. "Then how the hell are we still here?"

"We're not still here. We're back."

Chaos erupted behind her as everyone began shouting questions, spewing accusations and spinning wild theories, while David urged them, without success, to speak one by one. How very like him it was to seize every chance to try and form councils and make speeches the minute he could.

Regina drowned out all the infuriating noise. As usual, they were letting panic and prejudice cloud their judgement and wasting precious time. Not only were they wrongly accusing her - that was the least of it. They were asking all the wrong questions, too. As absurd and inconceivable as the idea seemed, there was only one way they could have gotten back. The real question was, who'd done it and why? And where did this leave Henry and Emma?

The jumble of voices was finally hushed somewhat when Snow spoke.

"Regina's right. We must have been gone for a while."

"How do you-?" The words died on David's lips, and the shocked silence that followed, only interrupted by Leroy's snort of disbelief, made Regina finally turn around and face the lot of them.

They all seemed to be staring at Snow, but David was blocking Regina's view. He squinted at her with narrowed eyes, suspicion brewing, then stepped aside.

Snow was touching her highly pregnant belly - rather sheepishly, as if to check if it was really what it was pretending to be. Well, this was unexpected. There it was: proof that time had indeed passed between the day they'd left Storybrooke and the moment they returned. It must have been eight months at least, by the looks of it.

"Regina, what magic is this?"

Regina snorted at David's insinuation. "I'd hardly call this magic - at least not the kind I can perform." Surely even he had to realise he was the one responsible for this?

"I don't remember anything," Charming shrugged with such bafflement that her smirk turned into a sympathetic smile.

"I assume the last thing all of us remember is standing on the town line before I sent us back to our land."

"Aha!" Leroy leered. The poor idiot probably thought he'd just caught her in a lie. "And just how would you know that, unless you're the one who did this?"

"Because I actually use my brain?"

"So...what happened?"David stepped in again before Leroy could make another dim-witted comeback. "Have we- I mean, could we have moved forward in time?"

"No, that's impossible. Magic cannot do that - no one's ever figured out how."

Regina turned her back on them and strolled back towards the town line, stopping just a few inches short of it. They weren't going to like what she had to say - neither did she, for that matter. Searching for alternatives for the umpteenth time, Regina's eyes rested on the familiar slanted writing of the sign overhead: Leaving Storybrooke.

But they weren't leaving. They had just returned.

"I performed the spell right." Her voice rang with confidence. Like it or not, it was the only thing that made sense. "We must have been taken back to the Enchanted Forest, and Storybrooke must have been wiped out. There were no portals left for us to take. There's only one way we could have gotten back here and have no memories of the past year or so."

No one spoke. Someone gave a nervous little cough. Perhaps they all hoped not speaking the words would make them less true.

"The Dark Curse."

At least Snow was smart enough to understand. Regina half-expected to be contradicted again. Instead, a collective gasp was all the response the news got.

"The question is, who cast it, and why?" Regina's stomach sank and she couldn't stop herself, even though part of her hated herself for caring what they thought. "Before anyone bothers blaming me again, I had nothing to do with it."

"Yeah, right," Leroy growled. The man never disappointed, that was for sure.

Sensing an impending crisis, David made a step forward.

"Has anyone else noticed Neal's missing?"Belle asked with a hint of reproach.

A murmur rose as all eyes turned to Belle, then scanned the group of them. Sure enough, Neal was indeed missing.

There seemed to be more to this lost year than any of them would like for ti to be. There was a reason they didn't remember this year in particular. Regina needed to be alone to think, to give free reign to all the emotion washing over her without worrying about keeping up appearances. Then she - they, she thought with mixed feelings, because that's what they'd become somewhere along the way - could figure out what to do next.

The possibilities were endless, and Regina felt life pumping in her veins again - not fully reawakened yet, because let's not get carried away, but it was something, so very much unlike the despair descended on her as Emma's yellow bug had rolled away in a cloud of purple smoke.

If Storybrooke existed, doors may have been reopened that Regina'd thought were closed forever.

He was there. Henry, her son Henry, whom she'd never thought she'd see again.

Regina's whole world began to spin, revolving, as always, around the one person that had been the centre of her universe for over twelve years now. The spoon clattered against the saucer, the sound barely reaching her from far, far away, barely registering as her head swam and her chest threatened to burst with emotion, with the strain of keeping it all in.

He was right there, just a few steps away, sitting with Emma and the two idiots as if they'd never left.

When their eyes met, Regina's heart burst into song. Henry's blank look slowly changed, and the sweeping music inside her died instantly. It wasn't recognition she saw there, it wasn't joy and it certainly wasn't love. He was disturbed - disturbed by a stranger gawking at him with her eyes wide open and her jaw dropped, staring, staring, slowly dying inside again - though that was something he couldn't know.

The stammered apology somehow managed to get our past giant lump in her throat, and Henry nodded - apology accepted - and turned back to Snow and David.

He'd looked right through her.

Regina wouldn't cry. Not in front of him, at least. But later, in a minute, out of everyone's sight but especially her little prince's, she'd break down in tears, wishing her bleeding heart gone.

So he'd been happy.

Sitting on the front seat of the yellow bug with Emma next to her, Regina let the knowledge sink in.

Her eyes brimmed with hot tears just as her heart rejoiced and ached at the same time. Her son had been happy in New York, happy in this new life Regina had created for him and Emma. A good life. Happy memories. For Emma, they had been brand new. For Henry, they were all real. They were their memories, ones Regina and Henry had made together in the eleven years they'd been a family. So yes, for Henry the memories were real, with one small change to them: Emma instead of Regina.

The memories Regina had of Henry and herself were the most precious thing to her. Giving them over like that had been a struggle, yet at the same time a reward in itself. It had helped her remember that their life had been good, that they had been happy before things had started going so terribly wrong, before the storybook and Dr Hopper and Emma Swan.

A tear rolled down her cheek. With Henry, she'd made mistakes, yes, ones she would likely never forgive herself, but she'd also finally got something right. Regina might not be a part of Henry's memories now, but he'd been happy.

It had all been worth it.

It hurt to have him near and yet so far away. Emma's suggestion was tempting. To see Henry, to talk to him was all Regina wanted, and yet…

What if she couldn't handle it? What if she gave herself away? What if her strange behaviour completely freaked him out?

Emma was so insistent, and Regina so afraid. Why? Perhaps that was how profoundly grateful Emma was for those memories, the life she had lately been living. Perhaps offering a little bit of that to Regina wasn't so hard after all of that. Except that wasn't true. When Emma had first come to Stroybrooke, Regina hadn't even considered sharing Henry with her - and she'd lost him because of the frantic fight she'd launched herself into. Perhaps Emma didn't want to make the same mistake. But no, that wasn't all there was: Regina saw it in her eyes, the sympathetic look Emma was giving her even now.

There was a light on in Snow's apartment, and shadows moving behind the curtains - one of them would be him.

And Regina finally caved.

Next thing she knew, she was standing in the living room, desperately trying ot be still while she had no idea what to do with her hands or the weakness in her knees or the hammering of her heart. Regina drank him in as he stood to meet her. It had been so long and he'd grown so much - they were almost the same height now. As her heart began to pound all the more, her brain seemed to slow down to a crawl, and talking to him was almost impossible but she had to try, she had to keep it normal if she wanted to see him again. As Madam Mayor, not Mom. But anything was better than nothing.

So she pretended that was all there was, Madam Mayor and Henry Mills. Swan, it was Henry Swan now. Her heart wasn't pounding anymore, maybe the very realisation drowned all life out of it. To hug him was second nature to her, it was an impulse she had been fighting and now had almost given in to it. In the last moment, she pulled back at the sight of his offered hand, turning the pain curl of her lips into a smile as best she could. No, the glove at least needed to go. They shook hands, and yes, she could do this, she could pretend she was only meeting him for the first time, a stranger to her just like she was to him. She could do this if this all there could be.

Henry looked moderately pleased and a little flattered by the idea of the Mayor herself giving him a tour of the town, so it was all worth it. Regina would show him around Storybrooke, the place he'd lived at for over a decade. She would smile the whole time and be happy to finally get to be with him. And not a tear would fall - except later when she was alone at the empty white mansion he didn't know had been his home, and which had ceased to be hers now that her son no longer lived there.

He was there. He really was there, right here next to her. If she were only to put her arm out, she could reach him, hug him, walk arm in arm with him.

But she couldn't, because he didn't remember. Because to him, she was Mayor Mills. Nothing more.

Regina fought back hard against the descending darkness brought about by the realisation. This was their afternoon, she was finally getting to spend some time with Henry, and whether he remembered her or not, this meant the world to her. Not so long ago, she'd been facing the prospect of never ever seeing him again. Now here they were. She wasn't letting anything stand in the way of her enjoying this.

She kept throwing him sideway glances as often as she dared without running the risk of him noticing. Henry was enjoying the ice cream like he always would. He'd picked chocolate chip, like he'd almost always do. Regina smiled at the chocolate smudge in the corner of his mouth. He might have grown a lot in the past year and have fake memories and new, real ones she wasn't part of, but some things hadn't changed. He was still her little prince.

Showing him places he'd known all his life had proven much more difficult than she would have imagined.

They'd been off to a wonderful start when Henry stopped in front of the local newsagent's to look at a new edition of his favourite comic book. Regina casually - although her heart picked up and her palms were suddenly sweaty - dropped a piece of comic book trivia she'd learnt from Henry a while back. Henry raised an eyebrow at her in what she knew to be a look of surprise. He was impressed with this Mayor he'd been getting so much kind attention from. Well, there was no way for him to know she'd been buying and reading all the new editions in his bedroom, then stashing the comic books on his bookshelf, hoping against hope he'd find them there one day - with his memories intact.

The town hall had fascinated him, or rather the idea of her managing the town from some out of bounds, enigmatic office. Regina looked at him strolling beside her. He'd been so sheepish about asking if he could see her office, he'd been almost sure it would be taking it one step too far, a favour the Mayor would have no interest in granting him. But of course she had. Henry'd looked over her lavishly decorated office with a small frown, and Regina's heart had skipped more than a single beat. Could he be remembering? Did he know he'd spent hours in there with her as a child, sitting at her desk next to her on a pillow-staked chair, covering white sheets of paper with colourful doodles while she sorted out her paperwork with many a glance at the precious boy beside her. Was he remembering he'd offered her help with the budget once and she accepted, letting him scribble all over a report that had been almost ready because it made him oh so happy, and then she'd had to stay up all night to put it together all over again? Henry's look was awestruck…but not enough. He didn't remember. Regina did, though, and she turned away to straighten her face, to dab at the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes and on her eyelashes.

They were still deep in discussion about the nature of her mayoral duties when they passed the school. Henry threw it a glance of superficial interest and turned back to her, keeping the questions coming. He hadn't been so chatty on his first day here. He'd been anxious as they'd walked up the pathway from the car - even though he wouldn't admit it, she'd known by the way he'd been clutching her hand. Regina'd leaned to him and pulled Henry's favourite book - they'd already been reading it together, Henry dragging his finger across the page, a five-year-old deciphering lines of words with a delight that filled her with joy on top of pride - from her bag, and his face had cleared. He'd been looking forward to school, the book had reminded him. The hug he'd given her before she left was one of the tightest she'd got, but he'd never cried. In the end, neither had she - at least not until she was safely back in the car and out of sight.

But of course he didn't remember that either. Well, yes, he did. Only it wasn't Regina smoothening his shirt and kissing the top of his head in those memories now - it was Emma instead.

Regina fought the rising knot in her throat: Henry must notice nothing. A crying mayor would hardly make him eager for another outing in the future. She was still answering questions. Admiration was settling ever more clearly on his face as she spoke. It'd been so long since he'd last looked at her like this, Regina took on another onslaught of tears welling up in her eyes.

Just when she had recovered most of her composure, they'd reached the clock tower.

This was where it'd all started - the end of the Curse. Regina didn't cry her cursed town back - not anymore. But when the giant clock had moved for the first time, its ticking had been no less than the ticking of a bomb for Regina. She and Henry had grown so much further apart, and it'd only been getting worse with every moment. All the decisions she'd made in her desperation to keep him with her had only served to chase him further and further away, and there'd been nothing else she'd known to do but fight this woman Emma, who'd already abandoned him once, to get her out of this town and their lives, so that Henry wasn't hurt - so that she wasn't hurt. It had been a mistake, and Regina had paid dearly.

She was still paying dearly. But now, walking in the park with him, even though he remembered nothing, a gaping wound in her heart was beginning to heal.

"Madam Mayor?"

The strange form of address ripped a new wound open.

The ice cream cone crunched under his teeth and he was looking up at her curiously. Regina chided herself for getting lost in memories again. The world came back into focus, green and fresh-smelling.

"Storybrooke seems like a good place to live."

Storybrooke paled in comparison to New York in so many respects, and the fact that he'd still say such a thing brought a smile on her face. He'd felt like that before. Maybe with his memories back, he'd want to stay again. Without them, though…it was hard to tell. He had a good life in New York, a school, friends - the kind of life Regina wanted for Henry. But she also ached, more than anything, to be able to share that life with him. What could she possibly say to him, though?

"Thank you."

Robin rubbed his forehead, trying to make sense of yet another thing he didn't understand. There certainly seemed to be a lot of those around. This land was even messier than the one he'd known before all his life - and that one was far from perfect, too. Perhaps a drink still wasn't a bad idea. He recovered his glass from the table and swirled it slightly, contemplating the clear, colourless liquid.

Several days had passed since Robin and his Merry Men had found themselves in the woods of Storybrooke without the faintest idea of how they'd gotten there. Robin's latest memory had been that of tucking Roland in early in the morning before setting out for a hunt with a few of his men. Then, poof - an unfamiliar forest. The first answers had come within the first hours: they were in a strange land, in the town originally created by the Evil Queen's Curse, and they'd been swiped here by the same kind of Curse cast by someone else this time around. To complicate matters even more, no one remembered the past year or so.

Some habits of this land were easy enough to take on: the clothes were practical and quite comfortable here. All the strange gadgets this realm had to offer would need some gettingused to, though. The new crossbow, for one, was a great make, but he still preferred his own arrows. And, much like in Fairytale Land, he and his men preferred dwelling in the forest to the hum of the town for now.

As if memory loss and an entirely new world weren't enough to cope with, one sinister event was followed by another. Little John was flying around somewhere transformed into a grotesque monkey; Emma, the lost daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming and frequently simply labelled the Saviour, had mysteriously returned to Storybrooke; and Neal and a bunch of other people had simply gone missing. And if that wasn't enough chaos, they were also facing a vicious Witch...

...and Robin had just partnered up against her with the former Evil Queen.

Regina - she'd said she preferred Regina. The name suited her, much more so than the "evil" moniker did these days. How can I possibly know that? He'd met the woman not an hour ago for no longer than several minutes. What had made him say that to her? It was a feeling he had, the way she conducted herself. She hadn't been exactly friendly, especially not at first, and yet... There'd been something. At one point, they'd suddenly been standing really close, with next to no distance between them. Robin would have expected her to object, but she hadn't. Perhaps she'd been watching the situation unfold with the same fascination he'd experienced around her.

The non-magical drink - whiskey, it was called - tasted bitter on his tongue. The second glass, the one he'd poured for Regina, stood on the table untouched. Why had she hurried off so abruptly? It was almost as though she'd...fled. But she'd been happy enough to accept the drink mere moments before. Had he done anything? If so, he wasn't aware of it. And it kept nagging him.

As he took another sip of the strong liquor, her words rang in his ears again, spoken in that enthralling voice of hers: a liquid that can conjure courage, give strength, or even act as a love potion of sorts. And then she'd chuckled. The smile had spread all the way into her eyes, lighting them up warm and bright, and in that moment the thought that this had once been the great and terrible Evil Queen had seemed perfectly absurd.

Robin shook his head slightly. These thoughts swarming in his head were strange and unusual to say the least, and so was the curious sense of loss creeping upon him now that the abandoned glass was the only trace left of her in the room. Regina had a peculiar effect on him...he simply couldn't place it. Had he known her during the lost year? Had they been friendly? Had they shared drinks before?

The legs of the chair scraped against the floor as he stood up with his glass emptied. He contemplated Regina's untouched one, then retrieved it from the table. Instead of sitting back down, he leaned against the counter she had vacated a while ago. He'd swear it was still warm where her palms had rested upon the hard surface. Without further thought, he downed the contents of her glass.

Whatever it all meant, chances were they'd see each other again - they were, after all, stranded in the same little town, connected by a common foe.

And, above all, Regina was most definitely quite impossible to overlook.