5: March 21st, 7:51am

"Babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt— "I got you, babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt—

Emma stuck her hand out and grabbed the phone just as it buzzed off the edge of the table, hitting the snooze button and tossing it back in one smooth motion as she sat up.

The previous loop had gone well, she thought as she threw back the covers, but she wasn't any closer to breaking out of this cycle. She grimaced - not that she was likely to have any luck figuring it out on her own. She'd just have to figure out some way to convince Regina faster.

Swinging her legs out of bed and wiggling her toes on the carpet, Emma pondered. Maybe if she got the timing with Kenai right this time, Regina would believe her right away. She shrugged, hoisting herself off the bed and into the bathroom. "Worth a shot, anyway," she said to herself in the mirror as she washed her hands.

Plan set, she headed for the kitchen, and tripped over her boots on the way. Groaning, she kicked them under the bed and stubbed her toe on the frame, cursing up a blue streak.

The sooner she made it to tomorrow, the better.

6: March 21st, 7:51am

"Babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt— "I got you, babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt—

Emma pulled the covers over her head and groaned, letting the phone buzz its way off the table and under the bed unhindered.

Regina hadn't been convinced when Emma had predicted Kenai's mishap, since he had done something similar at least once a week since he arrived, and it had ended up taking Emma almost an entire half a day to convince her, again. She sighed, pulling at her cheeks. There had to be a faster way.

Watching her breath puff up the comforter above her face, Emma thought - if only she could remember what everyone was going to say. Regina would have to believe her if she was predicting conversations word-for-word, right?

7: March 21st, 7:51am

"Babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt— "I got you, babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt—

Emma rolled over and snatched up her phone, keying in her passcode and pulling up her notes app. She frowned, scrolling through its entries slowly, then faster and faster.

They weren't there. All of her perfectly detailed notes about everyone's conversations - they weren't there!

"Fuck, shit, fuck," Emma said, dropping the phone on her face. "By memory it is, then," she mumbled against the screen.

She wasn't dumb, Emma reasoned. She paid attention. Surely she could get this all memorized in a single loop, right?

Okay. Maybe two loops.

Three. Three loops should do it.

10: March 21st, 7:51am

"Ba—"

Emma snatched up her phone and silenced it quickly, jumping out of bed and rolling her shoulders. The start of her tenth loop, by her count, and she was feeling pretty confident about it.

She rehearsed the conversations in her head as she got ready: "Did you see the size of that pothole outside?" she whined in Zazu's nasal tone as she pulled on her jeans. "I know," she intoned, trying to reach the despondent bass of Eeyore's response as she yanked her sweater over her head, "I could have fallen into it and died."

She was ready. Pulling open the door to the weak winter sunlight reflecting on the slush, she knew today would be the day she convinced Regina right off the bat.

Doctor Sweet shined the light in her eye again and Emma growled, kicking out at his shin. "Seriously," she said, "What are you expecting to find in my eye?"

"I honestly don't know," Sweet chuckled, jerking a thumb at Regina, who was standing next to Emma's bed and twisting her hands together, "but I sure as heck ain't gonna be the one to tell her that I won't check everything I can."

"Well, excuse me for wanting to make sure your brain is okay when you suddenly start being able to read minds," Regina snapped. She glared at Emma as she said to Sweet, "She told me what everyone in Granny's was going to say this morning before they could say it. It was… alarming."

"I told you, I'm stuck in a time loop! I memorized their conversations!" Emma said, attempting to bat Sweet's hand away as he brought the thermometer up to her mouth.

"And I told you, that's impossible without a major, magic-breaking curse!" Regina huffed, "Look, Emma, I know you don't want to do this, but please. I'm— I'm worried about you."

Emma looked over at her and was startled to see Regina hold one trembling hand up to her mouth. "Hey, hey no," Emma said. "It's okay! I'm gonna be fine!" Emma whacked Sweet in the chest. "Quick, Doc, tell her I'll be fine!"

Sweet shrugged. "I can't see anything wrong with her," he said.

Emma reached out and smoothed a hand up and down Regina's arm. "See? Everything's okay. Why the worry?"

"Psychic spells are a serious concern, Emma." Regina drew in a shuddering breath. "They can burn out your brain, break your mind. And they are absolutely nothing to mess with."

Emma sighed. "Look, I promise you I'm not under the influence of a psychic spell. But—" she held up a finger when it looked like Regina might interrupt, "if it makes you feel better, I'll stay here for today and you and Doctor Sweet can keep an eye on me, okay?"

Regina nodded, and, well. If it would make Regina smile at her like that, like she was the only thing holding her world together, Emma would sacrifice as many loops as it took.

Besides, she could always try again tomorrow.

11: March 21st, 7:51am

"Babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt— "I got you, babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt—

Scooping up her phone and briefly wishing she could travel back in time, if only so she could kill Sonny and Cher before that song was ever recorded, Emma silenced the alarm, sent a quick text to Regina (Granny's?), and hauled herself out of bed once more.

"All right," Emma said, splaying her hands out on the table between her and Regina as a steaming pile of pancakes was set in front of each of them. "I know this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out, okay?"

Regina frowned, but cut off a bite of pancakes with her fork anyway. "You have fifteen minutes before I have to go meet the Maldonian royal family. But you know as well as I do that good things rarely come after an opener like that," she said.

Bracing the tips of her fingertips together on the tabletop, Emma groaned. "I know, but I've already tried every other way to tell you and it hasn't worked so far." She huffed, blowing a wisp of hair out of her face. "So here goes: I am trapped in a time loop." Regina drew a breath, and Emma hurried on, "No, I did not cast a curse, nor did anyone else, as far as I can tell. Yes, I am pretty sure it's a curse. No, I am not concussed or under the influence of a spell - believe me, you've checked. I am just," Emma bounced her hands in front of her for emphasis, "just experiencing a time loop."

Regina's brow furrowed, and Emma's heart sank. She cast around desperately for something else to say to convince her, and a memory surfaced from the first conversation Emma had had with Regina about it. "You think it's impossible because that would be 'distorting the temporal, um," Emma fumbled, waving her hand in the air frantically, "thau- uh, thautamergic boundary?' Or something."

A bite of pancakes slid off Regina's fork and back onto her plate as she stared at Emma, poleaxed. "Temporo-thaumaturgic?" she said faintly.

Emma snapped her fingers. "Yeah, that's the one!" She shrugged. "To be honest, I thought you were making that word up, but you seemed pretty convinced."

Regina set down her fork. "Well, it is supposed to be nearly impossible," she said, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. "But it would explain where you had picked up a phrase like that. I can see why I wouldn't believe you, thoughit's far from the weirdest thing to have happened to us, isn't it?"

"That's what I've been trying to sa—!" Emma cleared her throat awkwardly as everyone in the diner turned to look at her. "I mean, that's what I've been trying to say, Regina."

"Well, I'm glad you've finally found a way that makes sense, then," Regina said, pushing her pancakes around on her plate and ignoring Emma's snort. "So what kind of a time loop are you in? Is it like Groundhog Day?"

Emma stared at her. "You've seen Groundhog Day," she said flatly.

"Of course I have. Honestly, Emma, I did have twenty-eight cursed years to fill. Did you think I never went to a Blockbuster during that time?"

Emma threw up her hands in defeat. "I really hate you."

Regina hmmed in response, smiling. "Come on, then," she said, pushing aside her plate and waving Marian down for the check. "There's research to be done."

Despite Emma's hope that Regina might find a swift solution, the loops kept coming, and started to blur together a bit after a while as she fell into a strange routine.

Much like he had before, Henry again suggested they bring Zelena in, and she ended up joining them most loops for research (and sarcasm). Some loops, they headed to the station to talk to Mulan about visitors to town who might have cast a curse for some reason. In others, the Charmings joined in with their knowledge of the Enchanted Forest.

And eventually, at one point or another, every single person in town learned about the time loop and forgot again just as quickly. Emma and Regina worked their way through anyone who might know what was going on: Gold, Blue, Mama Odie - even Winifred Sanderson was questioned in turn. None of them had anything useful to share.

True Love's Kiss was suggested so many times, and by so many different people, that Emma began laying a hearty kiss on Henry's forehead at the start of every loop, much to his chagrin.

When that didn't work, other combinations were suggested, and some loops progressed with a sillier and sillier chain of kisses. Regina smoothed Henry's hair back to give him a kiss of her own as the Charmings planted a kiss on either one of baby Neal's cheeks. Snow would beckon Emma over and gave her a kiss on the temple with suspiciously damp eyes. Even Zelena dragged Regina down once to plant a sloppy kiss on her cheek before she was chased from the room with a fireball.

And when that tried and true method fell through, they began working down all the others that had worked before.

Henry, although he had broken the Author's pen, gamely tried to write a way out with every pen, pencil, and marker in his collection, and had to be consoled by Regina when it didn't work.

David mentioned that they might investigate the mines for fairy dust that could be active, and Emma felt a sharp stab of relief when Regina said it would be too dangerous to navigate after all of its myriad mishaps. The mines made her uneasy, and she wasn't sure if it was because of the cave-in, or the fail-safe trigger, but either way she was glad to stay out of them.

Snow, meanwhile, suggested they use the Dark One's magic, and was simultaneously shouted down by every other person in the room.

But through it all, good days and bad days, the only constant was Emma and Regina - reading through books at the mansion, spending long hours in Regina's personal laboratory as Emma watched her brew potion after potion, and discussing ideas over lunch at Granny's.

There were some parts that stood out, even as the rest ran together - like the loop early on, when Emma realized the need for a quick way to get Regina to believe her each morning. After some trial and error, Regina spent an afternoon drilling her until she could repeat the phrase 'a limited, self-repeating temporo-thaumaturgic bubble encompassing the town' in her sleep. She never had a problem convincing her again.

If she also flushed to the tips of her ears when she thought about Regina's mouth carefully shaping the phrase 'temporo-thaumaturgic' so she could repeat it over and over and over again, well. Nobody had to know.

Or the time, about thirty loops in or so, when they were gathered around the table - she and Regina, and Zelena and Marian and Mulan, all with a different book of magic in front of them.

Mulan cleared her throat. "This might be something," she said, dragging her finger down the page as she read. "'Chronos' Conjuration': this spell can be used to grant multiple days in the space of one." She glanced up at Regina, but Emma spoke up before Regina could.

"I don't think that would be it," she said, propping her chin on her hand. "That spell's mostly used by gardening mages, and I think it just makes plants grow faster, it doesn't actually loop the same day for them over and over."

A stunned silence fell over the table, and Emma realized everyone was staring at her. "What?" she said, hunching her shoulders. "I've had a lot of time to learn about magic recently!"

Regina licked her lips. "It was simply very… impressive, Emma," she said, "that's all."

Emma caught her eye and felt herself blush all the way down her throat.

"Gross," Zelena said, and Regina turned to glare at her, breaking the spell.

Emma looked down and stuck her nose back in her book, where it was safer, for the rest of the evening.

It was nearing fifty loops in, by Emma's estimation, when she draped herself dramatically face-first across the dining room table just after lunch and said, "No," protest muffled as the tabletop squished her mouth to the side.

"Emma, get up," Regina said, attempting to pull a particularly large grimoire out from under her shoulder. "I know you said you'd tried doing an elemental invocation, but I think if we just—"

"No," Emma muttered again. "Not gonna."

"Emma—"

"Regina," Emma said, picking her head up. "I know this is the first day for you, but I've been doing this for over a month. I need a break."

Regina took a breath and Emma interrupted, "I promise you we have already tried what you're about to suggest." She began ticking them off on her fingers, "True Love's Kiss, alchemic exchange, temporal invocation, Rishad's Ephemeral Hex, Zelena's time travel spell, aaaand leaving town." Regina's eyebrow quirked at the last, and Emma said, "Oh, yeah, the bubble traps us in town. Which, you know, shouldn't surprise me at this point. But still."

Regina sighed and shoved the grimoire aside. "Well then, what do you suppose we do instead?"

Zelena piped up from the other side of the table, a certain twinkle in her eye, "You know, if the day's just going to start over and there won't be any consequences, you could do," her eyes slid between Emma and Regina and she wiggled her eyebrows, "anything."

"I was thinking a movie night!" Emma said desperately, and Zelena scoffed. Emma turned her attention to Regina. "Come on," she wheedled. "I know it's a school night, but it's not like he'll be able to turn in homework tomorrow or anything. We could make an afternoon of it!"

"Well," Regina said, "I normally wouldn't consider it, but if there were ever a time that called for special circumstances…"

"Yesss," Emma said. "Come on, the kid's gonna be home from school in an hour - we gotta go get supplies!"

"I think that's my cue to bow out," Zelena said, leaning towards the door. "You two crazy kids have fun!"

Checking to make sure Regina's back was safely turned, Emma stuck her tongue out at Zelena.

"Ah ah ah," Zelena said. "I bet you can think of a better use for your tongue than that."

Emma doesn't know when it became everyone's favorite game to try to make her blush around Regina, but she knows she really, really hates it.

By the time Henry made it home from school, there were the makings of a pretty epic cookie factory piled up on the counter, and both Emma and Regina were coated in flour from head to foot. Henry cleared his throat in the doorway to the kitchen and Regina paused mid-lick, beater halfway cleaned of its dough already, and Emma danced over to the speakers to pause the music.

"Welcome home!" Emma said, holding her arms open for a hug and wiggling her doughy fingers at him.

"Hey ma," he said, sidling away from her floury embrace, "mom. What— are you doing?"

Regina shrugged and licked another arm of the beater. "We decided to have a movie night."

"Yeah!" Emma said. "And you can't have a movie night without an absolute mountain of snacks." She gestured around herself. "We're making six different kinds of cookies!"

"You're welcome to help us bake them if you like, Henry," Regina said, "or you can go get the living room set up, if you'd rather. We'll need to move the big couch back over again for tonight."

Emma chucked a handful of flour at Henry's head. "Oh no," she said, deadpan, "Henry can't go move furniture - he got himself all dirty already!" She ruffled the flour into his hair thoroughly, leaving a light dusting on his nose. "Oh, well," she said with an exaggerated sigh. "I guess he'll just have to stay here and help me decorate these Cookiebrooke citizen cookie people."

Henry grimaced as the flour trickled down the back of his neck, then grinned. "Oh, it is on," he said, and Emma laughed, running to hide behind Regina as he charged into the kitchen.

After dinner, Henry insisted they have a family Mario Kart tournament, even as Regina tried to beg off.

"Ah, come on!" Emma said. "It'll be fun! And you don't even really need to know how to play. It's easy, I promise."

"All right," Regina said, "But if I manage to win one, you have to do the dishes."

"Deal," Emma said. "But there's no way that's gonna happen."

"I can't believe you fell for that," Henry said as he dried a plate. "It's the oldest trick in the book, honestly."

"I can't believe my own kid betrayed me and didn't warn me his mom was a cheating video game shark!" Emma said, elbow-deep in sudsy water. She splashed some bubbles at Regina, who warded them off with a flick of her hand.

"I meant to ask," Emma said as Regina idly twirled a small cyclone in the dishwater with her finger, "How have things been going with you? I feel like every loop I end up talking about me a lot, but we don't ever talk about you. I don't even know why you were supposed to be meeting with the Maldonian royal family this morning."

Regina sighed. "Town budget problems, basically." She picked at a bit of lint of her shirt and brushed it off. "Without my original curse to funnel money into the accounts, Storybrooke has basically been running on borrowed time. We haven't even had the money to fix potholes in over a year."

Emma dunked a pot into the water, scrubbing the inside vigorously. "Ah," she said. "You know, I didn't even notice."

Regina pulled a face. "Everyone else has, evidently. I've got Storybrooke citizens coming up to me every hour of the day and night, asking me what I'm going to do about it."

"Almost makes you wish they were scared of you again, huh?" Emma said.

Regina laughed. "Well, it was easier, I will say that."

"I'm confused," Henry said, putting another plate into the drying rack. "What does Maldonia have to do with potholes?"

"Tiana and Naveen came over in the most recent curse migration," Regina said, "so they still have a lot of their royal wealth. I'm trying to convince them that investing it in Storybrooke is a good idea."

"That sounds… boring," Henry said.

"Good thing your mom's a big nerd for municipal projects then, isn't it?" Emma said. Regina crooked a finger and a jet of water shot out of the sink and straight up her nose. "Augh!" Emma spluttered, and Henry laughed so hard he almost dropped a glass on his foot.

Even later, stomach full of good food and far too many cookies, Emma dozed on the sofa in front of Big Hero 6, Henry's choice of movie after Emma's pick of Matilda had ended.

("I always wanted to be Matilda when I was a kid," Emma had whispered to Regina, whose soft smile was paired with a knowing look.

"You can do all of those things now, you know," Regina said.

Emma shrugged. "Yeah." She snuggled further down into the cushions and smiled. "I know.")

As the kids on-screen fought the big bad with their improbably-powered super suits, and Henry watched them from his spot splayed out on the floor, Emma felt her eyes drifting shut. As her head tipped back to rest on the sofa, she was tugged to the side so that it rested on Regina's shoulder instead. "Wha-?" she said, groggy.

"Shh," Regina said. "You were gonna get a crick in your neck, sleeping like that. Watch the movie."

Emma yawned and squinted one eye open, watching as the big poofy robot did something ridiculous on screen. "'Dya ever think we'd get here?" she asked, the glow from the television washing over her as her eyes drooped shut again.

"What do you mean?" Regina whispered back.

"I mean, like, back when you hated me. Did you ever imagine we'd end up…"

"As a family?" Regina said, and Emma felt warmth seep into her bones like a hot bath after a long day. "Can't say I saw you as anything more than a wrench in my plans at the time, so no. I'd have to say this would have been a little unexpected for that Regina Mills."

"Ah, come on," Emma said, nudging her head into Regina's shoulder. "I saw the look on your face the day I chainsawed your tree." She was edging close to dangerous territory here and she knew it, closer to a forbidden topic than she'd ever gone before. But she was warm and safe and sleepy on this couch, in this house, with her family, and there would be no tomorrow, after all, so she said, "I was more to you than an annoyance, wasn't I?" She can't help the plaintive lilt to her voice.

"Of course you were, Emma,"" Regina said, and Emma felt a soft pressure on her head. After a moment, she realized that Regina had just pressed a kiss to the part in her hair, and she melted further into the warmth that filled her entire body.

Regina must have felt her relax, because she dragged a corner of the sofa blanket over her. Emma protested, pushing at it, but Regina shushed her. "Shh. Just sleep."

"Can't," Emma said, blinking her eyes furiously, yawning until her jaw cracked.

"Why not?"

Emma felt her eyelids droop again, but just before sleep overtook her entirely, she managed to say, "Because I want today to be the one I get to keep."

An hour later, the boom echoed through a house at peace, and the purple cloud followed.

It covered Henry, sprawled out on the floor in a nest of blankets, the light of the TV flickering across his face.

It covered the half-eaten tray of cookies on the coffee table, and other detritus of a night-well spent.

And it covered Emma's sleeping form where it lay entangled with Regina's on the couch, neither of them stirring as the darkness came and swept them both away again.

48: March 21st, 7:51am

"Babe!" —bzzt bzzt bzzt— "I got—"

Emma snatched up the phone from where it was blaring the same alarm it had the last forty-seven days in a row, hurled it at the wall, rolled back under the comforter, and stayed there, alone, until the darkness came again.

The next morning, Emma threw herself into researching like she never had before. She spent long hours at the library, poring over book after book of magical lore, hardly stopping to eat when Regina brought her food, but still she found nothing they hadn't already tried before. Her grim determination was worrying Regina, Emma knew, but she couldn't stop.

Mostly because, now that she was looking for it, she could see signs of all the lives people weren't living.

The first hints were the missed jokes. She would be talking to someone - Marian, over her morning coffee, or Mulan at the station - and mention something funny that had happened in a previous loop; expecting laughter and being greeted with puzzled silence instead.

The next were the puppies, which during her first few weeks in the loop, she had taken to visiting at the shelter when she needed a break from research. Now it grated that they never aged. Day after day after day, and Emma felt more and more worn out each time, while they stayed eternally young

And Henry, who had grown four full inches that past summer alone, hadn't budged even a millimeter in over two months. She felt queasy when she looked at him, sometimes, like looking at still ground after staring at a waterfall for too long - expecting something to move that never would.

She looked at herself in the mirror one morning, before she went out to convince Regina about the loops, before she had to confront her reality again, and wondered: was she aging? She poked at her face, pulled on the skin under her eyes. Would she grow old as everyone around her stagnated?

Was this just another way she'd have to feel alone?

She found herself trying to memorize every little moment that stood out from the repetition around it -

- Henry, groaning when she ruffled his hair and peering into the hall mirror to push it back into place, tilting his head back and forth as he inspected the damage, his thumb brushing over faint hairs on his lip and chin that Emma was staunchly pretending weren't there.

- Regina, holding her hands in the air just so as she taught Emma a shield spell, working to increase her control over her own magic. The chill March air curled in breaths above their heads, but Regina's, "Well done, Emma," warmed her better than any spell ever could.

- Marian, a coffee carafe in one hand and a magic text in the other, pacing the linoleum behind the counter as she read passages aloud, pouring coffee into Emma's mug as she struggled her way through a text of her own.

But, as she collected these memories, she noticed another pattern. People mentioned strange, flickering lights in the hills, and a slow-building rumble under the floorboards on the far side of town. The final straw came when Grumpy mentioned in passing that a golden streamer of magic had shot upwards from the general area of the mines that morning.

Emma shuddered. It was obvious, when she looked for it, how carefully she had avoided even thinking of the mines through all the loops. The thought of going back down there made her palms sweat, and her heart race, but if there was one thing she knew about magic, it was that it always fought the hardest right when you found its weakest point.

And now it was time for Emma to finally fight back.