Storybrooke, January 2018, a few days later
"Mom! Mom, we've figured it out." Henry rushes into the diner with a large leather-bound book under one arm, Belle following at his heels.
Regina turns to face the door, and Robin looks up from his coffee, following her gaze.
When Henry reaches them, he slides their coffee cups out of his way, depositing the book in the empty space and opening it to a page he's marked with his hand. "Look," he points at the top of the second page, where a calligraphy P denotes the beginning of a new section. Above it, in precisely drawn lines, is an image of the box they'd found.
"Pandora's Box," Regina reads. She places a finger on the page and skims down its paragraphs quickly.
Emma stands from her seat at the bar, leaving her coffee behind. "What's up?"
Henry glances back at her, then at Snow and Charming, who have also stood and gathered around the booth. "What's going on?"
Regina sighs and pushes the book back to Henry, lifting the box itself from beside her and setting it on the table. "Why don't you read it for everyone? The relevant parts anyway."
Henry casts a glance around the room at the growing number of people listening in, then takes a deep breath and begins.
"Once upon a time, there was little evil in the world. Sadness, sickness, and misery were barely known. It was in this time that the gods grew very fond of a woman named Pandora. They decided that they would give her a gift. A beautiful box fashioned of iron and covered with intricate carvings. However, before they could give her the gift, an argument began among them.
Some of them believed that ordinary humans did not deserve such a treasure, as fickle and easily distracted as they were. Others thought that Pandora could be trusted with it. In order to settle their debate, they crafted a clever plan. Each of the gods would place his or her own curse inside the box, transforming it into a dangerous test.
Pandora, they warned her as they gave it to her, however curious you may be, however much you may wish to, you must never open this box. You must trust our judgment and promise to obey."
"Some gift," Leroy scoffs.
Regina glares, and he rolls his eyes.
Henry clears his throat and continues, unfazed.
"Naturally, Pandora was curious, but for many months, she did exactly what they had asked. Eventually, Pandora found that she could no longer contain her curiosity. What could the gods have placed inside this box, she wondered, and why should she not open it? It had been given to her, after all, and should not anything inside it be hers as well? Pandora found the iron key that belonged to the box, placed it in its lock, and opened the lid."
The facing page is embellished with a drawing of Pandora, a young woman, bent over the same box with her fingers on the latch.
"Pandora heard a distant scream, and clouds of black filled the air as the box's contents spilled into the world. Greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, famine, illness. On that day, it is fabled, humankind gained all manner of evils."
Regina shoots a glare at Leroy before he can interject with complaints about the story's improbability.
"Pandora cried out and tried to slam the lid shut, but before she could, she saw one last thing escape in a cloud of white, almost hidden beneath all the rest. The wisest gods had known that she would open the box, that she would fail the test and the world would be cursed, and had placed a second gift there to make that suffering bearable. Hope."
Several moments of still silence follow the story.
Henry turns the page. "There's a note here!
If cursed with evils from this box
and kept outside by its firm locks,
Pandora's hands you must possess
to free the world from its distress."
"Greek mythology is real now, too?" Emma demands.
"Not necessarily." Regina looks again at the page, only partially attending to her own words as she speaks them. "It could easily be a story that's grown around a cursed object as it reappears throughout history. It's a tidy way of hiding magic. At least in this world."
Robin tugs the book towards him once she gives up on the uninformative page, fingers tracing one of the illustrations. "I've heard of it, I think. Now that I'm reminded of the story."
"How?" Emma inquires, lifting the box from the table and turning it in her hands.
"Let's just say I'm an expert in…rare and collectible treasures."
Regina snorts.
"Rather a necessity in my former line of work. Anyway, it's a bit of a famous story, though I've heard different versions. The box of curses. It was supposed to be in the possession of some sorcerer a few hundred years ago, and when he died, according to legend, it vanished."
"It was the box that did that, yesterday," Belle surmises.
"It would seem that it was," Charming agrees.
"So…we should open the box again," Emma suggests, reaching for it. "Let out hope. Before we end up with that curse."
Snow shrugs.
Several of them look at Regina, who skims the riddle yet again, frowning. "What am I, the hall monitor?" She sighs. "I suppose it's worth trying."
Emma tries first, gripping the box firmly in both hands and tugging at the lid. Her frustration is clear as she tries different angles, but it doesn't budge. She sets it on the table in front of her instead, and tries surrounding it with magic, twisting her fingers in sweeping gestures until the white light dissipates. The box still hasn't changed.
"Let me try," Charming insists.
They pass it around, to Grumpy, Robin, Snow, Hook, Belle, Henry—nobody can make headway.
"You're doing it wrong!"
"Why are you doing it like that?"
"Will you stop grabbing it!"
"I almost had it, why did you—"
"Are you really going to—"
"That's not going to work."
"Is that—"
"I can't believe—"
"What is that supposed to—"
Regina grits her teeth, losing track of who's complaining about what in the general volume of the room.
"Stop!" Emma finally snaps. "Stop it, everyone. It's the box that's doing this to us."
"I hate to say it, but Swan is right. I think this is going to take a little more finesse."
A week later
Robin jumps out of the way as a crystal vial flies towards his head and shatters mid-air behind him, pieces of it crashing into the protective shield of magic that Regina has put up around the kitchen, and piling on the floor at its edge. Now that he's within its protection, he can hear.
She huffs with frustration, tossing a handful of some herb into a soup pot bubbling on the stove. "It still won't work." She flips open a cabinet, then slams it shut. "Where are they," she mutters, opening another. "I've read more about it. If we can just get it to open again, the curse should break, and then…"
She spins and throws magic at the box, which he now sees is sitting on the counter near where he'd entered. It is pure magic that she throws this time, without a potion, but he's seen her try this dozens of times in the last few days, and he knows that no matter how she twists or weaves the purple and silver strands, they won't pry open that lid.
"It's 2am," he informs her. His hand is gentle as it slides down her arm to hover lightly over her palm.
"I'm in the middle of something," she insists, her back to him. Another ingredient goes into the pot, and her hand slides away from his.
"Regina, please."
She frowns, opening one drawer, then another. It is easy to guess her thoughts, even if some might be operating below her own consciousness. That it's her fault somehow, that she must have brought this curse upon them, that it's her problem to fix, that they cannot be happy until she does.
He pulls back his hand, seeing in her stiff posture that his touch won't help. "You've been at this for hours. You should come to bed."
"It wouldn't have taken so long if I could find anything in this place," she snaps. She looks around the kitchen, scowling, as though to find drawers and cabinets she hasn't yet checked.
He looks, too, watching as she tears through another drawer in her search. "I can't find anything. I had it all in a place that made sense, but now when I'm looking for ingredients for magic it's all vanished. It's idiotic."
"Regina," he breathes. He'd reorganized the kitchen a few months back, making things easier to find when they cook.
She turns on him. "Say what you're thinking, would you. It'd save some time."
"I'm thinking that I'm worried about you."
Something bubbles over in her eyes, an anger that is partly foreign and yet familiar."Oh well that's so helpful, thief."
It has been a nickname, that word, said with begrudging fondness, or a teasing title, pronounced with relief that it is the opposite of king, prince, noble. But now it feels like an accusation.
Regina bottles up another vial, waving a hand over it as purple spins within its amber liquid. She tosses it at the counter and breaks it over the box with a twist of her fingers. It doesn't work.
He catches her hand gently as she goes to make another. She tears it away.
Something that feels wrong, out of control, flares in his eyes for a moment, a flash of anger, "Maybe if you weren't such a lone wolf about everything, this would be easier. If we decided things together. If you told me when something was wrong, Your Majesty, instead of handling it all yourself as though I'm an idiotic peasant unworthy of being consulted."
"I shouldn't need to consult you about every damn—It was my house, and then you had to move in and…"
"Regina!"
They stare at each other, both too stunned to continue.
When he recovers enough to speak, his voice is quiet, but insistent. "Damn it, Regina, tell me what's really wrong."
She swipes her tears away angrily. "Nothing." It guts him, as it always does, to see her cry.
"Please come to bed with me. Take a break from all of this." He nods around them, offering his hand. "I'm sorry," he sighs. "I just came to make sure you're all right."
She shakes her head, turning away. "I know. I just need to work on this."
"But, I—"
She draws in further on herself, her arms closing around her as she moves away.
.
.
.
Robin sleeps lightly for the next few hours, alone in their bed, waking with each strong gust of wind against the windowpanes, each click and rush of air as the heating system turns on and off.
He wakes again just as the beginnings of morning light show in the blue-grey outside , staring blearily at the shifting mattress that had woken him. She blurs into his vision with a steaming mug held out in one hand. The tea is a gesture in and of itself, established between them. An olive branch.
"Hi," she murmurs as he sits halfway up, blinking the grogginess from his eyes. Her eyes are red with fatigue, her posture a mix of confidence and shyness that used to perplex him, when he knew her less.
"Hey." He searches her face. When she reaches to take his hand with her free one, he takes and leaves the mug on the bedside table, pulling her gently into bed.
She settles against him silently, her firm grip on the arm he wraps around her a sure sign of her mind's turmoil.
He searches for the right words, but nothing comes to him that could reassure her. Instead he traces the back of his fingers up and down her bare arm, from shoulder to elbow and back, over and over again, until long after her breathing slows and evens, and she drifts off to sleep.
Storybrooke, June 2021
"Regina? Regina."
"Hm?" She turns to Roland from the doorway of his room. It is still the same forest green, but the toys and books have aged in an instant.
"Are you coming?"
As she takes a step toward him, her vision suddenly flickers out. The slip of a foot on stone, the sensation of falling, voices calling her name, the bright light of magic blinding her. The slap of cold water as it hit her back.
Any memory of the Underworld has come in fragments this morning, but it is that last moment she sees with sudden clarity. Mother, reaching out with magic, Regina and Emma shielding the others from it. Cora sliding back, tripping with the key in her hand, and Regina grabbing for her, both of them falling, falling…
Regina had cast a spell to return an object to its former state, hoping to return them both, or at least the key, to solid ground. Mother's magic had intertwined, interfered, hadn't it? Along with that of the Underworld's rushing river, the swirling threads of ancient magic deep within it.
Had…she been the one to do this? Had the spell really gone this wrong?
When her vision returns, Roland is staring at her, a hand on her arm.
"You don't look fine," he says flatly.
She stands straighter, hoping he doesn't notice the hand flattened against the wall and supporting her. "I will be, all right?" She catches the hand he'd stretched out to her and squeezes it. "I just need to—figure some things out."
He considers this for a moment, then sighs and turns to the stairs.
"Do you know where I left my phone yesterday?"
"Nope." He bounces down the stairs with quick steps, Regina following him as she continues to look around. "Oh, wait, there it is!"
Roland hands her a phone that had been sitting in a corner of the kitchen counter. It's not the same device she remembers, but it is recognizably hers—something that she would pick. Black, sleek, simple. The lock screen is that same photograph of Henry and Roland, with Henry in Storybrooke High's cap and gown. The screen blinks on, requesting a passcode. Henry's birthday does the trick.
8:13AM, Saturday, June 5, 2021. Her fingers freeze on the screen. She shakes her head impatiently. Roland is standing before her, a foot taller than he was when she last saw him, and it is her phone that is making it start to sink in?
She reaches out with her magic, thin tendrils of it spreading beneath her feet into the floor below, out into the garden, and then as far as she can reach down the street. It…feels real. No odd shimmers of other magic; no evidence that what she's experienced has been tampered with. And the room doesn't have that film, that shimmering filter she's been trained to recognize in magical illusions.
"Who're you calling?" Roland asks from across the room. He's busy tugging the fridge door open and reaching for something.
Her magic flickers with the distraction, and she draws it back in impatiently, satisfied for the moment that she's not under someone else's magical thumb. "Your papa."
Roland tilts his head curiously. "You can't. He's in the forest, remember. Until tonight."
Sure enough, the line goes straight to voicemail. It's me, she says shortly, glancing at Roland. Call when you get this.
Roland looks deeply unsettled as she walks over to get down the milk jug he'd been straining to reach, and she has to remind herself that he's ten.
"Do you still want to make pancakes?"
"What?"
"You promised pancakes for breakfast."
"Did I?"
"Mmhm. With chocolate chips. Lots and lots of them."
Her lips quirk into half a smile. "Did I?"
He adopts a full-on pout that is clearly a continued joke between them.
She can see in his eyes, that he's teasing her in an effort to cheer her up. Her smile fades, and not-possibly-reality sinks back in. "Give me a moment. Then we'll make breakfast."
"Okay."
She kisses the side of his head, and walks through to the living room, out of his earshot.
It scares her at first, when she types out Henry's cell and the call doesn't go through. But a quick look in the phone's contacts reveals his number must have changed, and she dials him again.
"Hello, this is Henry Mills. I'm sorry I can't get to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Thanks!"
She swallows, and hangs up before she can worry him with a confused message. He sounds so old. His voice is low and resonant and…grown up.
She forces the anger back into her stomach. That impulse won't help at the moment, at least not until she knows for sure what's going on. Henry. Robin. Roland. That leaves the others she was with, back in…wherever they were, in the Underworld. She strains to pulls faces out of the blurry memory. Emma, David, Snow…
The loft is one number, at least, that has not changed.
Mary Margaret picks up on the second ring.
"Regina?"
"What's the date, Snow?"
"What?"
"The date. Now."
"Um, June…fourth? Fifth? Fifth, I think."
"Of…"
"June."
"Snow."
She falters at the other end of the line. "Twenty…twenty one? Regina, I don't know what you think you're accomplishing here. Why are you asking me that? What's going on?"
"I need you to come help me."
"I don't think that's a good—"
"It's important." She hears a young boy's voice chattering in the background. Neal, she realizes with yet another jolt. He'd be—almost five now, wouldn't he?
Just her then, she can be almost certain. That spell she'd cast, or perhaps the water— "Come, would you. Now. And bring Emma."
"I don't think she'll—"
Regina squeezes one hand into a fist, then forcibly lets it go. She has neither the time nor the patience for this. "Call her. Get her to come."
"All right! All right. I'm coming."
Regina forces herself to loosen her grip on her phone and un-wrinkle her brow before she heads back to the kitchen.
"Let's put together a quick breakfast, okay," she tells Roland, thinking her voice sounds all wrong in its overstudied nonchalance. "Then we need to get dressed. Mary Margaret and Emma are coming over."
"Really?" He comes closer. "We don't have to cook, if we don't have time."
She redoubles her efforts to seem calm. Robin should be there when she explains to him, surely. And as much maturity as he's gained in being ten, ten is still very, very young. In any case, she hardly knows what explanation she could give. To him, clearly, it's just a normal Saturday. "No, we'll cook. Really."
"Okay." He slides off of his stool, pulling a steel mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. "You seem different today."
"Different?"
"Yea, a good different." He reaches up to set the bowl on the counter. "I like it."
"Do I usually seem…not like this?" She catches the word here before it escapes her lips. "Bad?"
"Not bad, Regina," he insists, as though it's a ridiculous proposition. "Just not happy."
A confused jumble of anger, disbelief, disappointment floods through her, and she fights very hard not to recognize that at its base is a stab of fear.
.
.
"What are you wearing?"
The warm, humid air of early summer washes over Regina as she opens the door for Snow, and her body's visceral reaction to the weather causes her to remember that where she had been before, it had been cold. She glances down at the cobalt blue dress she'd chosen from the back of her closet, one she's worn at least a dozen times before. "Good morning to you as well."
Snow narrows her eyes, then tilts her head as though something else has caught her interest.
"What?" Regina snaps after several seconds of scrutiny.
"It's just I…haven't seen you in anything but black and gray in quite a while. I'd forgotten how different you look in…" Snow trails off with a sigh. "Never mind. Emma's on her way. Although I think she was as confused as I am. It's been a few years since you've invited us to cross this threshold." Snow takes a slow, deep breath, then walks with Regina into the house. "So, what is it?"
Regina pushes the door shut as she takes in this information. In different circumstances, she would laugh at it—her, regretting the apparent loss of friendship with Snow White.
"You look…strange."
Regina glances past Snow into the kitchen to check on Roland. "Good." It'll be easier to explain that way.
Emma's arrival at the door cuts off the reply hovering on Snow'a open lips.
"Emma!" Snow smiles at her daughter, and Regina wonders if it's possible that the awkwardness she sees between them is entirely in her head. It certainly doesn't seem to be. "How have you been?"
"Fine."
Nothing much of Snow's appearance had been different, but Emma's is. Her hair is suddenly shorter than in Regina's recollection, and her eyes are somehow more tired, worn. "Since you last saw her, what, a few hours ago?" Regina adds, rolling her eyes.
Emma tilts her head. "Actually, it must've been a few weeks, right?"
Snow looks down. "Three. I think." It's clear that the number comes readily to her.
Regina scowls at them. What is with this place?
"Your dress is blue."
"Thank you, Emma. Any other obvious facts you'd like to point out, for the good of the group?"
Snow gives Regina that look, the one she thinks will calm her down, but usually just enrages her.
Emma ignores them both. "Can we get to the point here? Why call us?" She looks around to see who else might have come. "And for that matter, where's your ex for the 'urgent meeting'? Please don't tell me we've got some other idiot trying to take over the town or something."
Regina fights, mostly with success she thinks, not to show the stab of Emma's casual confirmation lancing through her. "Somewhere in the forest, apparently. Off grid."
"Mary Margaret! Emma!"
"Hey Roland," Emma greets.
"You've gotten so big!" Snow enthuses, reaching for a hug. "What grade are you in now?"
"I just finished fourth."
"Wow!"
"This is insane," Regina mutters under her breath.
"Hm?" Emma turns to her with razor-sharp eyes.
"Roland," Regina clears her throat, "We need to talk for a few minutes. Do you think you could find something to do upstairs for just a little while? Since you've finished your breakfast."
He sighs heavily, a child who knows perfectly well that he's been banished to a different room while the adults discuss grown up things.
"It was wonderful to see you!" Mary Margaret adds, reaching out an arm. "It's been too long."
Roland submits to a second hug, smiling crookedly at her as he heads upstairs.
Regina leads them into the kitchen, gathering up Roland's breakfast dishes and spinning around once she's deposited them in the sink. "I'm from the past."
"You're what?"
Snow stares, looking at her with fresh eyes, and Regina can see the wheels turning. The dress, perhaps, the way she looks different from whatever they had expected. "But—How did this—when were you—?"
"2018. March, or so, I think, although it was hard to tell, there."
"The Underworld," Emma realizes.
"Yes, that's the last thing I remember, although most of it's hazy. I fell toward the water, I cast a spell. And I woke up here."
"How do you know you haven't just forgotten?"
Regina lifts up the edge of one sleeve and turns her arm to show them the mark she noticed while getting dressed. Red, raised, and barely healed. "The box, remember? That's my burn."
"But, how is that even possible?"
Regina rolls her eyes, tugging the sleeve back over the burn. "Emma, I really thought you'd reach a point where you stopped asking that question."
"I'm just saying—"
"I don't know, all right. I have no idea. All the spell was supposed to do was to land me back on the riverbank. How do you remember it? The Underworld."
Emma frowns. "We were losing the fight. Cora took the key, and threw it into the river to be carried off."
Regina looks at her sharply. "The box was never opened?"
"No," Snow shakes her head. "It was all we could do to find a portal and get back here before she trapped us. The curse was never broken."
.
.
.
"So Henry's at school."
Snow had insisted on moving them to the living room, though Regina had resented the implication that she might be feeling faint.
She's trying to think of things she wants—needs to know here, to compare.
"In college, in New York. Studying writing."
Regina smiles a half-smile at Emma's words, relieved to have that confirmed at least. Mother and daughter are sitting on the sofa, but Regina is leaning against a chair beside them, refusing to sit.
"You're so proud of him," Snow enthuses. "We all are. He's wonderful."
Regina looks around the living room again, at the absent photographs, the crisp and clean fabrics, the empty coffee table. "And, Robin?"
After the sting of Emma's earlier words, these make the wound feel hollow.
"You split up about six months after we got back." Snow's voice softens. "Everyone's had—has problems, because of the curse. But the two of you were…you never really told us why."
Snow reaches out to take Regina's hand, and seems further convinced by her allowing it that she is definitely not from this time.
She'd worked so hard, back home, to let people in. How on earth had she, in any future, lost sight of all of that to the point that those relationships had crumbled around her?
"This must be a lot to take in."
"This can't be real," Regina protests, her hands tensing into fists as she pulls away from Snow, her voice dark and rough. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. All I did was cast that spell, and it dropped me three and a half years in the future."
"Not everything goes to plan." Snow says, her voice soft with hurt.
Regina looks up sharply. "Where is your Charming husband? I'd assumed he'd be joining you."
Snow startles. "You didn't ask."
"Since when does he need an invitation to follow you somewhere?"
"We don't go everywhere together."
Regina gives her a skeptical look. "You do where I come from."
"Things…happen. We're not as…close as we used to be."
Regina stares, catching a glimpse of Emma's discomfort out of the corner of her eye.
"You're not—"
"No, no, we're still together, it's just…" Snow sighs and shakes her head. "We may know the curse makes it worse when we're arguing, but…"
After a short but somehow deeply uncomfortable silence, Regina finishes the thought, the echo of the box's curse shivering through her veins. "It doesn't feel like it when you're actually in it." Her voice is harsher than she'd meant it to be, and then she mutters more to herself than to them, "And apparently, nobody tries very hard to stay connected here."
Snow blinks and glances away, clearly stung. A few quiet tears drip down the other woman's cheek. Not the heavy, ugly tears of the hopeful young woman she once knew, but weary ones, nearly hidden.
Emma sighs as though this is a somewhat regular occurrence. "I'll check around. Make sure nobody else has…travelled here or whatever." She turns to Snow. "You should check the book. See if there's anything about this, or if anything has changed. New pages, missing pages..."
Snow takes a deep breath and swipes away the tear shining on her cheek. "Henry left it with us, in case something happened."
"Be discreet, would you," Regina says sharply. "Just in case."
"I was a detective," Emma reminds her with a roll of her eyes. "Of sorts. I think I can handle myself."
Regina stands, ready to be done with this conversation and its glimpses into her not-so-wished-for future. "I'll see what's different here from my memories. Maybe that will explain how, exactly, that spell went so wrong. Or what else it could've been."
"I suppose it's as good a place to start as any," Snow agrees as Emma stands and heads toward the door, and she and Regina begin to follow.
"Henry will be home tomorrow," Snow reminds them.
"Oh, right," Emma agrees. "Are you still going to meet him at the bus?" She seems to remember why they're here. "I mean, you were going to meet him at the bus, and drop him off at the loft for dinner."
Regina takes a deep breath. "I can do that. I tried to call him, earlier, but he didn't pick up."
Snow gives her a searching look as they enter the foyer. "Let's try again. At least to let him know there might be a…bit of a situation when he gets back."
Emma frowns. "He has a final in the morning."
Regina raises an eyebrow. "You know he'd hate that."
"Yes," Emma sighs. "He would."
"You sure you okay to do this?" Snow presses.
Regina casts her a momentary glance, then dials without comment. This time, thankfully, he picks up. "Mom?"
Regina blinks. Even having heard his voicemail earlier, his grown up voice is a lot to take in. "Hi, Henry."
"We have a—situation, here." Emma says.
"A Storybrooke situation?"
Snow adds, "Yes."
"Grandma?" He seems pretty surprised to hear all three of them on the phone. And if their seemingly distant relationships are anything to go by, Regina reasons, he probably is.
"Your last final is tomorrow morning right?" Emma asks.
"Yeah. I'll take the bus first thing after."
"Ok."
"Do you—want to tell me about it? I can step outside…"
"No, no you keep studying," Regina tells him, "Really. It'll keep til tomorrow. Don't worry about it."
He seems to consider this over a silent line, then sighs heavily with the knowledge that it's an argument he won't win. "Fine. I'll be there soon ok?"
"Yes. I love you."
Emma and Snow echo her sentiment before they hang up.
Regina frowns to fight back the tears.
"You should come to dinner tomorrow," Snow offers in her sympathetic voice. "We can't steal Henry from you on his first night back." She catches and squeezes her hand, and before Regina can protest, has caught her in a hug. "All we've wanted for you these past few years was for you to be happy," she says. "That's all we've wanted for you for a long, long time." Regina's eyes wrinkle up as Snow pulls back and squeezes her hand once more, but she forces the tears not to fall. Then, suddenly, the white walls and dark wooden floors blur, and for a second they are replaced with a searing orange-red, a flash of black rocks on the ground, the rush of a river. Regina's head spins as she struggles to keep her balance. She barely registers it as Snow and Emma grab her wrists to steady her, and it is another minute before her vision clears.
Regina immediately waves off Snow's concerned expression, blinking rapidly to clear whatever that had been. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Emma argues, stubborn as ever.
"What was it? What happened?" Snow insists.
"I thought I saw…" Regina murmurs, looking around again. The orange-red flickers into her vision, then flickers back out. "Nothing." She looks back up, meeting Snow's concerned and Emma's skeptical gaze, and opening the door for them. "I'm fine. Call if either of you finds anything useful."
.
.
.
It may be pointless, but she dials Robin again after they've left. Just to check.
Straight to voicemail. She scowls and tosses the phone onto the table in the foyer. What exactly would she be hoping for anyway? Might as well glean what clues she can from the house, with Roland still happily occupied by his legos upstairs.
As she'd noted while talking to Snow and Emma, nothing much has changed about the front hall, save for its nearly empty shoe mat and coat closet.
She walks through the kitchen to the living room, running her fingers along the edges of school photos tacked to the fridge—fourth grade the inscription reads under Roland's; twelfth grade under Henry's.
The living room has more to observe.
A few of the bookshelves seem off, empty, so she begins to read the titles. Some of the classics must be with Henry, at school, she realizes, shaking her head.
There also used to be a few photographs on the wall opposite the television, now missing. Her three boys sitting at the kitchen counter with mugs of cinnamon hot chocolate, Henry and Roland laughing at the whipped cream in Robin's beard. The four of them sharing Sunday brunch at Granny's with the Charmings. Nothing has been put up to replace them.
Out of bitterness, she wonders, or could this her simply not bear to be confronted with them each day?
She'd been that way, once, about certain portraits in her castle that she'd banished to a far-off wing. Of Daddy, Snow. Of long-dead relatives pictured smiling with their spouses and children who she'd never known but hated fiercely.
Frustrated, stressed, lonely tears begin gather in her eyes. She forces them back before they can fall.
It is not a new feeling, exactly.
Loneliness has been a constant ache in her life. One of losses piled onto each other so heavily she could not free herself from their weight, of a spirit too resilient to simply give in.
Even with Henry and Robin and Roland and so many people who had grown to think of her as their family, as a friend, it had not been unknown.
But the suddenness of this…
When Marian came back. She swallows against memory. That had been…different somehow. A just, logical conclusion to the life of the person she had become, the risks she had taken, the vulnerability she had shown.
Has she…gotten used to her family? Comfortable? Complacent?
They would all—her them would all—hate that line of thinking.
Don't you dare think like that Robin would say, as though he could will the thoughts out of her mind by sheer determination. As though he could steal from his own stock of optimism, and gift it to her, the way he is used to with coins and jewels. A spark lights in her chest as she feels an echo of the last touch she can recall; his fingers glancing over her wrist in a gesture of comfort as they walked…where? The memory flutters away, insubstantial.
Snow would scold her for it, too. Don't be ridiculous and you'll find each other again or other such nonsense, Charming nodding as though it was a wise observation.
Henry would give her a hug.
Even Emma would probably object to such a bleak description of her past.
But her Robin and Snow and Emma and Henry aren't here, are they?
She reaches for her phone and calls her son again before she's thought it through.
"Mom?"
"Hi, Sweetheart." She fights to keep her voice even.
"You sure everything is ok?"
"Fine. I'm fine. I just…I love you."
"I love you too, Mom."
She bites her lip at his voice, the deep, confident voice of a grown-up. "Go back to studying, okay? Do well on your test."
"You sure I don't need to be there now?"
"Positive. Good luck tomorrow."
"Thanks, Mom. I'll be there soon, okay?"
"I can't wait. Bye, Sweetie."
"Bye."
The silence at the end of the call leaves her feeling all the emptiness of a suddenly grown up son, and a suddenly different life.
What will a solution be? Returning to where she was, to the time she's left? Or will she simply be forced to adapt to a future life she doesn't remember living?
She has to get back.
But then, if this is the future it seems to be, is it worth going to back to reach it?
Because while she, Regina, seems to have landed squarely in some future, the house seems to have landed in its past. The days before Roland and Robin, before Emma, before Henry, even. The days of mind-numbing, heart-wearying sameness. Of Graham, and a bed that felt empty even when it was not, and a version of her who tried desperately to forget what it felt like to love, to experience passion, to feel joy, and who remembered just enough to still feel the hollowness and nausea and be disgusted with herself. Of a black, shriveled, broken heart straining to feeling something, to be close to someone; a heart that had forgotten how to love, how to be loved.
What's happened to her?
She scoffs at herself. As though learning of her break with Robin, with Snow, with Emma, with—everyone, seemingly, except for her children—has not been enough to tell her exactly what kind of person she's become in this future.
As a strange as it all is, she reminds herself, she's not in a total stranger's home. Something about each room is slightly familiar, like a book she'd read years ago. She has to know some things about this person—about herself. What would't, couldn't possibly, change. Those portraits in the Enchanted Forest—she hadn't destroyed them had she? Even at the height of all of that she hadn't had them burned or ordered them thrown into a river.
Struck with a new idea, she leaves the kitchen for the stairs to the basement, walking with a new sense of purpose and waving her hand before the crisp white wall. The door to her hidden room materializes.
It seems more or less unchanged from her memories, though she notes that the table on which she'd once placed Pandora's box is empty.
She walks past her cloak, a locket, a couple of gold-tipped arrows, various remnants of old lives, and straight to her desk, tapping the bottom left so that the hidden drawer appears and opens.
It's all here.
Of course she couldn't possibly have gotten rid of them, destroyed them.
The photographs that were missing from upstairs. Birthday notes on thick, unlined paper. Letters Robin has written to her on special occasions, or sometimes for no particular reason at all, carefully folded and stored.
She picks the letters up with a hand she tells herself is not at all unsteady, skimming over the well-known words, then reaching for a final, unfamiliar one, dated from 2018.
One of my fondest memories in our courtship happened because you lost faith in a letter you'd had for a very long time. May this letter instead be a promise you can always trust, and one you keep to remind yourself if ever my words or deeds do not. I love you. You are the second chance I had scarcely hoped to have, and I feel honored and blessed to know that I am also yours.
As beautiful as they are, I have no need of these golden arrows, here. May this one remind you that you will always have the strength to rescue yourself.
Happy anniversary, My Love. The memory of your boldness, that night in the forest, will forever bring a smile to my lips.
Robin.
Oh, Robin.
The sound of metal slinking to the ground interrupts her train of thought.
Beneath the note, wrapped in a separate piece of parchment, a long gold chain trails. A gold ring of hammered metal hangs from it. One of the gold-tipped arrows, she realizes with another glance at the letter, that she gave him when he helped her break into Zelena's castle. When he trained an arrow on her to stop her from cursing herself with sleep, and said he saw a mother's touch in her care of Roland. When he told no one else of what she had meant to do to herself.
Regina closes her eyes. The necklace, she lifts over her head and tucks under her dress.
When she opens her eyes, her vision flickers again. Veins of red-orange, shifting light. The Underworld she realizes as her vision clears, suddenly sure. That's what she'd been seeing, when she stood by the door with Snow and Emma. But why?
She stands with renewed energy for her search. If she knows herself, there will be research on the curse hidden here somewhere.
The wait for the next one won't be nearly so long-Emily.