So...I was feeling super discouraged about this story and for a loooooong time, I couldn't even bring myself to think about it (seven and a half months to be exact). I finally developed the courage to open it up again and here is the result. Those of you that haven't given up on this will probably want to go back and do a reread, seeing as it's been so long.

If you're reading this, thanks for sticking it out, I hope you enjoy, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. It definitely wouldn't hurt, and reviews would help to keep me going on this toughie.

Much love,

Your insecure and entirely too needy author, SouthforWinter ;)

Regina slowly blinked her eyes open, still unused to the harsh lighting of the cell. She felt something on her hand and when she turned her head, she found herself face to face with a sleeping David. His hand was resting gently against hers, and she suddenly remembered what had happened before she'd fallen asleep. It hadn't been a dream. She felt humiliated, but also relieved. She sat up slowly and felt guilty when she saw how uncomfortable David looked. He was in a crouched position next to the bed, his head resting on it as if he'd fallen asleep unexpectedly. Which he probably had, she realized. He'd been massaging her wrist, trying to coax her into sleeping and must have fallen asleep himself.

Now she was torn. She didn't want him to wake up because she didn't want to face the reality of what had happened to her, but at the same time, she didn't' want him to suffer from the uncomfortable position any longer than he already had. Besides, he hadn't shown any pity before, so maybe he wouldn't be as judgmental as she'd always imagined he would be. She'd never allowed any higher expectations of the husband of Snow White.

Sighing, she let her guilt win out.

"David."

His brow creased lightly, but there was no other indication of him waking.

"David? David!"

He jumped up then, alert at the sound of her call.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

She almost smiled at how his first thought was that he needed to protect someone, but she swallowed the impulse with the nervous thought that she was now among those he wanted to protect. She knew he didn't mean it as such, but she felt as if his protection was a reaction to how pathetic she seemed after her recent experiences. He'd always been the first in line to see her executed back in their land, and even after the curse had broken in this one, he'd been among those wanting to see her dead. His sudden change of heart had no other explanation. As much as he might deny it, Regina had a sneaking suspicion that his sudden protectiveness stemmed from some sort of hero complex; see a damsel in distress and the need to save her kicks in. It was a Charming family trait that Emma had inherited and it made Regina feel sick to her stomach. A damsel in distress was a role she'd never wanted, but somehow one she always seemed to find herself playing, no matter how unwillingly; with her mother, with Daniel, with the King, with Rumpelstiltskin, with Greg, and now with David.

David glanced around him, finally realizing there was no immediate danger. "Wha-..where…" He continued looking around in confusion, trying to get his bearings.

Regina decided to go directly for a less dangerous set of questions – she hoped. "How are you in my cell?" She'd briefly wondered the same thing before she'd fallen asleep, but her mind had nearly been gone, so she hadn't been able to go any further than that.

Halting his study of his surroundings, David finally remembered what had occurred, and why he'd awoken next to Regina.

"They opened the doors."

"They?"

"The people keeping us here. I don't know…They brought you back and then they closed off the hallway and opened the doors of our cells."

Regina stood abruptly and walked to the doorway of her cell. Glancing around curiously, she finally stepped outside and walked to one end of the now short hallway, inspecting the new wall carefully before walking to the other side and repeating her actions. "Why would they do this?" she wondered aloud.

"I don't know, but I'm glad they did."

Regina looked up from her place at the wall and met his gaze, absorbing the heaviness of his statement. If he hadn't been there to pull her out of the delusional world she'd spiraled into, she didn't know what would have happened.

She shook her head, and turned back to the wall, looking past it to the outer doors. "Yes, well…the question remains; why would they keep us apart and then all of the sudden open the doors between our cells?"

"Maybe they decided they'd gone too far and thought you needed a friend?"

Regina raised an eyebrow at his use of the word friend, but rather than question it, she shook her head. "No. What he did was very deliberate. Besides – he wouldn't be the kind of person to take pity. He doesn't care about us beyond getting the information he wants…" Regina slowed toward the end of her sentence, trailing off in thought. Just as David was about to ask her what she was thinking, her focus snapped back to the present. "It must have been something else. Perhaps a guard taking pity? Or, for all we know, this is a regular practice for them. Maybe it's just another way for them to study us."

David creased his brow in thought, but Regina plowed forward.

"Oh, well. Whatever it is, we have our own things we need to do. We need to discuss our options. I, for one, am still having trouble piecing together what happened back at the mines. It's still foggy."

David nodded. "For me, too."

"Well, maybe we can compare our memories and start to reconstruct what happened and how we got here?" She tilted her head. "Maybe talking it through will help us remember."

"It couldn't hurt to try," he agreed.

She walked back toward him and he stepped aside when she reached the doorway so she could move past him and back to the bed. "Why don't you start?" she asked, sitting down.

David moved into the room as well, leaning against the wall across from her and crossing his arms against his chest. "Well…we'd all gone back to the mines so that we could try to throw the trigger through a portal."

Regina nodded. "But you didn't have the bean—"

"—because Hook had stolen it…Right."

"Which probably worked out for the best in the end; there was no way to know which world it would have ended up in. We had no way of knowing what effect it might have had on the place it landed."

David's face paled. "I didn't even think about that. I thought it was specifically designed for Storybrooke."

"I think it was."

"You think?! Weren't you the one who designed it?"

She shook her head. "Rumpelstiltskin gave it to me before I cast the curse."

"But you said—"

"I know what I said!" she snapped at him. "But you know…I have been known to lie from time to time when it benefits me."

"Yeah," he said, pulling his arms tighter against him to keep himself from retaliating. "I know. But what reason would you have to lie about that? What purpose would it serve? And why would Rumpelstiltskin allow you to have such a dangerous weapon? He'd know that you would use it without telling him. He'd die along with the rest of us."

She huffed out an irritated breath at his persistence. "Gold has his own plan, his own agenda. Trust me when I say that he wasn't concerned about the trigger. As for me, I had my reasons for lying. Reasons you don't need to know."

David narrowed his eyes at her. "How do I know if you're even telling the truth now?"

"Does it matter?!" she asked, flinging her arms up in exasperation. Gesturing around her, she continued, "Or do you not remember where we currently are? Now…can we please get back to the matter of how we arrived here, or do you have a problem with that as well?"

He uncrossed his arms in order to brush a hand through his hair, trying to remain patient. Finally, he shook his head, sighing.

"Now that I have your permission…" she sneered.

"Just keep going, Regina," he nearly pleaded, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off an impending headache. "Please?"

"Hook had stolen the bean," she picked up. "We thought we were all going to die." Her voice lost most of the hostility as she recalled the emotions of that moment. They'd come back to save her, risking all of their lives, and for a moment, she'd truly believed they were all about to die. The overwhelming anguish washed over her again as she felt the ghost of Henry clinging to her tightly in what they thought would be their last moments.

"But Emma realized that she might be able to help with her magic," David continued, and Regina was grateful to be pulled from the memories.

She couldn't believe it had worked. She remembered the feeling of the added power; the burst of energy. But beyond that, her mind was fighting her. She tried to reach past it, to remember what had happened directly after, but there was a heavy resistance.

"Obviously it worked," David tried. "We wouldn't be here if it hadn't."

Regina nodded. "But what…?"

As she tried desperately to recall the events that had followed, David pushed himself off the wall. As if in a daze, he moved toward her and sat down beside her. In deep thought, he raised his arm and grasped hers, physically going through the motions he was barely remembering from those last hazy minutes in Storybrooke.

Regina's eyes dropped to his hand as they had during that moment back in the mines, and she looked up at him. "You…you did this right before…" She stood up suddenly, a panicked expression on her face. "Right before we realized that Henry was missing."

"Tamara and Greg," David realized. "We were going to go after them?" The memories were still disjointed, but he couldn't think of any reason they'd have done anything other than chase after the people who'd taken his grandson.

"But something happened…Damn it!" she swore. "Why can't I remember what happened?"

"It has to be the drugs they gave us."

"But those should have worn off by now."

"Not necessarily. The drugs that effect memory can alter it to a point where we might never remember what happened." He looked surprised at his statement. He'd run the pet shelter, but he'd also had the degree to become a vet. Even after several months, he still wasn't used to the medical knowledge of this world kicking in at random times. Even though most of it centered around animals, there was a whole history of medical school rolling around in his head. The simple shepherd in him found the whole thing extremely disconcerting.

Regina looked slightly surprised as well before she moved forward. "I just can't believe I'd let someone capture me like that. Especially after realizing that they had Henry." The disgust in her voice when she mentioned Greg and Tamara was palpable and David couldn't imagine how much she must hate the pair. "And now we're here," she said, all of the anger suddenly disappearing.

David watched as Regina went limp, deflating as what little energy she'd had disappeared.

"I've failed him. Again. We're stuck here and he's in danger." Just like that, she switched again, fear taking over. "What if he's hurt? And what do they want with him? He's just a boy. I should be able to save him – I shouldn't have let myself be captured. What if—"

"Hey," David said gently. He wanted to pull her away from this pit of fear and self-loathing and help calm her down – though, if he was being honest with himself, he was wondering the same things. For both their sakes, he needed to get her off that destructive path and start her thinking about more helpful ones; like how to escape.

"Emma and Snow will find him."

Regina looked up at him. "You don't know that."

"That's true, but you don't know that they won't. I have faith that Henry will be safe as long as they are looking after him. They won't give up until they find him."

"For all we know, they were captured as well. They might be here somewhere in a cell, just as we are."

David shook his head. "You can't think like that. Besides, if they were here, we'd know it, wouldn't we? After all, why would they put us together, and not the others? And we've both left our cells. The rest of the cells are empty. We've seen it for ourselves. Right?"

Slowly, Regina nodded, seeming to finally calm down. "You're right. But why would they only take us?"

"I don't know." He watched as Regina slowly lowered herself to sit next to him on the bed once more. "At least we're not here alone," he told her.

She met his eyes and he was surprised to find that she allowed relief to flood her expression momentarily. After it disappeared, she nodded.

"We'll figure this out."