.

Tessa hurried down the stairs and tried to slip quickly out the door. Regina came around the corner.

"Wait, wait, come here." Regina ordered. Tessa froze and then, very slowly, turned around to face her.

"What?" Tessa asked, not even closing the door, as she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

"You've been avoiding me since Graham… since he died. I just want to make sure you're okay." Regina told her. Tessa gritted her teeth. This was the last thing that she wanted to talk about.

"Peachy. Bye." Tessa said instead. She ducked out the door and hurried down the walkway, onto the sidewalk and towards Henry's castle.

By the time she got there, Henry was leaving, but Emma was still sitting there, dejected. Tessa went over to her.

"Hey." They said to each other in unison. Tessa flopped down next to Emma.

"Why is Henry ducking you?"

"Because he's worried what happened to Graham will happen to me if I make Regina any madder. But it was natural causes that killed Graham." Emma told her. Tessa swallowed hard before answering.

"Yeah, sure." She agreed, trying to make it sound convincing. Emma looked at her suspiciously.

"Don't tell me you believe Henry?" Tessa sighed.

"Yeah, actually, I do." She admitted. Emma stared at her. Tessa sighed again before explaining.

"Whenever I leave the town, I get memories back. From when I wasn't just Tessa. I was Contessa. I was the daughter of the Evil Queen. Emma, I know it sounds crazy, but it's true!"

"I… Tessa, I think that we believe… what we want to believe." Emma chose her words carefully. Too carefully. Tessa just laughed humorlessly and got up.

"Now you think I'm crazy. Lovely. Just what I needed." Before Emma could protest, Tessa was jogging away.

Tessa knocked lightly on the door to Archie's office. A muffled 'come in' allowed her to open the door. Henry was just gathering his things.

"Okay, let's get you home, kiddo." She told him. He walked past her and out the door, expecting her to follow.

"I'll meet you outside." She told him. He gave her a confused look but nodded and kept walking. Tessa looked at Archie, slipping into the office.

"If I tell you something, will you call me crazy?" She asked.

"I don't call any of my patients crazy." He assured her.

"Great… Now I'm a mental patient." She said with a roll of her eyes. She sat down on the couch across from Archie.

"Is this about Graham? I heard that the two of you were close." Archie said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

"It's not about that… I think that I might be remembering something from… a past life." It was Tessa's turn to choose her words carefully.

"Well, it might be just memories from your childhood that are coming back to the surface." Archie suggested. Tessa seriously doubted that. But she smiled anyway.

"Thanks, Archie." She got up and left, not wanting to talk about to someone who wasn't going to believe her. Henry was waiting outside for her.

"You have dinner with mom." She reminded him as they walked walking down the sidewalk.

"Why aren't you coming?"

"I have something else to do." As they round the corner, they saw the Mayor's office, surrounded in fire trucks, and the smell of smoke hit them like a brick wall. Henry ran towards the building and Tessa sprinted after him. She caught him and pulled him to a stop. She looked around and saw Regina sitting on a stretcher, an oxygen mask pressed to her face. Emma was talking to some fire fighters. As she let Henry go, he ran to a fire fighter to ask what had happened. She slowly went over to Regina. Regina looked up and had to do a double take to realize it was Tessa. Tessa sighed and looked at her.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Regina assured her. Tessa looked over her shoulder at Henry and then back at Regina.

"Do you want me to take him home?"

"Please." She went over to Henry, but he ducked under her arm to go talk to Emma. She let him go; knowing Emma would send him back to her sooner rather than later. She looked at the dying flames in the room of the mayor's office. It reminded her of something…

The cottage was in flames. Contessa and her grandfather turned and ran into the forest. Within minutes, they had lost each other in the dense trees. Fear overwhelmed her, made her want to run faster. She sprinted past trees, jumped over logs and scrambled down a hill. She didn't dare glance over her shoulder; she could already hear the footsteps behind her. As she got to the bottom of the hill, she heard someone yelling behind her. She stopped and turned, out of breath. A man dressed in armor threw a spear at her. She whirled around and threw herself to the ground. The spear grazed her, cutting into her skin from her left hip to her right shoulder. Blood quickly covered her shirt, pain making her vision blurry. The last thing she felt was someone dragging her away before everything went dark…

Someone was shaking her.

"Tessa, Tessa!" She jerked awake and Regina sighed in relief, waving the paramedics away. Tessa sat up and rubbed her right shoulder, where the scar ended.

"What happened?" Regina asked. Tessa pushed herself off the pavement of the parking lot and to her feet. She saw Emma with Henry, who was looking worried. Emma quickly distracted him by starting up a conversation with him. Tessa turned back to Regina.

"Nothing… I, uh, probably just had low blood sugar." Tessa lied. When in doubt, throw something medical in there and hope for the best. Regina gave her a suspicious look, which she had been getting a lot lately.

"I'm going to go home." She added. With that said, Tessa turned and hurried off before Regina could stop her.

The next day, Tessa was sitting at a booth in Granny's Diner, clicking away on her laptop. Ruby had customers to attend to, but was sneaking Tessa free glasses of coke every once in a while. Emma walked over to her.

"Hey." Emma greeted her to get her attention. Tessa looked up from her Bejeweled game.

"Hey." She returned.

"So the sheriff election is coming up… You're over eighteen and-."

"I'm not voting." Tessa told her.

"At all?"

"Correct. I'm not going to decide who's the best person to replace Graham because no one is. No offense." She added the last part as an afterthought.

"None taken." Emma assured her. She got up and started to leave, but then turned back to her.

"Can you at least wish me luck on the debate?" She asked hopefully. A small smile tugged at Tessa's lips and she gave Emma a thumbs up without saying anything. Emma smiled and walked out of the diner.

That night, Tessa was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and hoping to trigger some other memory. Henry ran into her room without warning and jumped onto her bed, knocking into her. She moaned and sat up.

"Ouch. What it is, Henry?" She asked. Henry was grinning ear to ear, not unlike the Cheshire Cat.

"Emma won the election!" He cried.

"Good for Emma." Tessa could tell her lack of enthusiasm wasn't working for Henry, so she plastered a smile on her face and repeated her words whilst forcing more excitement into her voice. He hugged her tightly, still grinning.

"Henry?" She pulled away and looked at him.

"In the book… What happens to me?" She asked. His smile faded and he was in full book-nerd-mode.

"You were born to Regina and-."

"No, no, I mean what happens at the end of the book?" She interrupted him. He smiled slightly.

"You try to stop Regina from doing the curse, but you're too late." He explained. She nodded.

"So… Am I a good guy?"

"Of course!"

"Good…"

"What's the matter?" Henry asked.

"I'm…" She trailed off. Depressed, confused and completely and utterly shocked about all of this were the true words, but she didn't say them.

"Feeling off." She finished.

"Oh." Was all he said.

"Why don't you go celebrate Emma's victory?" She suggested. He nodded and ran out of the room. She flopped back against her pillows. Chess crawled over to her, nudging her with his head.

"Hey, boy." She greeted him, petting his head. She sighed and stared up at the ceiling again, trying once more to trigger more memories.