David stared at the picture of Snow he'd pulled out of her file at the sheriff's office. He had been stewing all morning about what his next steps would be in trying to lead the town and get his family back. Between handling the crisis at hand and caring for his son-turned-grandson, there had barely been time for him to address the turmoil inside of him. His thoughts had finally shifted introspectively this morning in the quiet station and he made an attempt at descrambling his feelings.
Frustration ate away at him as his eyes nearly bore holes in the picture of Snow. He tried to summon an emotional reaction even remotely close to what seeing her used to do to him but it wouldn't come. He still felt love for Snow but it didn't hit him like a thunderbolt when he thought of her like it once did. His loyalty and his morality would always bring him back to her but he was having trouble getting his heart to agree with it. He tried blaming it on the fact they had no real time together since the curse broke, but it didn't make sense. They'd been separated before and his feelings had never faded.
He threw the picture down in aggravation, leaning back in his chair and cupping the back of his head in his threaded hands. How could his feelings from the curse still be lingering in his heart when he'd been woken up to the memories of his prior life? He made himself replay he and Snow's wedding day in his mind, searching for the way it used to warm his heart anytime he'd recall it. He longed for her now but was it just because he feared she and Emma were in danger? If that were not a factor, would he still be as determined to be with her again?
Thoughts of Regina flooded his mind despite the way he tried to avoid thinking about her. The town council had formed a letter to her, demanding her resignation and he knew she would've received it today. He wondered how she was going to process losing Henry and control of the town at the same time.
Regina loved to work and curse aside, had been a smart and efficient mayor. Outside of work she loved to still feel productive, often making plans for them on the weekend that he'd grumble about but end up enjoying. Now she had nothing else to focus on but her misery and it made him sad for her and nervous for the rest of them.
"David?" His name being called out startled him to sit up straighter. He stood up when he saw Regina rushing in, dressed in a fitted blue button up and dress pants. She looked put together outwardly but emotionally frazzled as she approached.
"Can I help you?" He frowned, taking a deep breath. There were no traces of the Evil Queen, just the familiar expression of the woman he called wife for years. Nothing but worrying over Henry ever made her this panicked and he realized something must be wrong, "Is it Henry?"
Regina hated running to David for help but it was the only thing she knew to do. After Henry had called and uncharacteristically asked her for lunch, she'd been gullible enough to believe he'd actually wanted to spend time with her. The blow of reality she received when she realized he stood her up to steal from her had crushed the tiny amount of self worth his invitation instilled.
"Henry, he-" Her brows furrowed hesitantly and David could see she had put away her pride to come to him, "He called and asked me to have lunch today-"
"And?" David put his hands on his hips in concern, looking down at her as he waited for her to continue.
"We agreed to meet at Granny's, so I went and he never came. I thought maybe you had kept him from it but then I got back to my office and realized the key to my vault is missing-" She bit down on her bottom lip in defeat before confessing, "It was a setup."
David's lips parted and he stared at her for a moment, taken aback by the pain he saw in her eyes as she admitted her own son manipulated her. He could tell she was heartbroken over him raising her hopes just to crumble them, for it was written all over her expression. "...He set you up to steal the key to your vault? You have a vault here?"
"It's just where I kept some things I brought from the Enchanted Forest," She admitted guiltily, gaze shifting to break their eye contact, "Things that could hurt him, David. You have to go to him, you know he won't leave with me-" She looked back up with glossy eyes, her sense of urgency back and evident.
"Maybe we should've gone with Operation Viper," David raised an eyebrow breathlessly at his grandson after shutting the lid on the snakes in Regina's vault. He had arrived just in time, sliding across the dusty floor to slam the chest lid and save him from being hurt.
He and Regina had jumped in the cruiser and sped to the cemetery as fast as they could, their worry making the ride a silent one. Regina led him through the graveyard when they arrived and pointed him to the vault. David had glanced back at her when he started down the steps but she shook her head and gave him a silent, knowing look. Henry would not respond to them if she was around and they both knew it, so she held herself back and put her trust in his father to make sure he was safe.
David let out a breath of relief as he bent over to help the kid up from the floor, "You alright?"
"Yeah, how'd you know I was down here?" Henry looked up at him sheepishly as he dusted the dirt from his jacket.
"Your mom came to the station and said you asked her to lunch, and when you stood her up, she checked her office and saw her keys missing and figured out the rest. She would've come herself but she didn't think you'd go with her," He frowned deeply and crouched to the boys levels, "Henry, what were you thinking?"
"I just want them back," He replied shakily, "I should be over there with them. Riding horses and learning how to swordfight-"
"I know..." David let out a breath at the boy's naïve aspirations, "But do you know how worried your mom has been that you'd hurt yourself down here? You know she'd never forgive herself if something happened to you. Especially here of all places."
"My mom?" Henry's face scrunched up then at his reference to Regina, "The Evil Queen is not my mom and she doesn't really care about me."
Henry's words struck David the wrong way and he frowned back at the boy, giving a slight shake of his head. "Listen I know it's confusing for you. It's confusing for me, too. Up until recently the three of us were a pretty happy family and now we find out she's not who she told us she was...it hurts, I get it. But Henry, she's still your mother, she raised you and she loves you more than anything else."
"No she doesn't - she doesn't know how! She's the Evil Queen and she thinks love is weakness," Henry shook his head stubbornly.
David could see the boy was struggling to keep his own thoughts together when all he probably wanted was to run home to the woman he'd known as his mother and let her hold him. Henry wanted to be brave and do the right thing but he was also a boy with empathy and love for the woman who raised him. And he was trying so hard not to show it.
"Henry, listen to me-" David remained on his knees at eye level with the boy, "Regina worked very hard to adopt you, to make us a family. Even though our cursed life wasn't real doesn't mean she didn't love you or want you. You were the one part of this that I know for certain was real to her. Do you hear me? And what you did today, lying to her and standing her up when she thought you were giving her a chance - it really hurt her..."
"I'm sorry," He muttered while looking down at his shoes awkwardly.
"I don't think it's me that you need to say that to..." David said quietly as he straightened up, "Now if we're going to find our family we're going to do it together. Okay? Now come on, you need to get back to school."
David reached out for the little boy he'd raised and loved with the woman who stood around the corner, overhearing their conversation. He mentioned how he needed to make sure no one else found the vault and put a reassuring hand on Henry's shoulder. Their footsteps grew louder as they approached the staircase, prompting her to vanish in a cloud of purple smoke.
Regina found herself sitting adjacent to the cricket, not believing it herself that she'd actually come for his help. Since the curse breaking she had no one to talk to and nowhere to go but to pace her Mifflin Street home, trying to avoid the temptation of her magic.
Since the incident with Henry and David defending her to him, she'd been on edge. It has been even more work to keep her emotions at bay and stay out of trouble while her situation bombarded her. If her son hated her enough to deceive her then would he even care if she redeemed herself? If David hated her then why did he stick up for her to Henry?
Questions like this plagued her, keeping her up all night and her shoulders tense. None of it lessened the stress of learning to live without magic and she finally snapped, seeking out Dr. Hopper as a last effort to hold onto her tattered self control.
She had approached the cricket desperately outside of his building, hoping to get in before anyone else saw her. So far there had only been a minor set back when Whale burst in to harass her about sending him back to his brother. Thankfully Hopper berated Whale for his attack of Regina and made him leave. The combination of her rampant thoughts and being attacked every time she set foot outside of her home had her ready to implode by the time she sat down on the cricket's couch.
"-It's just that magic is the way I've always gotten everything. When I got it back I just thought I could take Henry and things would be okay but I made everything worse-" She shook her head, sitting stiffly as she studied her hands to avoid his eye contact, "He can't even look at me now..."
"You forgot that magic is also how you lost everything," He replied, earning a glare from her before he looked at her pleadingly to remain open, "Regina. This is your chance to start over, to earn Henry..."
Regina stared back at him with glossy brown eyes as she processed what he was saying. Her posture was rigid and her jaw was clenched but he knew she was listening, as much as she hated it. It was the most vulnerable she'd been to anyone aside from David since the curse began and talking about it began to make her unravel.
"He hates me," She whispered, bottom lip trembling and tears threatening to spill over. "My own son hates me and...h-his father does, too. I don't want to start over I just want my life back-"
Dr. Hopper looked at her with empathy, seeing the human side of her that he was sure not a lot had witnessed firsthand, "Regina, if you stay on this path you can prove to them that you've changed...And you never know, things may end up a lot differently than you think they're going to..."
She wore a pained expression as she gazed down towards her clasped hands. He could see her warring with wanting to believe him and be hopeful, but her past would not allow her to be that optimistic. "I'm never going to get them back. I'll never have what I did before the curse was broken. This is what I deserve."
"Do you really believe that? That you deserve to be miserable because of the mistakes you've made?" The cricket looked at her almost skeptically and it made her back straighten in defiance.
"After what I've done? Of course I deserve misery-" Regina shook her head with a frown, "I hurt innocent people, I destroyed lives-"
"But why did you do it?"
"To get revenge on Snow White," She replied in a tight, irritated tone.
"But why did you really do it? You're smarter than that, Regina. You know that revenge wasn't what was going to make you happy. Why did you make it your mission in the first place?"
"I told you, she ruined my life-" She cocked her head to the side in annoyance at repetition.
"But what made you thirst for revenge? What blinded your logic so fully that you thought this was the right path?" He pushed, seeing her become more visibly uncomfortable.
"I was heartbroken!" She snapped, admitting it out loud as a fresh tear escaped her eye, "Is THAT what you were digging for, Dr. Hopper?"
"I think that's a start..." He said calmly, seeing she was unnerved and wildly out of her comfort zone. "I don't think you can build a fresh start when you haven't dealt with the past, Regina."
"I have dealt with my past, I haven't forgotten what I did to people, they remind me of it everyday-" She began to rant but he interrupted her.
"I didn't mean your past as the Evil Queen," He replied more seriously, seeing her gaze snap up at him in full attention, "I meant that you can't move forward unless you deal with the things that happened to Regina..."
She scoffed and crossed her arms as if she were dealing with the biggest idiot in Storybrooke, "Did you not get the memo? That's kind of what this whole curse was about, Hopper. My revenge on Snow White, the land without magic, marrying her true love-"
"On the outside, yes," He nodded, seeing her lip twitch in anger, "But that was the Evil Queen, not Regina. You created a completely different identity to protect yourself from the pain and trauma you experienced. You've used the Evil Queen persona to shield yourself from actually processing or feeling your emotions-"
"You don't think I feel my pain?!" She growled, sitting up abruptly, "I knew this was a waste of time. You don't even have an actual doctorate, you're a bug! This was foolish, you imbecile-" She lashed out, grabbing her bag from the end table as her temper flared.
"Regina, if you had dealt with your grief or processed your trauma then you wouldn't have brought the past with you..." He stated plainly, "You were lying outside, weren't you?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously at him then, "What?"
"When you told Whale that only the living made it to Storybrooke and you couldn't help him get to his brother-"
"Listen I don't care about Whale or his stupid brother. I brought who I wanted here. End of discussion," She snarled at the therapist who seemed unfazed by her attitude.
"If we're going to do this, I need you to trust me," Hopper looked at her firmly, "Who did you bring with you, Regina?"
Pain flickered in her expression and she pressed her lips together. She stared the man down in a last attempt to scare him before realizing she may have pegged him wrong all of these years. He looked back at her, unflinching as he waited for her response. She felt her walls begin to come down slowly at the fact he did not falter in fear of her.
"His name was Daniel. I preserved his body with an enchantment spell. He's dead but frozen, and I kept him in the family mausoleum."
"Because you couldn't let go of him," The therapist nodded as if he were putting together pieces of the puzzle, "If you can't let go of the past, Regina, it's doomed to haunt you."
Anger bubbled within her at his suggestion that she leave Daniel behind. He knew nothing of her grief or pain yet thought a fake certificate on the wall made him an expert.
"I think this has been quite enough," She said venomously, her tone not inviting argument as she stood from the couch with purpose.
"Before next week I'd like you to consider your reaction to my statement and reflect on why you feel you reacted this way. We'll discuss it this same time at next week's appointment."
"What makes you think I'd ever step foot in this office again?" She laughed bitterly, going for the door.
"Please consider it, Regina. I can help you."
"I doubt it."
Regina stood, staring unnerved at Dr. Whale in the hospital bed through the window of his room. It had all started with her reeling on her way home from Dr. Hopper's office the night before. The emotions she'd repressed for years had resurfaced with the breaking of her curse and the cricket pushing her to confront them started a landslide within her.
It was pouring the rain, mixing with her teary vision to give her a headache and wish she was home already. She hit her brakes and turned up the windshield wipers when she saw him at the corner of the street, straining to look closer. She wondered for a moment if she was hallucinating due to her stress or lack of sleep.
It was Daniel, wearing the same clothes she'd laid him to rest in, staring at her as he stood in the rain. When she blinked he was gone and she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were white, realizing that Dr. Whale had to be behind whatever this was.
When she'd found Whale in his destroyed laboratory and he told her he'd brought Daniel back she'd barely been able to process it. When he added that he'd come back as a monster, she refused to believe it. Daniel was back and that was all that mattered. She could handle whatever issues came with that and she was prepared to fix them. She would not give up on him again.
The nurses told her that she'd gotten Whale to the hospital just in time after transporting them immediately with her magic to the emergency room. She watched him now, hooked up to monitors and still unconscious, as she tried to grasp what this all meant for her.
Daniel was back. Her Daniel was alive again. Would he accept the person she'd become? Would he still be able to love her despite the past she'd created? Worry gnawed at her stomach and she stared through the glass, wondering where he might have gone. David and her son hated her but maybe with time Henry would come around. And if she had Daniel beside her in the meantime, well that sounded too good to be true. She would have someone.
The thought of Daniel's return didn't lessen the ache in her heart for David, but maybe she'd be able to ignore it easier. Maybe she wouldn't have to be alone and there was still someone that could love her unconditionally. God knows Daniel was her only opportunity for that in this realm and the rest.
"What's going on?" Her husband's voice startled her and she spun around quickly, seeing him charging in, "I just got a call that Dr. Whale was attacked."
Regina saw the accusatory look he was giving her and made a mental note that she had to stop thinking of him as her husband. He would've never looked at her that way.
"You'll have to ask his doctors," She frowned.
"No, I'm asking you," He narrowed his eyes, lifting his finger up to point it at her.
Regina bristled at the attitude coming from him. She'd done nothing since she pledged her good behavior to Henry that would warrant this accusation and she hated that it stung even more coming from him.
"I came here to speak with him and discovered that he was hurt," She grit, narrowing her own gaze back at him.
David raised his eyebrow in the way he always did when he didn't believe something she said. It usually happened during their marital squabbles when she'd claim she was fine and he knew she wasn't. That's when he'd arch a brow and stare at her until she admitted that he had upset her or her feelings were hurt or she needed to talk about something.
"I'm telling the truth!" She frowned at him hurtfully. Did he not know her at all? Their marriage may have been a part of the curse but they had shared so many ups and downs together. Did he truly not feel anything real during it?
"What else?" He pushed her, the personal space between them gone and their faces inches apart. It was as if he wanted her to admit to doing wrong just to validate his poor opinion of her which made her resentful. "What did you come here to speak with him about?!"
"Someone from my past," Regina tried to appear casual, her eyes shifting down from his gaze before looking back up at him. Her history was something she'd told fully to no one. Sharing it with someone she'd gone from intimate to enemies with felt awkward. "I believe he's come back...Daniel...his name is Daniel..."
She watched as David put the puzzle pieces together from what he knew of the Evil Queen and what she'd told him about her past during their marriage. She had left out the fairytale aspects, but told him about her difficult relationship with her mother and about losing her first love to a terrible accident. Everything she had shared with him had been a part of her real history and now he was connecting the dots between their talks and what Snow had told him.
"The man that you were supposed to marry," David nodded, remembering the night she'd shared with him about losing her first love to an accident. He realized Snow had also told him about Regina being in love with a stable boy who was killed and he frowned in confusion, "Snow told me what happened and how it was her fault that he died..."
"Yes...he did-" She nodded, swallowing thickly at the look on his face.
"Then how could he be back-" David frowned deeper.
"Whale...He believed he could bring him back from the grave, and..." Regina's expression grew hopeful and she smiled unsurely, "I don't know how but...he has," She looked up at him wide-eyed and he felt a pang of jealousy shoot through him.
"You don't know how?" David scoffed and crossed his arms, his gut telling him that this would not end as well as Regina clearly wanted it to. There was dark magic involved with whatever was going on here. "Guess."
"No, not magic. He practices something more powerful than magic," Regina shook her head and tried to reassure him, reaching out to touch his arms. "All he needed was a heart...and he took one of mine."
David's eyes widened and Regina scrambled desperately to act like it was a normal statement. Her former husband's reaction to what was going on was slowly tugging her back to reality. The reality that tampering with death and dark magic did not end well...and that having a vault of hearts was in now way normal.
"You have hearts here?" He looked at her incredulously, pulling her to the corner of the waiting room with a grip on her upper arms. The expression he wore looked like he was staring at a stranger, not being able to comprehend that she was more heinous than he knew.
"It's my vault - from our land, back then," Regina tried to defend herself, as if the fact that she'd not added to her collection recently should be mentioned.
David watched her in disbelief, realizing that she was not thinking clearly. She was obviously shaken by the thought of someone from her past coming back and he didn't like to see her this way. The more he saw the soft, vulnerable side of her the more he began to remember instances where he'd seen it before during their marriage. Had those times been real or was she acting then? He hated that he even wanted to know.
"Regina, whose heart did he take?" David forced himself back to the problem at hand and looked at her seriously.
He saw her expression change, as if she were beginning to understand the gravity of the situation, "I have no idea..." Her eyes shifted away from him, "I took so many it was impossible to keep track."
David stared down at her as he tried to fathom how this Evil Queen who took hearts for fun could be the same woman he'd just been married to. The woman who cried when their son took his first steps. Who cuddled into his back at night when she was cold. Who was always too shy to ask for comfort but would melt into him as soon as he opened his arms to her. How could the Regina he knew be the same Evil Queen that killed innocents and wrecked his life?
She saw the struggle play out on his features. His forehead creased in disappointment at her and she felt her stomach sink. She had exposed herself as a heart stealing murderer and David was seeing her for what she was.
"I need to go," She frowned and diverted her gaze, starting to walk around him until he grabbed her. "I have to help him."
"No," David wrapped his hands around her upper arms firmly, "Where is he? Look what he did to Whale, he's dangerous-"
"Not to me-" She shook her head quickly, "He won't' hurt anyone else David, I promise-"
He shook his head, chest heavy with jealousy and anger that he couldn't explain, "You know I can't take that chance."
He glared at her, angry that she was putting him in this position. How dare she make him care about her and then try to put herself in danger?
"You have two choices, Regina," He stepped up to her closer, his expression stern, "You tell me where he is or go to jail."
It was weak, but he was at his wits end and didn't know what else he could possibly threaten her with.
"I told you I don't know! But I'll find him, I promise-" She begged him then, hand gripping the front of his jacket.
David looked at her for a long moment and let out an exasperated breath. He didn't know why, maybe years of marriage, but he could sense she was telling the truth.
"Come on."
"What?" She frowned at his sudden change in direction.
"I said come on, we're going to our - I mean , your house after we pick up Henry from school," David nodded, straightening his jacket over his gun belt where she'd pulled at it, "As long as this guys out there, you're not staying alone. Now come on - we need to tell the others to get inside until we figure out where he is."