Someone Else's Story (Patreon)

“Henry James Mills, you may be the Author, but it is still a school night!”

Standing in the doorway to the reading room, Regina looked like some statue to motherhood—hands flat on her hips, head tilted to the side, a decided scowl on her face from the better part of an hour spent playing phone tag and running around town to track her son down. It all evaporated into exasperated fondness, though, as she came down the landing to the writing desk where Henry had a leather-bound book spread open to near the end.

“Mom, I’ve saved your life, and I think I’m a little old for a curfew—“

Regina’s expression soured again. “If you tell me Emma said that…”

“No… not yet… but you’ve got to admit; saved your life.”

“Oh? So then you’re ready to cook your own food, pay your own rent, earn your own wages, clean the house, do the dishes—“

“I do sweep up at the pawn shop.”

“It’s a pawn shop, dear, it’s supposed to be dirty. Try dusting a mansion.”

Henry shrugged. “You could’ve magicked yourself a duplex.”

Regina grumbled to herself. If she was just a little less self-aware, she could’ve at least blamed Emma for his smart-aleckness instead of realizing he got his sarcasm from her. “I also turned quite a few people into a cleaning service. That’s foresight: like going to bed early when you know you have school in the morning.”

“Five more minutes,” Henry responded, as was customary. “I’ve nearly finished this shelf and if I just get done checking this book…”

Regina pulled up a chair. Only, she reasoned, because he gets his OCD from me and not Emma ‘A Chair Is Part Of My Laundry System’ Swan. It’s not like I’m a pushover or anything. “What are you trying to find, anyway? You know I don’t like you gallivanting off to the Apprentice’s house when there’s an unsavory element afoot.”

“Mom, c’mon, you said it yourself, the Untold Stories are harmless.”

Regina grimaced. Why was it teenagers only actually listened when it was something they could use against you? And why was it all of Hyde’s groupies had turned out to be more… bad neighbors than villains? The worst thing Hyde had done was sunbathe nude in his own backyard. Annoying, but not really the sort of thing anyone had to sacrifice themselves to stop.

“Harmless or not, I still don’t like losing track of you. And please don’t try to put me off by getting me to rant about our little melting pot of a town.”

Henry sighed—not the only one who could be like a dog with a bone when it came to something triggering their spider-sense. “It’s these books… they’re not the Storybook, but they’re not just books either.”

“Alright,” Regina said gamely. “So what are they?”

Henry didn’t look up from the pages as he flipped through them, frantically scanning. “I think they’re other stories, real stories, from other worlds. Or other collections of worlds. Like a different Enchanted Forest and a different Storybrooke.”

Regina’s brow furrowed. “Another Snow White. Wonderful…”

“Yeah, but maybe that Snow White is evil, like the one from the Author’s story. Or, uh… like the page you found of you and Robin meeting at the tavern, back in the Enchanted Forest.”

Regina felt her heart clutch, almost more at the apologetic look Henry gave her than at the mention of his name. Was it really that bad, her suffering that obvious, that even Henry was aware of it? He was growing into a perceptive young man, it was true—the Author—but had she lost even the appearance of fortitude?

Did everyone know how much it hurt?

“Henry, it’s magic. It’s unpredictable. And the magic of the Author is particularly powerful, particularly unstable magic. Remember why you vowed not to use the Pen? For all we know, all these stories are just… who knows? Records of dreams a person had, or something that could’ve been if a thousand things had happened differently. I doubt you’d get anything relevant to us from them.”

“I’m not looking for research. I’m looking for a possibility. Even the possibility of a happy ending is a powerful thing.”

Regina exhaled softly and still felt like her lungs were closed up so tight that her breath had to be dragged over hot coals before it got out. Believe in happy endings, Regina. You deserve to be happy, Regina. You’re a hero, Regina.

Possibilities weren’t as powerful as reality. And the reality was that Regina could never be forgiven for what she’d done. Not by herself and not by the universe.

“It’s been a long few years. A good few years. I think everyone who’s going to get a happy ending has gotten one.” There. That was as much as Regina could say without screaming.

Henry tapped the book like it was an equation he’d written proving her wrong. “There are a lot of stories where you’re always the Evil Queen, and you get an unhappy ending. Or where you’re always a hero and you have a happy ending with Daniel.”

“Henry, that’s enough,” Regina said. She didn’t want to be angry with her son, but more than that, she didn’t want to be sad. Not now. Not yet. Plenty of time for that later, when she had sleep to drink her tears.

Henry pressed on like he hadn’t even heard her. “And there’s stories where you have a happy ending with Robin Hood. So if you can be happy with Robin instead of Daniel, why can’t there be someone else for you?”

“Because there just can’t!” Regina snapped, and had to force herself calm, even had to force her magic to withdraw from where she’d summoned it up throughout her body. Her temper was always so fast, and it only got faster when she had nothing else to feel. “Henry,” she continued, sounding insincere but at least not sounding furious. Or overcome. “I don’t need true love to be happy. I have you. I have friends. I have… something of a family now. I know that my father and mother and, and Daniel are in a better place. I know that people have forgiven me for what I’ve done. I’m respected… and I think I have as much love as I can handle. I am so much happier now than I ever thought I’d be. I don’t need anything else.”

“But you deserve it,” Henry insisted.

“That’s not how stories go,” Regina reminded him gently, reaching out to rub his cheek. “Not in our book. Now if you’ll put that back?”

Henry quickly checked his watch. “I still have one minute, forty seconds.”

Regina sighed and stood. “I’ll go start the car. And if you’re not out of this house in exactly two minutes, you can eat your other mother’s cooking.”

“Uh-huh,” Henry replied, immersed in the book again, spending every second finishing up.

Regina rolled her eyes—no one to blame but herself—and headed out.

He was a good kid. Better than she deserved. And she didn’t need anyone else. The two of them against the world.

It wouldn’t get lonely.

***

Fallen from her horse and scrambling now, the knight was only stopped in her haste by the actual sight of her beloved. The glass coffin around her Regina shone in the midday sun like a diamond, reminding the knight of how impenetrable the curse that had befallen her truly was. But the coffin was only glass, she reminded herself, and the curse was only a curse.

She was panting, exhausted, but the torpor with which she approached the coffin was born of trepidation, not exhaustion. Would it work? True Love’s Kiss? After all they’d been through, all the spiteful words and rivalrous deeds, could their connection have truly blossomed into love, or was it just some quirk of their loins? The knight had to believe that the warmth she felt for Regina was returned, not just wholly her own fancy.

She reached the coffin, now seeing her own reflection in the glass lid, and spared a moment’s amusement at just how she looked, bloodied and battered and absolutely covered with sweat, not to mention how dinged and dirtied her armor had become as she fought her way through the Mad King’s forces. She could just imagine Regina tsking at her as soon as she came awake—assuming it worked.

She could’ve gone to clean herself, but she found that for all her apprehension, she could not waste another moment. She had to have Regina back. More than that, she had to know. Was it real, what they had? Did Regina, for all her bluster, for all her wounded defensiveness, for all her infuriating, hilarious cynicism—feel as she did?

She threw the lid over, breaking the latch clean off by main force, then stooping to Regina. The closer she drew, the more impossible it was to discern Regina’s stillness. Her curse became mere sleep, her silence serenity. It was just as if Regina had fallen asleep after a night of kisses, and now the knight had a stolen moment to see the peace she’d brought to her heart.

Nervousness bloomed in her. Not the anxiety over the curse, but the same old fears as ever. What was she doing? Did Regina love her? Was she making a fool of herself? Would Regina reject her, scorn her, betray her?

They had kissed many times before. This was not the apex of those, not the ultimate, but seemingly every kiss at once. With all their hesitance, all their anxiety—and all of their eventual bloom. Emma’s lips met Regina’s in slow, almost courtly grace. Electric with needy passion, a lust not for Regina’s body, but to show Regina what it was she meant to her.

The kiss deepened. Emma felt Regina in those lips, felt the slow and aching storm of her under the placidity. She chose to believe that this was the woman she loved; she willed it, she believed in it, she trusted and had faith in it. I love her. She loves me.

It was possible nothing could’ve failed to answer the passion of that kiss. Not stone, not metal, and certainly not Regina. Her lips parted, her arms opened, and she embraced the kiss as she embraced Emma, her resting place suddenly a marriage bed beneath them.

“I never had any doubt,” Regina breathed.

“Yeah,” Emma grinned back at her. “Probably thought I couldn’t do better, huh?”

“Oh, you certainly could. But not before I’ve scrubbed some of this grime off you…”

Emma snapped her fingers. “Second thing you say to me after coming back from the dead…”

Regina kissed her again. There was only so much chit-chat she could take when Emma was on top of her and neither of them had the excuse of being in a coma. “Not the first thing, though.”

“No. There’s hope for you yet.”

“And after all that, seems a bit redundant to have to say I love you. I mean, did you see the literal rainbow that shot out of our kiss?”

“It was nice,” Emma agreed. “But I’d still like to hear you say it.”

Regina smiled. She could certainly do that. “I love you, Emma Swan.”

“And I love you, Emma—shit, sorry, Regina.”

“Oh, no, I’ve seen you love yourself, you’re very good at it.”

“Regina Mills, I love you,” Emma reiterated. She swung herself out of the coffin, morbid as it was, and picked Regina up before she even had a chance to think of getting to her feet. “Now I do believe I’ll be taking you home. There’ll be a warm bath, a hot meal, and—oh yes—a wedding.”

For once, Regina Mills had nothing to say. But she had quite a lot to kiss, and she did, every step of the way back to Emma’s horse, as they began their first day of living happily ever—

***

From outside, Regina’s car horn blared. It wasn’t the cute little blart of Emma’s Volkswagen. Regina drove a Range Rover. She meant business.

Henry packed the book deep into his backpack. School night or no, he needed to read this from the beginning.