Chapter Text
In a figurative sense, she supposes this is the second time she’s ended her own life.
Her last attempt at undoing was far more extreme; she’d gone from a desolate cliff’s edge, surrounded by vile and destructive creatures, to a paved surface with a sign marking it Main Street. A clocktower in front of her had chimed, just once, and then the rest of the population of all the kingdoms had come flooding in, scattering into being like gnats flying into a windscreen.
She’d immediately tried to ensnare them, to no avail, and had then stared at her hands in sheer disbelief; what happy ending could come without magic? Magic had brought her everything that had ever mattered.
Awareness of her own nudity had come when a man owlishly blinked at her and then had blinked at himself, and had finally looked at his hands with the same sense of wonder. All he’d said, after that, was Hello. Are you--are you all right?, meaning, Am I all right? Where am I? What is going on?
He hadn’t known to ask those questions, then, and she’d closed her eyes and concentrated until they were all clothed. Their old apparel had lasted several days, until she’d uncovered a television and had tuned it to a daytime soap opera, absorbing the dress code and mannerisms of this world. All of her original inaccuracies had knitted themselves into a seamless pattern while she’d slept, and one month later, that owlish man had tipped his hat to her on the street, stuttering out a, “Good morning, Mayor Mills”, like he’d never done anything else his entire life.
“Good morning, Dr. Hopper,” she’d responded, smiling sincerely for the first time in years.
She had felt like she had won, then.
…
Today, it isn’t the same.
Her second death was messy, with far too little preparation and a horrific amount of outside intervention; the memory of Henry barreling towards them, knocking Emma off balance, is overwhelming, and it’s what causes her to shoot upright and clutch at her chest.
Something there still beats, even now.
She reaches for the covers and swings her legs out of the bed, but before she can get very far at all, a strong arm wraps around her waist and holds her in place. Everyone’s happy ending, she remembers, and feels something that feels an awful lot like hope swell inside of her, supplanting the fear that somehow, Henry isn’t here with them, or wasn’t able to forget the horrors of the last few days of his life.
She whips her head around to look at Daniel, warm and real and with her and not monstrous and--
“Ugh, what time is it?” Emma groans, unclothed and only halfway covered, before cautiously opening one eye and looking at her in a way that Regina can only think of as familiar and fond. “God, Regina, I know that you like to make it to work early but the sun hasn’t even come up yet. Get back here, will you?”