Chapter Text
Chapter 1 – Return
The sun always rose gently over the meadows of Storybrooke, brushing light across two old ranches that stood on either side of the quiet valley. One grew wildflowers, the other held silence.
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Past: The Quiet Life
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Regina hadn’t planned on coming back.
Not to Storybrooke. Not to the ranch. Not to the white-fenced pastures or the dusty barn she’d sworn off the minute she turned eighteen. But death doesn’t ask what you planned. It just calls and you answer.
Her mother passed in early spring.
The lawyer’s voice had been dry and distant: You’re the sole heir. The land is clean. No debt. The ranch is yours.
Regina didn’t cry. She didn’t know how to.
She packed slowly. Mal packed faster. “Maybe it’s what we need,” Mal had said, folding Henry’s baby clothes into a suitcase Regina hadn’t touched in years. “A place to start something real.”
Regina had nodded, even if she wasn’t sure what real meant anymore.
They arrived in late April.
The grass was too high, the fence sagging. The paint on the barn door had peeled in strips like sunburnt skin. Regina stood at the end of the gravel drive with her arms crossed, trying to remember who she used to be when this place still felt like home.
Mal came up behind her, holding Henry against her hip. “He’s going to love it here.”
Regina looked sideways. “How can you tell?”
“Because he doesn’t know how heavy this place used to be for you.”
Regina said nothing. Just turned the key and stepped inside.
The house smelled like cedar and memory.
Her mother’s perfume still clung faintly to the upstairs hallway. Regina opened every window and let the wind scrub the walls clean. Mal unpacked in silence, only pausing to pull a photo of the three of them from her bag and place it gently on the mantel.
They didn’t make big declarations. They just moved.
Henry was barely four. He toddled through the kitchen barefoot, squealing at the sight of the chickens. Mal carried him through the pastures, showing him how to whistle between his teeth. Regina found herself watching them from the porch, something raw blooming behind her ribs.
She had been afraid that coming home meant giving up her life.
But as days passed, and the air grew warmer, she realized: she wasn’t giving anything up.
She was building something new.
The ranch taught them how to live small.
They grew zucchini that twisted like question marks. They fixed broken gutters in the rain. Regina re-learned how to ride, this time with Henry holding tight to her waist. Mal built him a wooden sword and called him “Sir Henry of Clover Field.”
On nights when the sky turned orange and the animals settled early, Regina would sit on the back steps, barefoot in the dirt, listening to Mal hum lullabies upstairs.
She never expected to find peace in this place.
She never expected motherhood to soften her.
But every time Henry climbed into her lap and called her “Mom,” she felt something old unspool inside her chest.
Something like purpose.
Something like home.
On Henry’s fifth birthday, he asked, “Was this your house when you were a kid?”
Regina knelt beside him in the garden, dirt on her palms, her wedding ring glinting in the sun. “Yes,” she said. “It was my house. But now it’s yours too.”
He nodded seriously, as if understanding the weight of inheritance.
Mal came out onto the porch, carrying a plate of cake. “And you’re going to run it someday, aren’t you, bud?”
Henry grinned, frosting already on his nose. “Can I be the boss?”
“You already are,” Mal said, kissing the top of his head.
Regina watched them, smiling without realizing.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like she was living someone else’s story.
She was writing her own.
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Past: The Day the Air Changed
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The door was still open when the sheriff left.
Regina didn’t close it.
She just stood there, keys in one hand, phone in the other, her whole body suspended like time had stopped and forgotten to start again.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She just… stopped.
The house was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that presses against your eardrums until it feels like it’s screaming.
Mal’s coat was still hanging by the door.
Henry’s sneakers were still by the stairs, muddy from the backyard, one shoe slightly tilted like he’d taken it off mid-run.
Regina stared at them for a long time.
Then she sat down on the floor.
And stayed there.
That night, someone brought food. She didn’t remember who. The next morning, someone else fed the animals. Ruby, probably. Someone left fresh eggs on the porch. Someone else offered to help with the funeral. The town moved around her like water.
She didn’t move at all.
Three days later, she opened Henry’s door.
His bed was still unmade. His stuffed dinosaur lay sideways across the pillow. A crayon drawing was taped to the wall: a crooked house, three stick figures, a chicken, and what was probably supposed to be a dragon.
Regina sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers across the comforter.
He had picked it out himself. Bright blue. Rockets and stars.
She pressed her face into it and finally let the sob escape.
It came out of her in a way that didn’t sound human like something breaking open and spilling into the floorboards.
She cried until she couldn’t breathe. Until her ribs ached. Until she had no more sound left in her body.
And when she finally lifted her head, the light had changed.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there.
That night, she lit a fire in the living room.
She made tea she didn’t drink.
She pulled Mal’s sweater from the laundry basket and wore it even though it still smelled like her.
She sat on the couch with the framed photo of all three of them in her lap.
“Why wasn’t it me?” she whispered, over and over.
And the house said nothing back.
A week later, the funeral came and went like a storm she didn’t feel pass through.
People hugged her, but she didn’t remember who. She said thank you to things she didn’t hear. She stood still while flowers were lowered into the earth, thinking only of the chicken coop Henry had begged her to paint yellow.
That night, she packed away his shoes.
She left his room untouched.
She threw away every sympathy card that began with “They’re in a better place.”
And she locked the door to their bedroom.
Because she couldn’t sleep where they were supposed to come home to.
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Present
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The gravel crunched under Emma Swan’s boots as she stepped out of the cab, the scent of pine and late autumn lingering in the air. Storybrooke hadn’t changed much in the years she’d been away. Same weather-beaten signs. Same silent hills. Same whisper of ghosts in the wind.
But everything had changed.
She stood at the edge of her grandmother’s flower ranch, two suitcases at her side and a piano-shaped ache buried somewhere deep in her chest. Her fingers, still stiff from the flight, twitched slightly, missing the keys, missing rhythm. She hadn’t played since the call from Ruby came. Since she heard the words.
“Mal and Henry. Car accident. No survivors.”
Her lungs hadn’t worked right since.
The house still looked like it belonged to a fairy tale, white wood, sloping roof, green ivy swallowing the porch. Emma stepped inside. Dust waited patiently. The scent of old jasmine and unfinished dreams clung to the walls.
She dropped her bags, sat on the edge of the couch, and didn’t cry.
Because she hadn’t yet.
⸻
The next morning, she walked to the ranch.
Regina’s land sat just past the apple grove, wide and dry now that the season was turning. The horses were in their pens. A few goats ambled near the fence. Everything was quiet.
Emma spotted her near the barn, tall, still, Regina had always been the strong one, stubborn, sharp, impossible not to admire. Life had found its rhythm. Until the crash. Until silence swallowed everything. Regina was fixing the north pasture gate when she heard the gravel shift.
She didn’t look up at first.
Lately, people had been coming and going, bringing casseroles she didn’t eat, flowers she didn’t want, kindness that felt like noise. She’d learned to keep her eyes down. Hammer. Nail. Breathe. Repeat.
But this time, something felt different.
She looked up.
And there she was.
Emma Swan.
Hair wind-tangled, boots dusty, the same leather jacket, same quiet fire in her eyes. But something else now, something softer. Older. Bruised.
Regina’s heart stopped.
It wasn’t surprise.
It was grief reshaping itself into recognition.
Emma took a step forward, like she wasn’t sure if she should speak.
“Hey,” she said gently.
Regina stared at her, hands frozen mid-hammer. “You’re back.”
Emma nodded. “Came as soon as I could.”
Regina nodded. No thank you. No hug. Just a nod.
There were a hundred things Regina could have said.
Why now?
Why not before?
Why didn’t you call me when I still knew how to breathe?
But all she said was, “You shouldn’t have.”
Emma tilted her head. “You don’t mean that.”
Regina dropped the hammer. It hit the dirt with a dull thud. “I don’t know what I mean anymore.”
They stood in silence, just the sound of the wind brushing through the dry grass and the distant nicker of horses.
Emma took another step. “I thought you might need someone.”
Regina swallowed hard. “Everyone keeps thinking that.”
“I’m not everyone.”
That stung more than it should’ve.
Regina looked down at her hands, splintered, dirty, useless. “You’re late.”
Emma nodded again. “I know.”
Regina turned away. Not out of anger, but because if she kept looking, she might break.
Emma didn’t leave.
She walked to the edge of the fence, and said nothing else.
And Regina, who hadn’t let herself feel anything in days, felt the air shift.
Not because grief was gone.
But because Emma was standing in it now too.
And for the first time since the accident, she didn’t feel entirely alone.
She felt Emma beside her. No questions. No pressure. Just presence. Just like always.
⸻
That afternoon, they worked in silence. Emma fixed a broken stall door while Regina mucked out the pens. Occasionally, their hands brushed. Neither of them said much. The grief hung between them like fog, thick and quiet.
Finally, as the sun began to dip behind the ridge, Regina spoke.
“She left the heater on. Mal. That morning. Said the weather was turning.”
Emma paused, not sure whether to respond.
Regina kept going. “She buckled Henry in. I found the car seat. Perfectly latched.”
Emma turned to her. “None of this was your fault.”
Regina’s jaw clenched. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be your fault to ruin you.”
They stood there a while longer, the chill settling into their bones.
⸻
Later that night, Emma sat on the porch of her grandmother’s house, sipping lukewarm tea, eyes scanning the stars.
Ruby pulled up in a beat-up truck, two coffees in hand.
“You look like you need real caffeine,” Ruby said, handing her one.
Emma smiled gratefully. “I forgot how quiet it is here.”
Ruby leaned on the railing. “Yeah, but it’s a heavy quiet now.”
Emma nodded.
Ruby glanced at her. “She’s not okay.”
“I know.”
“She won’t let anyone in.”
Emma looked down at the ring on her finger, thin silver, slightly tarnished. Regina had given it to her in college. “For luck,” she’d said.
“She doesn’t have to,” Emma whispered. “I’ll stay anyway.”
⸻
The next morning, Emma walked into The Velvet.
It was covered in dust, the stage empty, the bar still lined with old forgotten glasses. Her fingers twitched again. This place used to be hers. She played here before the world got loud with tours and stages and gowns.
Ruby met her there, keys in hand.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” she grinned.
Emma exhaled slowly. “Let’s bring her back.”
Ruby clapped her hands. “God, I’ve missed you.”
Emma turned, looking at the piano tucked into the corner of the stage.
“I’ve missed this,” she said. “All of it.”
⸻
That night, she lit the first candle she made in years. It smelled like sandalwood and orange peel. She labelled it Reign.
She didn’t say why.
But Regina would know.