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For the first week, she didn’t even realize who he was.
The mechanics of the curse were strange and rather convoluted. For its victims, it replaced the most crucial memories with faded, overwritten substitutes, while the rest was left to a vague, impenetrable fog. It gave them enough to know who they were now and to complete the tasks needed to function, and very little beyond that. For its caster, it provided even less than that. Whether it was an intentional failsafe to prevent the caster from going insane or a design flaw that the original creator had somehow missed, Regina didn’t know.
What she did know was that her name was Regina Mills, and that she was a mayor, not a queen, in charge of a town instead of a kingdom. She knew what a landline phone was and how to work it. Newly provided instinct taught her how to drive a car and use an electric stovetop and how to pay for things with her credit card. Her feet knew the path to her home. Her fingers remembered the shape of a keyboard.
The transition was aided by the curse, but that didn’t make it seamless. She had almost thought it didn’t work the first time she’d used a lightswitch, convinced that she must have cast a spell by mistake to light the room. For a place called ‘The Land Without Magic,’ it sure seemed to have a lot of it. Cars that ran on internal propulsion and phones that let her speak to anyone across any distance. A television that worked like her old magic mirror and signs outside storefronts that glowed without fire. In the brief moments where she wasn’t consumed by her own misery, she took the time to be amazed by this new world they’d stumbled into. At the way that the inhabitants of the land with no magic had taken matters into their own hands and made their own. Most of the time she was too angry to notice.
The other thing the curse provided her was names. Not the old names, but the new ones, whispered like a gentle reminder whenever she ran into someone on the street. Their new identities were impossible for her to forget, decided and meticulously maintained by the spell she had cast and then lost control of. The curse told her their new names, their new jobs, how she was meant to know them now, in this new life they had been assigned. When it came to their old identities, however, she was on her own.
Most of them were easy. Many of them were people she didn’t even know, citizens of land that came along for the ride. Then there were those that had been… if not true allies, then at least not enemies. She recognized King George in the new District Attorney. The few of her soldiers that she knew the faces of passed her on the street. She knew, even if she tried to pretend she didn’t, why the sheriff was so unwaveringly loyal.
Then there were the satisfying ones. The faces she liked seeing the most, the ones that had pushed her to this point in the first place. The ones she revelled in recognizing, in knowing them better than they even knew themselves. She saw the strong-willed Ruby and Widow Lucas reduced to the bickering proprietors of a failing bed and breakfast. She watched as the town drunk, once the hardy leader of her most irritating band of enemies, stumbled his way into a back alley to pass out. The moralizing cricket cowered at the slightest glare, steadfast Gepetto spent his days in a griefstricken haze, and the once high and mighty swarm of fairies were reduced to nothing more than dirt underneath Regina’s heel.
And Snow. Snow. The cause of all of this, the girl that had ruined both of their lives with her stupid, selfish need to prove that she was, somehow, a good person. Every misery Regina had suffered, every agonizing, aching step towards victory, every crushing loss, it all traced back to her. She was the one Regina liked seeing the most, at first. Getting to watch those defiant eyes go wide with terror at the slightest provocation. Seeing the once brash, arrogant princess reduced to a timid, cowering mess. That was what all this had been for. Getting to look at Mary Margaret Blanchard and know that her life here, provided helpfully by the curse’s eternal narration, had amounted to nothing.
It was everything she’d ever wanted. Everything she’d fought and sacrificed and bled for. It was supposed to be perfect, her happy ending, the one she had finally earned. And it was, at first, when the taste of victory was still fresh and she was high on that initial revenge.
It didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off. For the monotony of the repeating cycle of Storybrooke’s days to start grating on her nerves. The nervous way the town avoided her stopped being thrilling. The fear in Mary Margaret’s eyes got old. Because none of it was ever new, never enough. What was the point of all this revenge if they couldn’t feel it? What was victory over Snow White if Snow White was good as dead? What was the point of tormenting this town if they’d just forget, the memory lost in the fog that they lived in? She’d wanted them all to be just as miserable as she was, but it seemed the only person suffering in the long term was her.
He was the nail in the coffin.
It was the second time she’d spoken to him here, but in every way that mattered, it was the first. She’d gone to him exactly once, when she first realized the cycle she had trapped herself in. She’d found out who he was by process of elimination, going through the town records and finding the one man who seemed to fill all the criteria of the deal they’d made, that day in his underground prison. The one man in town with enough power to fit the bill.
She’d burst into his shop demanding answers, demanding he fix this mess, because this was not the victory she had been promised. She’d spoken to him then, realized that he didn’t remember either, stormed out just as angry. But she hadn’t talked to him, not really. She’d been too angry to register the reality of the situation. That took another week.
She was out on the town later than she usually was these days. She’d taken to wallowing in her house instead, trying to find some way of making this pointless, circular existence worth it. She fulfilled her mayoral duties and then she wandered aimlessly, unable to stand the hollow gazes of the people outside. Today, though, she was out. Not for any interesting reason. Just because she needed groceries.
He was standing a building down when she got out of her car, leaned against the brick wall behind him so he could free up the hand that usually held his cane to do something with the cup he was holding. She was going to just pass him by, ignore him like she was trying to ignore everyone else in this godforsaken town, when he noticed her staring. He lifted his head, and he was too far away for her to see his eyes clearly but it didn’t matter, she knew exactly where he was looking. She was approaching him before she even fully registered the movement.
It was curiosity, mostly. Part of her secretly still convinced that he knew what was going on. Sure, he’d seemed genuinely confused when she went to talk to him, but she’d been so angry then. Maybe she’d missed something, or maybe he was just a better actor than she’d given him credit for. But surely there was no way he wasn’t in on it somehow. She liked to think she knew him better than most, and there was no way he hadn’t built in some kind of failsafe, right? A way to remember? Or maybe he was just so powerful that he didn’t even have to, that he was just immune to the curse’s power in the first place. But he had to remember. There was no way he didn’t.
It wasn’t until she got up close that it struck her just how human he looked. In the Enchanted Forest, he had been one of a kind. Unmistakable. Strange, warped skin that sometimes looked like scales and sometimes looked like he was rotting where he stood. Unsettling golden eyes that gleamed like a cat’s in the dark. Even just the way he held himself, his body leaned at odd angles, his hands resting awkwardly when he wasn’t using them, like an animal that hadn’t quite figured out how a human body was supposed to move.
In Storybrooke, he almost blended into the background. His hair was straighter here, neatly swooped back where it used to hang haphazardly over his face. His skin, clean and unmarred by the strange infection that had seemed to corrode it. His eyes, brown and sullen and so starkly human. Somehow, the sheer humanity of him now was far more unsettling than the creature she’d spoken to through his prison bars.
“Gold,” she greeted, curt, cold. The curse helpfully whispered his name to her as she approached him, but she hardly needed the reminder.
“Mayor Mills,” he replied. His tone was polite, too polite for who he was, even with the undercurrent of distaste filtered through it. It didn’t sound like his voice at all. Except it did, but not the him she wanted to hear. It was Mr. Gold’s voice and it fit him perfectly. But she wasn’t here to talk to Mr. Gold. “Did you need something?” There was a warning in the statement. Either get to the point or stop wasting my time. How presumptuous of him, to assume he wasn’t the one wasting hers, simply by virtue of being there, of being who he was.
He spoke wrong, here. Too clear, too smooth, too polite. She’d gotten so used to the ravings of a madman that she could no longer understand him sane. His voice was lower, too, both in pitch and volume. There was a stillness about Mr. Gold that made her restless, like living by a dormant volcano after spending your whole life with an active one. She’d gotten used to bracing herself when she spoke to him, preparing herself for the boundless, manic energy he brought with him. He was calm now, but she had yet to unlearn the instinct, and every second the ticked by without the tension releasing just made the anticipation grow all the worse.
“I’m curious about something,” she said slowly.
“Oh? How exciting,” he deadpanned, taking a sip of whatever his drink was. The cup was from Granny’s, but there was no tab hanging over the side, so either he’d chucked the teabag or it was coffee. She didn’t know how she felt about that. Was Rumplestiltskin the kind of man who drank coffee?
“What brought you to Storybrooke?” she asked him. He blinked in surprise, turning to look at her more fully. He scanned her face, searching for something that he didn’t seem to find. Not that she could blame him. She was watching him just as carefully. He wouldn’t answer her honestly, she knew he wouldn’t. But she was praying for something. A twitch of the eye, a tightening of his grip around his cup, a slight downturn of his mouth. Anything to indicate that he knew more than he was letting on. Something she might’ve missed the first time she talked to him in this town.
Some indication that she wasn’t really alone here.
“Any particular reason for this… sudden curiosity?” he asked, gesturing at her loosely with his free hand.
“I just want to get to know you better,” was her PR ready answer, smile sweet to match. “After all, a good mayor should get to know her constituents.” His eyes narrowed, clearly not buying it for a second. The thought was somehow comforting at the same time it was irritating, because the irritation was familiar. You know, right? You’re still here. I know you’re still here.
“How charming,” he decided, sending a jolt through her body that she barely managed to disguise. Was that it? Was that a sign, him subtly toying with her, choosing that word out of all the others he could’ve picked? It had to be, right? “The same reason anyone comes to America, I suppose.”
“What?” she demanded, an angry hiss slipping through her attempt to appear only mildly curious. She took a moment to school herself, calm her impulse to scream at him until he told her what she wanted to know. “And what’s that?” There was a flicker of something across his face and her mind bit down on it like a dog on a bone, refusing to let it go. It replayed in her mind, the way his eyes narrowed and his lips twitched, over and over as she prayed that it meant what she thought it did. His tell. His slip up, a crack in his carefully schooled facade. The face of a man who, just for a second, hadn’t been able to think of a convincing lie.
And then his expression shifted again, into something painfully, disgustingly familiar. Not familiar from him, not the glimpse of her old friend or enemy or whatever the hell he was to her anymore that she had been so desperate to see. Familiar from every other damn person in this town. The furrowing of the brow, the worried tilt of the mouth, the way their eyes squinted like they were fighting a headache. A confusion she had become far too acquainted with in the past weeks, from every time she spoke to anyone here. It was what they all looked like when they tried to think too hard, trying to wade through the fogged up recesses of their mind where the curse hadn’t completed their false past.
His silence couldn’t have lasted more than a couple seconds, but to Regina, it was minutes. It was such a subtle shift, but to her, it felt like every detail was rendered in perfect resolution. There was no tell. There was no indication. There was just a familiar expression on the last face she wanted to see it on, and the crushing realization that she’d been right the first time.
“I can’t say I recall,” he said finally, hammering the final nail into her coffin and straight through her heart with the confirmation. “It’s been some time since then. Perhaps I just wanted a change of scenery.”
“Seriously!?” Regina spat, her voice rising in anger despite her best efforts to control it. Gold- because it was Gold, irrefutably now- raised an eyebrow, leaning in just a bit closer as he scanned her face for some answer about this bizarre interaction. Because he didn’t understand it. She’d assumed they were both playing a game with each other, skirting around the truth they both knew, trying to force the other to show their hand first. But they weren’t. For the first time in her life, Regina was well and truly ahead of him, holding all the cards, winning over the last person she’d thought could stand against her. She should’ve felt victorious. Should’ve been proud that she’d bested them, bested them all, even him. Instead she just felt hollow.
“Expecting something else?” Gold asked, voice acid, the cordial veil over his tone drawing thin. Everything he said sounded like a coded message. Was it the curse messing with her, making Gold so eerily knowing despite the fact that he didn’t? Or was it her own perception, her own desperation to not be stuck here alone coloring his every statement, just to preserve the faint hope that he was still in there. He wasn’t. Good god, he wasn’t.
“No. Just surprised,” Regina said coolly. Gold let out a quiet hum, some mix of irritation and confusion, before reaching back to the wall and reclaiming his cane.
“Well. Not that this hasn’t been fun, but I do have a shop to run,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder as he began to leave, sharp brown eyes meeting Regina’s gaze one last time. Sharp, but laced with the same hazy lack of focus that every other person in this town carried with them. It was him, alright, but only the vague shape of him. Just like Mary Margaret, just like Sheriff Graham, Gold was nothing but a pale imitation of who he used to be. An echo. “Have a good evening, Mayor Mills.”
She watched him leave, something sick and heavy settling into her stomach. The empty look in his eyes was etched onto her soul, his once clever and perceptive gaze turned hazy. It was her ultimate victory. The people who’d caused her the most trouble, reduced to empty husks while she alone stood triumphant. It didn’t feel like winning. She thought ahead to the future and saw only monotony. Imagined her inescapable life of constant cycles, the same day, again and again and again, until she went insane.
And it hit her that Rumplestiltskin had let himself die of his own accord. He could have saved himself, she was certain of it. A creature that powerful, that clever, should have found a way to resist the curse’s effects, travel over with his memory perfectly intact. But he hadn't. She hadn’t beaten him, he’d chosen this. Chosen the haze, the foggy, half-baked memories and incomplete thoughts. Because ignorance is bliss. Because somehow, in her perfect victory, the only one who knew enough to suffer the consequences was Regina herself.
She gritted her teeth and stumbled her way back to her car, original errand forgotten in the sudden need to get away, to escape the hollow, unknowing eyes of the people around her and the knowledge that she was the only real person left. She clenched her hands around the steering wheel and dug her nails into the thick leather, and with the last parts of her reality setting in, she swore to herself that she was going to win anyway.
Maybe she was alone. Maybe she was the only one left who understood, the only mind that remained clear and aware in this town. But she’d fought too hard to lose here, to lose on a technicality. She’d made her bed and she was going to lie in it, and she was going to toss and turn and hammer it into shape until it finally fit her vision.
Regina Mills had beaten too many odds to collapse before the finish line. She was going to have her happy ending, here in Storybrooke, just like she’d planned. Even if no one else would ever know.