Chapter Text
The incessant ticking in the quiet room was what pulled Regina’s consciousness to the surface. With a frown she glanced over at the clock on her bed side table. The demanding red digits told her that it was just after four in the morning.
Why was she awake?
The warm body that lay beside her shifted and it became clear that it must have been her daughter who'd roused her from her sleep.
She really is getting to be too big to be sneaking into bed with-
Regina's thoughts were halted by another round of deafening tick, tick, ticks. In the instant it took her mind to identify the sound her heart clenched painfully in her chest.
The deathwatch beetle.
All of her life she'd been told what this omen would bring if she ever had the misfortune of hearing its threatening call. She'd witnessed it first hand when her father died when she was no older than the little girl who was currently sprawled between herself and Daniel was.
When the deathwatch beetle began to chirp in the home of a Mills woman it meant death. The death of the man who loved her.
A curse that had been passed down from generation to generation of Mills women had found its way into Regina’s home at last. She'd blindly thought that after the last seven years of marriage that maybe, just maybe, she'd surpassed the death sentence that had stolen away countless loves from her relatives.
The thought of loosing Daniel, her Daniel, had her shooting bolt upright in bed, her dark eyes blown wide with fear.
“No…” She breathed out in a terrified croak, her eyes raking over the serene face of her husband and their daughter, Robyn, who slept together soundly, their foreheads touching, none the wiser of the doom that loomed before them.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happing. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn't.
“Not him, please,” she pleaded, praying to anything that would listen that the dreaded ticking would stop.
But it didn’t.
It continued to tick through the early morning hours, always moving away from Regina as she sought out the insect that spelled out the destruction of her little family.
Crouched in the closet, pulling boxes from the furthest corners, was how Daniel found his wife, whispering wildly at the floorboards.
“Reg? Honey?” His sleep riddled voice called to her as he came to lean against the door frame, the frown he wore audible in his tone. “What are you doing?”
Regina jumped, the sound of something that wasn’t ticking taking her by surprise.
“Daniel! Oh Daniel,” she sighed with relief. A relief that didn’t quiet settle right in her chest. Just because he was okay right now didn’t mean it would last. Not until she found that beetle and killed it. If she killed the damned bug surely that would break the curse, at least, that’s what she prayed would happen.
“Honey, you look spooked. Are you alright? Can I help you find what you’re looking for?”
Pushing up from the floor, Regina reached for his hand before it was even offered and clasped it tightly between her own, her eyes begging him with every ounce of her being. “Don’t go to work today. Stay home. I have this feeling, a bad feeling. Something is going to happen and I just need you to believe me. Please, just stay here today. Please Daniel. Don’t go in today.”
Furrowing his brow in his growing confusion, Daniel pulled his wife against his chest, enveloping her in his strong arms to try and calm her visibly frayed nerves.
“I can’t stay home today, you know that. We have that new stallion arriving today. I have to be there to sign off,” he sighed and planted a kiss against her dark locks. “What’s brought all this on huh? Did you have another dream? Honey, nothing is going to happen today. Not when I have one of the towns best witches on my side,” he teased with another kiss to her head before pulling back.
“This isn’t a joke Daniel!” All of the fear that had plagued her since she woke up seeped into her words making them sound clipped with her growing frustration. The heat of her tone had him turning back to look at her unwavering glare.
“Alright, what if after I get everything settled at work I come back home and you and I can have some much needed time to ourselves?” Wrapping his arms around her waist, he gently pulled her back to him with a calm, patient smile. “Henry and Robyn can go to school like normal and you and I will spend the rest of the day together.”
“Daniel-“
“I’ll be home by eleven at the latest. Maybe we can call your Aunt Mal and see if she can pick the kids up from school and keep them so we can go on a date. An actual date. Dinner, movies, a chilly walk on the beach- the whole nine yards. We haven’t done that in a while. What do you say Reg, do you wanna go out with me?” Daniel asked with a crooked grin that always managed to earn one in return from the woman in his arms.
Sighing heavily, Regina stared up at him with defeat in her eyes. “Promise me you’ll be careful and that as soon as you’re done at work you’ll come right home. No going to the Rabbit Hole with Jefferson. No stopping for anything. Straight home. Promise me.”
“I promise Regina. Nothing’s going happen and later I’m going to take my favorite girl out for a night on the town.”
Leaning down to capture her lips, Daniel put an end to any more of her worries. The ticking of the beetle silenced for the time being and for a moment Regina believed that maybe it really had just been a terrible, terrible dream.
Regina stood in front of the kitchen sink with a lukewarm cup of coffee in her hands, the edge of the mug pressed against her lower lip as she stared out the window sightlessly. The morning had gone as it usually would. Showers, rousing two tired children who needed to get dressed, breakfast in a rush- everything was normal. The kind of normal that Regina had strived hard to get.
Being a Mills in the small coastal town of Storybooke Maine came with a stigma behind it. It was no secret that magic flowed through their veins and when she and her older sister Zelena were younger and newly moved back into town with their Auntie Mal shortly after their parents deaths it had lead to ruthless teasing and taunts that still echoed in her mind all these years later. It hadn’t been until she married Daniel that things had changed for her.
After the wedding and the birth of Henry everyone in the sleepy town seemed to forget that once upon a time they would shout names or throw stones simply because of her last name. For the first time in her life she was welcomed into the normal everyday goings on of the town and to Regina it was everything she'd ever wanted. To just be normal.
Maybe, she mused to herself, if I focus hard enough I can will things to remain as they are.
She could beat this curse that had plagued her family for well over a century. Yes, she was certain that she could hold onto her family. She would not be like her mother and her grandmother before that. She would keep Daniel.
As if it had heard her thoughts, a loud tick sounded from somewhere behind her. The mug in her hands slipped from her grasp and shattered against the edge of the counter, exploding shards of ceramic and coffee all over the hardwood floors and her bare feet.
“No!” She howled as she whipped around, her voice rising as she shouted at the empty room. “No! I won’t let you take him!”
Ignoring the scattered mess around her, Regina stormed into the utility room to find a screw driver in Daniel’s tool box, determined to find the harbinger that threatened everything she held dear.
“You are not taking him, do you hear me?! You’re not taking him! I won't let you,” she growled defiantly as she dropped to her hands and knees and pressed her ear to the floor, straining to hear where the ticking was coming from.
She crawled along the floor, stabbing the point of the screw driver into the seam of the floor boards, prying them up with hands that trembled. She didn’t care if she had to take up the whole house she would find that beetle before it was too late. This was not how her story would end.
“Come on, come on- where are you?! WHERE ARE YOU!?”
Her voice wavered and tears began to blur her vision as desperation set in. The ticking had picked up, each tick louder than the last until it was a frenzied whirlwind of echoing clicks throughout the kitchen making her heart constrict as she sat up on her haunches, dizzy with dread that threatened to suffocate her.
In her mind she could see it with perfect clarity.
Daniel was squatting in front of the tack house, his jeans already splattered with muck around the ankles, his hand out stretched towards a straggling looking mutt he was trying persuade to come over with what was left of the muffin he'd stolen from the counter before he'd kissed her goodbye. Regina wanted to scream, she watched the as her husband remained focused on the pup who steadfastly refused to come any closer, entirely unaware of the feed truck that was pulling in too fast behind him.
A strangled cry caught in her throat as she tried to shout for him to move, to leave that stupid stray alone and get up, get out of the way! But he couldn’t hear her. Not from here. Not with her alone in their home miles away from the stables.
The impact of the truck striking the firm mass of his body was jarring and instantly the beetle’s frenzied ticking ceased to fill the kitchen, leaving in its wake an eerie stillness that shattered before it could even take root.
Pain crawled up Regina's throat as wounded wail after wounded wail filled the void, drowning out the house phone that shrilly demanded she answer. She didn’t need to answer it. She knew what that call would be saying. She had seen it. She had felt it.
Daniel was gone.
The curse won.