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It is said that for forty nights before you meet your soulmate, you'll dream about them every time you go to sleep. And then, on the fortieth day you'll meet them. But you only have one chance. If you ignore the dreams or miss your soulmate on the fortieth day, it's all over. No second chances, no do-overs.
Some people don't believe in soulmates. Some people ignored their dreams, dismissing it as superstitious nonsense and nothing to worry about. Some people scoffed outwardly about the idea but secretly, as they lay in bed at night looking at the person sleeping next to them, wondered if they could have had it better. And some people believed fervently that their soulmate was out there waiting for them. They would track down each and every face that they dreamt about and whilst this didn't always work out, many claimed that it did.
Emma Swan found herself comfortably in the middle of the first category. She scoffed at the idea of soulmates, openly scorned people who believed in true love and laughed wildly whenever Mulan, a firm believer in the idea, would comfort her and tell her that her soulmate was out there somewhere.
So when she began to dream about a brunette with dark eyes and a rich laugh she dismissed it, blamed it on too much wine before bed, and continued on with her life.
And that's how it would have continued, had Henry Mills' mother not been late to pick her son up from Karate one evening.
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Regina Mills was having an awful day. As far as awful days went, this one was right up there with the time she missed closing a deal with one of the biggest companies in the country, and then Henry, a baby at the time, had vomited into her Chanel handbag. In short, a truly awful day.
Her meetings had run over, her oven had finally given up the ghost meaning takeout for dinner, and now to top it all off she was twenty minutes late to pick up Henry from his after school Karate class. And none of this was made any easier by the headache pounding behind her eyes after five consecutive nights of disturbed sleep due to a ridiculous recurring dream.
Had Regina been superstitious she might have stopped to realise what the dream meant. But she wasn't, so the blonde woman with stormy green eyes was pushed aside to the back of her mind. And that's how it would have continued, had she not run into Henry's karate instructor as she rushed to pick him up on a rainy Tuesday evening.
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Emma glanced over at Mulan as she placed the last mat neatly on top of the pile in the corner of the room. "That all?" She asked hurriedly as she shrugged a sweatshirt over her thin tank, pulling her hair out of the tight bun she wore whilst teaching.
Mulan jerked her thumb in the direction of the door "One kid left. Henry Mills. I don't know where his mom is, she's usually the first one here"
"Hmmm" Emma finished tying her laces and straightened up "I'll wait with him, you go ahead, I'll see you tomorrow?"
Mulan smiled gratefully, Emma had remembered that she had a date this evening and in her usual thoughtful way was trying to help out as much as she could. "Thanks Em, I'll owe you one!" Mulan flashed her a smile and exited out the door and into the night.
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"Hey kid" Emma sat down on the step next to the young boy who was looking forlornly out at the stream of traffic, none of which carried his mom's BMW in it.
"Hey Emma" he turned to look at her "do you know where my mom is?"
"'Fraid not kid, I'm sure she's on her way though, is she late often?"
Henry shook his head, no.
Several more minutes passed and just as Emma was debating whether or not to phone the emergency contact number, a large black car drew up in the parking lot.
"Mom!" Henry stood up, gathering his oversized school bag into his arms.
"Henry! I'm so sorry I'm late sweetie, you won't even believe the day I've had!" The woman laughed, her dark hair falling over her eyes as she bent down to her son's eye level to help him with his bags. Then, straightening up, she extended her hand out to Emma.
"Regina Mills" she said crisply "I don't believe we've me-"
Her sentence cut off abruptly as she looked at Emma, taking in the stormy green eyes and loosely curled blonde hair. Her mouth fell open.
"You.." she breathed.
No. It couldn't be. This wasn't possible.
But Emma was staring at her with similar shock reflected back in her eyes as the deep laugh she had heard echoed over and over again in her mind. That laugh. It couldn't be. This wasn't possible.
She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket, trying to hide the shaking as her mind went into overdrive and her entire belief system crumbled around her.
"Um, I, I have to go. G'night Henry!" Emma jogged over to her car and slammed the door, pretending she couldn't see Regina Mills' stunned expression following after her, long into the night.
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Rationalise. Rationalise and deny everything. Rationalise and deny everything and drink a bit too much. That seemed to be Emma's mantra for the night as she tried, and failed, to put the events of the evening out of her mind.
She didn't believe in soulmates. It wasn't real. Of course it wasn't.
That woman, Regina whateverhernamewas, had probably seen her in a store or something. Emma had probably cut her in line and now she was pissed. Yeah. That was probably how Regina had recognised her. And then Emma's overworked, sleep deprived brain had filled in the gaps based on her earlier conversation with Mulan. There was some word for that, right? In psychology.
But try as she might to convince herself that it was nothing, a small voice at the back of Emma's mind kept whispering, feeding doubts into her brain, hour after hour after hour.
So Emma drank too much and passed out on the couch, fully clothed, dreaming once more about the woman with the dark hair and the beautiful laugh.
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Distractions. Distractions make sure that you never have to spend a single second thinking about things you don't want to think about. Regina Mills was excellent at distracting herself from things she didn't want to think about.
She helped Henry with his homework. She cleaned the entire bottom floor of the house. She wrote grocery lists for the next three months and caught up on paperwork from the last three. She made herself so busy that by the time she crawled into bed, body aching with the effort of staying awake, she had almost forgotten about the whole thing.
But distractions stop working when you're asleep at night. And nothing, no matter how much she had tried, could stop Regina dreaming about the woman with the long blonde hair and stormy green eyes.
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Emma's head was pounding when she walked into work the next morning, sunglasses planted firmly over her eyes. Mulan was already there, stretching on a mat in the corner. Emma shrugged off her jacket and shoes, and walked over to join her.
"You look awful."
"Well good morning to you too"
Mulan laughed and then glanced over at Emma again with concern etched into her brow. The blonde looked awful. She had dark circles under her eyes and was clearly hungover and running on minimal sleep.
"Something happen, Em?"
Emma shook her head quickly once and went to work laying out mats before their first class, a group of beginners, was due to arrive.
"You're lying"
"How do you know?" Emma growled. She wasn't in the mood for this conversation.
"Because you're an awful liar and I've known you for...oh, only five years now. What happened?"
So Emma told her. She told her about the dreams she'd been having for weeks now, and about how she didn't believe any of it until she met Regina Mills and now she wasn't sure anymore. She told her about Regina's laugh and how she couldn't get it out of her head and how last night when she met her out of nowhere in a deserted parking lot she had just felt...something.
And the more Emma spoke the more Mulan's face lit up, her eyes bright with excitement and happiness. Finally. She had watched Emma insist that she was happy alone for years now, watched as Emma fell down a self destructive path of one night stands and drinking, and then supported her as she rebuilt her life upwards and turned it around again. But in all the time she had known her she had never once heard Emma admit the possibility that maybe there was someone out there for her. And Mulan knew that she needed to do whatever it took to make sure Emma met Regina again before the end of the forty days.
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Regina rubbed her head tiredly and forced herself to keep reading the page of closely written text she was meant to be discussing at her meeting later that day. But the words kept blurring together as her sore eyes drifted shut against her will, and she argued with herself that closing them for just two minutes couldn't do any harm.
Thirty minutes later she jerked awake as a sharp knock at her door sounded across the room. Marian poked her head around the door.
"Thought you might want some company for lunch!" She announced cheerfully as she held up a paper bag from the salad bar in the centre of the city.
Regina shuffled some papers off her desk to make room as Marian pulled up a chair opposite her.
"So. What's up buttercup?"
Regina rolled her eyes "how many times do I have to ask before you stop calling me that?"
"Too many to count. Now tell me, what's up with you?"
"Who says anything is up?" Regina glared at her friend defiantly.
"You have there's something up with me radiating off your body in giant waves, Regina. Seriously. What happened?"
So Regina, stoic, solid, doesn't believe in superstitious nonsense Regina, told her everything. She told her about the recurring dream and those stupid, beautiful storm green eyes that she could see everywhere she looked. She told her about running into her yesterday and how she was never late to pick up henry, not ever, but somehow yesterday she had been and then Emma Swan had just been there. Regina's face was flushed by the time she finished talking, her eyes pinned pleadingly on Marian, begging for answers.
But Marian just tipped back her head and laughed. She laughed until she had tears in her eyes and her cheeks were red with mirth.
Regina's face grew more and more stony with every second that passed. She pinned Marian with a cool gaze, unamused and unimpressed.
Eventually Marian lifted her head up sheepishly to meet Regina's gaze.
"Sorry" she hiccuped, still sniggering "it's just...I never thought I would see you getting flustered about soulmates.
"And what is that supposed to mean?!"
"Well...just that you've never really seemed interested in love. I assumed that you didn't believe in all this soulmate stuff"
"I don't."
"Well exactly! So why believe in it now?!
Regina didn't reply, instead choosing to pick through her salad and eat the individual cubes of feta one at a time. She avoided Marian's gaze, not willing to answer, not sure if she could. What had changed? She'd had dreams about people before, sometimes for weeks on end, everyone did. But not all of them turned out to be your soulmate. So why was she jumping to the conclusion that this Emma woman actually was?
Was it because she had met her? Maybe.
Or was it because when she had met her, when her eyes had locked onto Emma's, she had seen something reflected back at her, something which had intrigued her, captivated her.
Did that really mean that Emma was her soulmate though?
Eventually she voiced her thoughts to Marian, who leant across the glass desk, listening closely. She popped her lips as Regina finished speaking, and leant back in her chair.
"I think...I think that even if she's not your soulmate, because god knows neither of us believe in that, given our pasts. But you said you felt something when you looked at her, so isn't that at least worth something? It doesn't have to be some dramatic, grand I found my soulmate gesture. You could just...take her out for a drink or something?"
Regina nodded slowly. She realised that she did actually want to see Emma Swan, and try to figure out where this was heading. At the very least, if they met once and Emma turned out to be awful, maybe the dreams would stop.
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Across town Emma was sitting with Mulan in their shared office, more of a box room really, picking despondently at a limp tuna sandwich. Her morning had gone terribly, some beginner kid had thrown a tantrum which Emma had been forced to deal with, her head was still pounding and to top it all off, she still couldn't get Regina Mills out of her mind.
Mulan sighed as she watched Emma sink further and further into her own thoughts. She had to do something about this now before it got too far. Emma had a tendency for sulking and escalating things, and she really didn't want to have to spend the next three weeks picking up the pieces of her self destructive friend.
"Phone her" she said at last.
"Hmm?" Emma didn't look up.
"Phone Regina!" She repeated herself more insistently and gestured towards the ancient phone hanging on the wall behind them.
Emma rolled her eyes "and why would I do that?"
"Because I know you want to!"
"No. I don't. What I want, is to go to sleep"
"Well we have to teach in 20 minutes so tough shit. Phone Regina or I'll tell the old lady self defence class that you'll be covering for me today." She smiled innocently as Emma shuddered at the thought.
"Ugh. Ok fine. One phone call! And only because I really hate the smell of old lady perfume."
Emma stomped over the phone, reading Regina's cell number off the sheet pinned up next to it with emergency contact numbers for the children they taught.
One ring,.
Two rings.
Three rings.
Just as Emma was about to slam the phone down and give up, a click echoed down the line.
"Regina Mills"
"Regina...hi, it's um...it's Emma Swan..."
Across town, Regina Mills smiled to herself and leant back in her chair as the blonde woman with the stormy green eyes began to speak.
Maybe there was some truth in this whole soulmates thing after all.