[Log] Well-Met by Sea-Mist (Regina x Dyson), backdated to Nov. 2

[st_oriedqueen]

Date: end of Halloween Town
Summary: Regina's heart is still her own, but Dyson's thinking about her offer. He meets her in the mist and they talk about her children.


Dense fog rested heavy on her lashes, cool where they stuck to the very top of her cheeks. Her long camel coat kept out the worst of the damp chill, and black leather gloves protected her hands, but she was hardly aware of either. The diffuse golden light from the lighthouse out on the point had drawn her in, and she'd allowed it, not needing to meet Dyson in town for the evening for an hour yet. But time had passed without her knowing, as she wandered the mental path through that fog to another bay, another bench, another coast, a universe away.

Coming up from the beach on his way to meet her, he knew she was there before he saw her, despite the misty fog and the half light. He hesitated as he approached, not wanting to startle or disturb her and made sure he made enough noise to alert her that he was there as he came up from behind.

As lost as she was in her memories, she didn't startle, nor did she notice the noise he made. It was only when he was close enough for her to feel the weight of the air shift with his presence that Regina became aware of him. And she knew instantly who it was. Her voice sounded like a watercolor in the fog, true in the middle and feathered around the edges, when she asked, "Am I late already, wolf?"

"I'm early, was thinking about a run in the woods before dinner." He bent to lean against the back of the bench beside her. "Looking for something out there?"

"Henry," she said, though it wasn't clear exactly if she was speaking to him until she turned to catch his eyes. "Storybrooke was on the New England coast. I never thought I'd miss it." It occurred to her that she'd never really told him about it, either. "Don't let me keep you from your run," she said, and meant it, blessed the offer with the brush of her lips against his jaw. She didn't know how much longer she'd be able to do that with Bo here, but after Marian, she knew better than to take even a second of it for granted. "But if you want to sit, I wouldn't mind your company."

They didn't know how long this other world would be here for them, but he could run tomorrow and if it was gone he would use the woods at the Inn. So he moved around the bench to sit next to her and slip an arm around her shoulder.

"Company I can do." He was still thinking about her offer, and Bo and any number of things that a run would help with, but he'd asked to hear about Henry before and he wasn't going to say no.

His arm around her shoulder was a surprise, but not an unpleasant one, and she shifted easily into it. Whatever his reasons for being with her, here and now, she felt too much to reject them. "Once upon a time..." she began wryly, but smiled, touched her gloved fingers to his thigh. "I was miserable in the Enchanted Forest. Nothing made me happy and even the things that pleased me never did for long. The only solution, I decided, was to make everyone else hurt as much as I did."

It was all in how she said it, that somehow she wasn't trying to justify what she'd done, or even explain it. Just tell it, from her own point of view, like it had never been done.

"So I took away all the happy endings. All of them. I cursed all of my subjects and much of my world without magic. And for eighteen years, it was perfect. Dull as all hell, but perfect. They went about mundane lives with no idea of who they'd been and I was the only one who knew that staid, prissy Mary Margaret Blanchard the first grade teacher was actually Snow White."

She continued the story, telling him about Snow and Charming's daughter, the Savior, and how she'd been born and cast into the world as an orphan. About Pinocchio and how he'd joined her and been told to look after her but failed.

"Time came when I was unhappy. Nothing changed. Nothing mattered. No one knew I'd triumphed but me. Archie, that's Jiminy Cricket if you've seen Pinocchio, said that there was a hole in my heart and I needed something to fill it." She looked away, out across the fog, and said softly, "My mother had said the same thing. She'd said a child would fill it. But I'd cursed my own womb and I couldn't have a child, and even if I could have, that I couldn't have shared with Graham. So I sought the help of Mr. Gold, that's Rumpelstiltskin, also the Dark One, but at the time, I thought he didn't remember who he was. He did, and the child he found for me to adopt was the newborn son of Snow and Charming's orphaned, and at that time, imprisoned, daughter."

"Henry?" He knew all about complicated families, Bo's own mother had tried to kill her, and him. And that didn't even get into how Trick fit into it all and what had been done to Aife.

"Just 'baby boy' at the time," Regina answered, voice softened with appreciation for the complete lack of judgment on his face and in his eyes. "I named him Henry after my father. Middle name Daniel after the love that should have been his father. Both sacrificed their hearts to make me who I was."

He'd sacrificed his to save Bo's life, and if her father and Daniel had felt a fraction of what he'd felt for Bo once they wouldn't begrudge the sacrifice. As raw and open a wound the emptiness was inside him he didn't regret it. Not even hurting Ciara had made him regret giving his love to save Bo from her mother.

"Was?" He knew she'd changed, but their loss had rippled outward to the woman sitting beside him too.

"And am," she agreed, but probably not in the way he thought. "Mother took Daniel's heart to teach me love was weakness. I took Father's to power the curse, because loving him was the last 'weakness' I had. He would have done anything to help me be happy, and since the curse led me to Henry, he wouldn't begrudge me his life." She pursed her lips slightly, paused to think. For a quarter of a century, she'd never had that thought, but it was true, 100%.

In her lap, her gloved hands folded and unfolded, then smoothed her sweater dress over her thighs. There was more about Daniel, how she'd killed him a second time to save him pain and protect Henry, but that wasn't the story of Henry. Not today, anyway. "May I...tell you the rest?" Her lips trembled slightly. "If I don't, I may never get the words out."

"You can tell me anything you want." His voice was low, a soft rumble in the foggy night.

It wasn't what she'd meant to say, but that simple offer... "Every day, even now," she said, voice blurring and feathering in the fog, and sounding more raw because of it. "It's like a bleeding hole where my heart is, not being near him. He was the first one to believe in me. The one who went looking for my happy ending when I couldn't believe in it anymore." Tears slipped down her cheeks, not a harbinger of sobs or weeping, just a marker of truth. "You can't imagine what I wouldn't give to hear him say, 'you can do this, mom' right now." When she was on the verge of losing yet another possible love to someone who deserved him more.

"I can imagine." Because he gave up everything to save Bo. Because he didn't to save Stefan.

She glanced over at him and her expression softened, instantly. "That was thoughtless. I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean it as an admonishment," he told her seriously. "Just... so that you knew you weren't alone in having felt it."

"Even so, wolf." The urge she'd been fighting to curl into his arms was gaining strength, but she fought it, not wanting to presume. Not wanting to intrude, if the conversation was shifting. "Especially with Bo having just arrived." The rest of Henry's story seemed less important then. "How are you, really?" She could do friends. If he stopped responding to her midnight knocking, she would have to, because she couldn't lose him now.

"I made peace with my feelings, or the loss of them, long ago." Well, not so long ago, but still he had moved beyond it. "And so did she. It isn't something that can be changed."

He pulled her a bit closer, an aid against the chill int he air - or maybe because he wanted to, and knew she wanted him to. He isn't sure he believes she can reverse what he did, give back what the Norn took. And he's not sure he's ready to talk more about it. Still their return to friends with benefits status, and Bo arriving have made him even more aware of the unfairness of what he can't give Regina.

"We were talking about Henry."

"I was talking about Henry," she said, shifting her weight willingly to lean into his embrace. He'd given it willingly, perhaps even desired it, so she rested her hand on his chest and her head on his shoulder. "You were gifting me with your attention."

That is also something she's rarely considered, how much of a gift he gave her with his nonjudgmental listening. One more reason she wanted to give him half of her heart. Which prompted her to say, "It's reversible, you know. If it doesn't work," without saying what she was talking about or attempting to engage him. She said it, and then immediately continued the tale.

"I was a terrible mother at first. Not cruel, but completely inept. Henry wouldn't stop crying and I didn't know why. I almost gave up when Mary Margaret held him and he instantly stopped crying, because of course my child would love my nemesis more than me. But she settled him back in my arms, secure, instead of how I'd been holding him, and the crying finally stopped."

She smiled then, remembering the relief of it, and the wave of love she'd felt, and proceeded to tell him how she'd come to suspect there was something wrong with him and Whale had needed his genetic history, which had led to her learning that he was Emma's son, and how after that, she'd taken the potion to forget what she knew about Emma so she could just love him without worrying. And then she told him about the book, and how Henry had become convinced it was true and she was the Evil Queen, and run away to Boston to find his 'real mother', and the battle between them that had ensued.

"When Henry and Emma finally broke the curse, everyone remembered who I was and what I'd done. They wanted to kill me, but Henry wouldn't let them. He said, 'She's not the Evil Queen. She's my mom.' And that was the beginning of everything. Of me learning how to be part of a family. Of stepping up because they needed me. Of learning how to be worthy of Henry's faith in me."

"You were already worthy, or he wouldn't have had that faith." It was funny, how much Henry's own faith in her sounded like his in Trick.

"Maybe," she conceded, because disagreeing would make it seem as though she was questing for compliments. "Even so, I needed to learn to be the person he believed in even when his and everyone elses back was turned." Her smile this time was brilliant and sweet. "He calls us 'Moms' now, when we're all three together."

"You and Emma and.. Mary Margaret?" He likes the smile, the way it lights up her face, the way it opens her up straight down to her heart. Her heart. With so much love to give, open and kind despite everything.

And he knew then, though he didn't say it. He knew he would agree to let her try to do the spell.

"Him, me and Emma. Mary Margaret is his grandmother, but he just calls her Mary Margaret, because she looks the same age as Emma." The way he looked at her, it was hard to remember that he couldn't love her. She lifted her fingers to his face and stroked his jawline. "Poor Henry's family tree is such a mess. His father was actually the Dark One's son."

He shifted unconsciously into the touch, much like a dog would actually and chuckled wryly.

"He and Bo would probably get along, they could commiserate over the awkwardness of their geneaology."

"Henry gets along with everyone. Even his grandfather." It never ceased to amaze her how deep his capacity for forgiveness was. "I imagine he'd like Bo for the same reasons most pre-teen boys like Bo. She's stunning, friendly, and radiates sex." Oh god. Did she just think that about her baby? Regina frowns again. "I have no idea how old he is now."

"She's a succubus, it comes with the territory." Male or female. But he knew Bo tended to do her best to blunt whatever effect she might have on younger people. "And he'll never be too old to have a mom."

If he arrived, even if he was a full grown man, he knew from what Regina had told him about the boy that he'd still call her mom.

"No. He'll call me 'mom' when he's ninety." And she would probably not look ten years older than she did now. That, she pushed out of her mind, for being too painful on too many levels. So too was talking about Bo for any length of time. Instead, she summoned a smile and told him, "Roland calls me 'Gina."

"And Snow ?" He asked, though he knew what she called her.

"Calls me 'Mama', as you well know," she said and this time the smile came unbidden. "It took a very long time and both of us nearly dying for her to say it the first time."

Which meant she'd likely never stop, things like that, built like that, they didn't break. He gave Regina's arm a squeeze and then moved to get up, "We'll be late for our reservation."

Then he held out his hand.