Midnight | Regina Mills

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Gwen Larson's life in Storybrooke is one of isolation and quiet despair. She awakens each morning to the monotonous ticking of the clock on her bedside table, its rhythm a constant reminder of the relentless passage of time. The room is a symphony of muted colors and sterile furnishings, devoid of personality or warmth. It's as if someone has taken a piece of her soul and locked it away, leaving behind only the shell of her existence.

Gwen rises from her bed, her movements slow and mechanical. She doesn't remember a time before this, before the curse. She doesn't remember the Enchanted Forest or the life she once led. All that remains are fragments of dreams that slip through her fingers like grains of sand. She dresses in clothes that she doesn't remember choosing, garments that neither please nor displease her. They are functional, utilitarian, like everything else in her life.

Downstairs, the kitchen is cold and sterile, filled with appliances that she uses out of necessity, not joy. The refrigerator contains food that she doesn't remember buying, its origins a mystery. She pours herself a cup of coffee, the taste bland and unremarkable.

Outside, Storybrooke is a picturesque town, the kind one might find on a postcard. The streets are lined with quaint shops and charming houses, but they hold no meaning for Gwen. The people who pass her by on the sidewalk are strangers, their faces as blank and indifferent as her own. Gwen rarely speaks to anyone outside of her customers at The Enchanted Brew, and even those interactions are limited to coffee orders and polite exchanges. There are no friends in her life, no confidants. She exists in a bubble of solitude, cut off from the world.

At the cafe, Gwen goes through the motions of her daily routine. She brews coffee and serves pastries with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. Her customers come and go, their conversations filled with laughter and camaraderie that she can't quite grasp.

She watches them, these people who seem so content, and wonders what it's like to truly connect with another human being. She longs for something she can't quite define, a missing piece of herself that she can't access.

The cafe becomes her sanctuary, a place where she can hide from the emptiness of her life. The hours pass in a blur of activity, the only respite from the crushing solitude that awaits her when the doors close.

Nights are the worst. When the cafe is empty, and she's left alone with her thoughts. She sits at the piano in the corner, her fingers moving mechanically over the keys. The music is a melancholy echo of her inner turmoil, a cry for something she can't name. She dreams, but the dreams are fractured and disjointed, like shards of a shattered mirror. She catches glimpses of faces she doesn't recognize, places she's never been, but they slip away before she can make sense of them.

Sometimes, in the stillness of the night, she feels a profound sense of loss, as if something precious has been stolen from her. She doesn't know what it is, only that it's gone, and she's left with an aching void in her chest.

Gwen's days in Storybrooke are a relentless cycle of isolation and monotony. She goes through the motions of life, but it's a hollow existence, devoid of meaning or connection. She doesn't remember the Enchanted Forest or the life she once had, but somewhere deep within her, there's a yearning for something more, something that remains just out of reach. As she lies in bed each night, listening to the ceaseless ticking of the clock, she wonders if this is all there is, if she's destined to live out her days in this lonely, cursed existence. The darkness of the curse envelops her, and she can't escape its suffocating embrace.

The days blur together for Gwen, an unending procession of mundane routines and the relentless solitude of her cursed existence in Storybrooke. Regina's absence, once a source of relief, now compounds her loneliness, leaving a void that grows with each passing day.