She's My Daughter

The Choice

Selena POV

I sat at the bus stop as the rain pelted down and hammered against the screens of plastic protecting me from the cruel rage of the rain as it attacked mercilessly. I pulled my hood up further around my head and closed my eyes, the face of Regina Mills swimming inside my head. It was nearly midnight and I still hadn't made a decision on whether or not to meet the mysterious woman who had so quickly made such a big imprint on my life. I sighed, my breath causing the air in front of me to turn grey, almost as if it had turned old while waiting for the cold to subside. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I weighed up the pros and cons of this meeting in my head once again. On one hand, she was a complete stranger and could simply be a care worker in disguise, she could also be lying about wanting to foster me which would make me the victim of another cruel joke, and she seemed to be holding a lot of information back, almost as if she didn't think I was ready for it yet which made my mistrust grow stronger. She could even be some pyscho who likes kidnapping kids. Okay, that's probably not likely but it wouldn't be the first time I've encountered maniacs like that. On the other hand, she was offering me a home and she seemed to have travelled all the way from America so maybe she was serious about all this. She also seemed to be someone who I could relate to and, well, someone who I felt safe with, even though I could definitely sense a dangerous edge to her. I grinned. That was probably what I liked best about this Regina Mills. I had to meet her, I decided. I felt a sort of connection between that woman and myself and, well, I'd be stupid not to try and find out more about her. But what if I got hurt again? I shook my head roughly, pushing the thought out of my head. I had to stay positive if this was going to have any chance at all of working. Sighing, I crossed the street and passed the bench I usually slept on as I walked towards the hotel Regina Mills had picked out for me, secretly feeling that even staying here was a sign of the inevitability of me meeting her tomorrow.

Regina POV

I sat cross legged on my bed, rubbing cream into my legs. I thought the meeting had gone alright, although, of course, it could have been better. Selena certainly was not a push over or a softie or any of that mush and I internally congratulated myself. And I did this because if what Emma said was true, then Selena was my daughter. How, I don't know, but Emma had found a newspaper article of a baby girl being found in a stable in Maine and that is, of course, where I met with my first love, Daniel. I hadn't known I was pregnant until a few weeks after his death, and I had immediately set out to find a sorcerer who could conceal the bump so Leopold would not find out. I couldn't stand for him to believe he was the father of the Daniel's child, I just couldn't. It felt like an insult to his memory. And so I met Rumpelstiltskin who then, of course, became my magic teacher. Eight months later and I had given birth to the most beautiful baby girl, but I couldn't care for her. Or rather, I wasn't allowed. It's all very complicated but it involves both Rumpelstiltskin and my mother so I pretty much had no say in the matter. And so, against my will, she was sent away to a land without magic, a land where I later knew I had to curse us to go and so Selena ended up in this world, with only her name scribbled hastily onto a little note shoved into her blanket. Quite like Emma really. Although, of course, she wasn't shoved into a wardrobe by two idiots. Sorry, I mean Snow and Charming. No, Mary Margaret and David. Oh, I don't bloody know. But I trust them now and, well, they're family. Their daughter, Emma Swan, is their daughter, the birth mother of my adopted son, Henry, and also my best friend, although admittedly I had tried to kill her about a hundred times when we first met. I smirked. I almost missed the days where I would try and push her away from my son. Our son, I mean. Anyway, Emma had been the one to encourage me to go and find Selena. She had also been the one to warn me not to tell her I was her birth mother when I first met her, and I took her word for it seeing as she had been through the same thing. "Trust me, Gina, telling her you're her mother as soon as you meet her will just make her build her walls higher. She'll be conflicted. She won't know whether to be happy or angry or upset and you can't do that to her. Not when you've just met her. Let her get to know you first." That had been what Emma had said to me and it was probably the only bit of sense she had spoken in years. Anyway, she had encouraged me to go looking for her because after I had spent the first 18 years in this world looking for her, I had assumed she was dead, and that is why I adopted Henry in the first place. And that is also why she began ageing. Oh, it's all very complicated, but I cast a spell that would ensure Selena would remain a baby as long as I had not given up on finding her. And even though I never had, the spell seemed to take me adopting Henry as just that. I love Henry more than anything else in the world, but I need my daughter. My real daughter and the only child who will ever truly be mine, as due to that potion I drank to spite mother, I can no longer have children. I still can't believe I was so stupid, so proud, so arrogant. Don't think about it , I told myself sternly as I collapsed into my bed and pulled the covers under my chin. As I closed my eyes and remembered that I had been supposed to call Emma, my thoughts drifted straight back to Selena. She even looked like me. She had my eyes, my hair and my facial structure. Could she really not see how similar we looked? Her skin, however, seemed to be slightly more tanned which shocked me since she lived in England where sunshine was about as common as normal people in Storybrooke, but her smile Daniel's smile. A tear spilled down my cheek as I thought of my first love but I ignored it, my thoughts concentrated around Selena and trying to ignore the pangs of pain associated with Robin Hood. I really hoped she would meet me tomorrow, but no matter what I told her about leaving her alone, I knew I wouldn't. I would not give up on her. I loved her too much for that.