Clock Chimes

Prologue

STORYBROOKE, MAINE, 2028.
Six years after Emma's death.

Seagulls cry overhead in a cloudy sky, circling above dark saltwater waves lapping against the shore. On a rickety wooden dock directly above the restless water, a woman stands alone, looking out onto the horizon. The wind whips around her, slicing at her cheeks, watering her eyes, and biting through her thin coat. The brunette crosses her arms in front of her chest, without making a single move to shelter herself from the ominous-looking clouds drifting above her head.

No, Regina Mills will not move from this spot for a long while; because today marks the sixth anniversary of the worst day of her life. Because it's been six years since Emma Swan died.

72 months. 2,191 days.

Six years, and Regina thinks about her every minute, every second, every breath. Constant.

She can still hear the six, haunting, deafening clock chimes that rang out mere seconds after Emma's life ended. Finished. It's funny--well, certainly not funny--how in one moment someone's life can change so rapidly, or in this case, end. Because one moment, Emma had been there with her, and the next, she hadn't.

And it seems impossible, truly; they've been through actual hell and back together; fought countless battles together; withstood a thousand challenges; raised a son side by side. It seems impossible that after everything, it could all end--vanish--extinguish like a flame.

Their story was not all as complicated as one might think. Regina had sat there, heart breaking and heavy all those years ago during Emma's wedding to Hook. And then she had been there, constantly, for Emma through the messy and horrible breakup with the pirate a couple of years later. Because it turns out, a few bullshit tests about whether a relationship with someone is True Love or not doesn't determine an entire perfect life. It turns out, trying to fit into the mold that everyone else wants you to be doesn't work as well as you might like. Emma experienced that firsthand; and realized that being a princess with a fairytale wedding and a constricting, over-the-top wedding dress that left her unable to breathe isn't what she wanted at all--and then it was too late.

But Regina had been there for her, leading the Best Friend role, helping her through a break up--trying oh so hard to mask her true feelings; feelings that had been there for almost as long as she could remember.

But then the charade fell away one night two years after Emma had recovered from her heartbreak, and there had been whispered shared confessions, kisses, and realizing that maybe not everything was not as complicated as it seemed. There was fitting into something so much easier--something that made sense--and becoming the unlikely family that somehow they'd always thought they'd only be in their wildest dreams. There was soft, romantic kisses, marks on long necks and quiet, slow, making love. There was the next morning when they shared the news with their son and he had grinned and told them that he couldn't believe it had taken them so damned long to figure out what everyone else had already known.

And then, Regina recalls with a ghost of a smile resting on her lips as she pulls her coat tighter still around her too-narrow frame, there had been one of the best evenings of her life.

Pink, streaky clouds paint the sky above clear blue water. Regina walks beside Emma, their arms linked, and the only sounds are the noises their boots make against the wooden dock, and the seagulls crying in the distance. Saltwater tinges the air, and Regina's nose clears further with every inhale. Regina lays her head against Emma's shoulder when they stop walking at the edge of the long dock, looking out onto the water.

"I'm happy." Regina tells her, and the words are so entirely simple, but the statement is loaded so heavily that it brings tears to her eyes. Because Regina has been alive for a long time, and the moments she'd been truly happy are incredibly slim--a few childhood memories here and there, raising Henry during the Dark Curse, when she was finally accepted into her family in Storybrooke, and the moment she'd realized Emma loved her back. And then, now. There's been a million roadblocks in her path; a thousand wrong choices made, and excruciating karma. But now.....this. And she thinks that truly, for the first time in her life, she's entirely satisfied.