We Can Love Again

Holding Onto Hope

Regina could hear her thoughts loud and clear, like someone next to her was screaming the words directly towards her.

Your son is going to die.

She thought she was going to be sick.

"Drive faster, you can go over the speed limit," she muttered, struggling to breathe in the dress she was still wearing. Blackness surrounded her; it was a familiar feeling to her, though suffocating. Regina thought that after being reunited with Robin again, after having Caroline, she would have a happy life, one where she was married to her soulmate.

But she was once the evil queen; though she had changed, she was still getting painful reminders that she don't deserve a happy ending like everyone else did.

"It's going to be okay," Robin began, reaching over to touch her shoulder, "Roland's a strong boy. The doctors will do everything they can..."

Sometime during their car ride, Regina had begun to cry. The sun was setting outside, and night was rapidly falling upon them. Robin was running every stop sign in their way towards the hospital.

"Robin, I can't do this- I can't see him like this..."

All she could see when she opened her eyes was red- her sons blood, everywhere, staining the house where she thought she was safe.

"Remember when we were in that jail together? The only thing I had then was hope, hope that everything would work out in the end. That's all we have now. We have to hold onto the hope we have, it's the only way we can get through this."

She knew he was trying to comfort her, but his words only fueled her hatred. Going back to hoping things were okay wasn't at all what she wanted, nor what she needed. They were so close to finally living those dreams...

"How can you be so positive about all this?" Regina demanded, grudgingly accepting his offer in helping her out of the vehicle, "our son could be dead for all we know."

He held his arm around her shoulders as they walked towards the front entrance. With everything he and his family had been through, Robin simply couldn't afford to think like that. He knew what the tattoo on his forearm meant when he got it; spending every day trying to live up to those standards was something the man had trained himself to do.

"Don't you say that," he ordered as they pushed past the army of nurses in the foyer, starting down the hallway; that was, until Mother Superior stopped them.

"Whale moved him to the operating room upstairs just now."

"So, what, we're just supposed to wait until someone tell us what's happening with Roland?" The queen snapped, feeling just as powerless as she did when Henry was there after he ate her cursed turnovers.

Blue sighed. "Everyone that knows his current situation is busy trying to save his life."

Before she could respond, Robin spoke on her behalf. "Thanks. We'll head up there right now," he said with promise, steering her off towards the stairs.

Regina despised hospitals more than anything else in the entire world. Not only did she stick out like a sore thumb in her dress, but she was lost and afraid, following her fiancé blindly with only hope at her side. They found the room their son was inside, but they weren't allowed in. So Robin forced her to sit down on a plastic chair across from the door, one of many that lined the hallway. As soon as she did, though, her anger had melted away into tears of desperation. He pulled her into him as she cried, trying to keep himself together as best as he could. His little man was right behind the door before them; what was happening behind that door was completely out of his control.