PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTINUING

Now, before we begin on this epic beast of a tale, I want to get a few things out of the way. This story deals with Regina struggling with alcoholism and her recovery. This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people, but for me this is a personal one. This is in no way a reflection of my own journey nor anyone else's.

No two people struggle with the same addiction the same way nor does anyone experience the road to recovery with the same experiences. I am in no way an expert nor do I claim to be one.

This story was born from an almost entirely different idea and it turned into something else as I wrote it. This story is part of the reason I woke up and saw my own addiction that I had been in denial about for a very long time and parts of this story will reflect that on a personal level. I am nearing 100 days sober in my own journey, one that was quite different than the one I spent the last nearly a year writing Regina into.

The very last thing I want and need is for anyone to come at me for certain things in this story, especially anything centered around Regina and her addiction and recovery. If alcoholism/addiction is a trigger for you, then I suggest you do not read any further.

This is completely set in an Alternate Universe as I have simply just borrowed the characters, some of their backgrounds, family/friends, etc. I've taken some (read: a lot) of creative liberties to twist things around to tell my own stories with the characters we all love (and some that we hate) to write this story that has quite literally been years in the making. I spent almost a year working on this, four months of that editing and rewriting it.

This story is complete, but there will only be updates 3x a week until every chapter is posted. (there are 50 chapters in total)

The update schedule will be the following: Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.

If for any reason I cannot update on those specific days, I'll be sending out a tweet or two. You can follow me on twitter, RhysMerilot, but I can't promise you I'll be very entertaining…

Now, without further ado, the first chapter…

Chapter One

The sound of horns honking and drivers yelling at one another out the window was very typical for the start of rush hour in the city, but it was those sounds that made the big city feel like home. Sometimes. Even after ten years-and seven different cities-no place ever truly felt like home to her anymore.

Regina Mills rushed down the busy sidewalk, sidestepping away from the slow walkers and the distracted people as she tried to hurry home. It'd been a long day at the courthouse with three of her clients booked literally back to back to face the judge for their final hearing for their case. Her last client, she and her ex-husband were nowhere close to being on the same page, and now that case was to go to trial in five months. It had been a stressful day, to say the least, and all she wanted to do was go home to relax and unwind with a warm cup of tea.

Regina adjusted the strap of her heavy bag and came to a stop on the corner just as the light turned red. Annoyed, she groaned just as an echo of it resounding throughout the crowd of people standing around her. It was clear she wasn't the only one impatient to get home after a long day. It was one of the longest waits at an intersection on her walk home from the courthouse, and with the weight of her bag, the stress of the day, and not to mention the fact she hadn't been sleeping well lately, it just weighed her down immensely and made her grow increasingly anxious and irritable.

"Excuse me," Regina huffed in annoyance as someone walked into her back.

"Watch it, would ya?" Someone a little further behind her yelled out. "People are walking here!"

"Nobody is walking yet, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!"

"Shut up!"

Regina rolled her eyes at the vulgar exchange. It was normal, at least normal enough that it happened once a day one way or another. In the seven months she'd been living in the city, she learned that most New Yorkers kept to themselves, but there were the few that definitely didn't keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves. For the most part, she ignored the idiots who acted like uncivilized children at best, even if they made her irritable.

After three impossibly long minutes, the light changed and the crowd began to cross the intersection, some people pushing at others who weren't moving quick enough. Regina kept up a steady pace with the rest of the crowd to avoid some of the impatient and rude people still yelling obscenities at others. She had barely made it to the sidewalk when her phone started ringing. She swore under her breath as she stepped aside from the crowd on the street and fumbled to get her phone out of her blazer jacket.

Private Caller.Regina furrowed her brow as she tried to readjust her bag strap on her shoulder before she answered the call just before it went to voicemail. "Hello?" She said, a little out of breath. "Hello?"

"Regina?"

Regina hardly had a second to react to the sound of her mother's voice before two teenage girls all but pushed her out of the way as they walked by. The girls laughed and continued walking down the street, leaving Regina nearly scrambling to keep from dropping her phone and her bag.

"Regina?"

"M-mother," she stammered as she moved to stand in the doorway of a small store. "I can't talk right now," she said as she tried to compose herself. "I'm on my way home and-"

"It's your father."

Regina's heart sunk. Over the last ten years, she had barely spoken with her mother, and her mother never did call her unless something had happened. The last time her mother had called, her father had been too distraught to call her himself when her horse, Rocinante, had suddenly passed away, and that had been eight years ago.

"Regina?" Her mother sounded upset and annoyed all at once. "Can you hear me, dear? It's your father," Cora said without waiting for Regina to respond. "He is on his way to the hospital as we speak."

"The hospital? Why?"

All around her, people went on with their lives, most trying to get home during the evening rush in one piece. Nobody cared about anyone other than themselves, and there Regina was, cowering in the doorway to a second-hand store while on the phone with her mother whom she hadn't spoken to in over a year. All the people that passed by, not one of them had any idea that her world was slowly falling apart.

"The paramedics that showed up to the house told me that he has had a heart attack."

"A heart attack? Is he okay?"

"Obviously he is not okay, Regina," Cora barked. "He's unconscious, but I know he would want me to I call you to let you know what just happened."

Regina just listened after her mother stopped talking for a moment and she could hear the sound of the ambulance siren and other noises, beeping, a man talking then shouting out for the driver to go faster.

"I'll have to call you back, dear," Cora said after a few long, agonizing minutes had passed and just like that, the line went dead.

"What?" Regina looked at her phone, dumbfounded, before she slipped it back into her blazer pocket with teary eyes.

Her hands were shaking as she tried to get herself together. She tried to convince herself that everything was going to be fine. People had heart attacks every day and they were fine, they survived, they recovered, and then they went on with their lives. Her father was old but he was healthy. He'd get through this, no problem.

Regina headed back out to the crowded street and tried to get home as quickly as she could, with one hand holding the strap to her heavy bag, and the other in her pocket clutching her phone so she could answer it as soon as her mother called back. When she finally reached her home, she avoided going in through the front where her office was, and she headed around to the back and let herself in, the lock sticking as she tried to turn the key. It took several tries before she calmed down enough to wiggle the key just enough to get the door unlocked.

The neighbor's dog was barking as she kicked the door shut behind her and dropped her bag by the small kitchen table. She headed straight up the stairs to the little loft where her bedroom was and she pulled her phone out of her pocket before she pulled off her blazer and tossed it on the unmade bed. As she slipped out of the heels she'd been wearing all day, she noticed that her hands were still shaking and she took a few deep breaths to try to calm down a little.

Regina didn't speak with anyone in her family except for her father and it had been that way since she left a little over ten years ago. She was close with her father and that was something that had not changed over the years. She had only just spent the last weekend up in Boston with her father where they'd gone exploring around the city, saw a movie on Saturday night, and spent Sunday at a ranch just west of the city riding a couple of horses on the trails. They'd spent the late afternoon just sitting on the terrace of their hotel room drinking tea as they talked. He had looked fine and that was only just a handful of days ago.

Her father had been in good spirits as he always was, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They talked about her life, mostly, because she never wanted to hear about her family or about anyone or anything back in her hometown of Storybrooke, Maine. They'd walked down that road a few times before and it made Regina's walls slam back up in an instant. Her father knew and then simply respected that she just didn't wantto know.

She had her reasons, of course. Reasons she tried not to think of or dwell on much over the years as to go on living her life the way she so deemed fit.

Regina turned her phone over and over in her hand, watching the clock on the wall just above the small flat screen television, and she tried not to count the minutes as they passed. She had two problems, one being that she didn't have her mother's number and the other being she didn't actually want to talk to her. She was afraid because the longer she waited, the more she began to worry. Five minutes turned to ten, then fifteen, half an hour, and by the time it was seven o'clock, her mother still had not called back with any news.

Nearly two hours had passed since that initial phone call and it was turning her into a nervous wreck. It had her worrying not only about her father and whether he was all right or not, but it also had her thinking of things she hadn't thought about in a very long time

Being just over ninety days sober meant a long time was roughly half of that time. Six weeks since she last fell off the wagon, so to speak, after spending several nights wide awake and thinking of nothing else but the life she had left behind ten years ago. Regina could remember that night very clearly and how she'd nearly given up her sobriety to a cheap bottle of wine she bought at the convenience store down the street.

A sudden pang of hunger served as a reminder she had skipped lunch in favor of going over some case notes with a client ahead of their scheduled appearance in front of the district judge. It also served as a reminder that her day had been impossibly long enough already. Instead of heading down to the kitchenette in her office, she stripped out of her clothes and got into a pair of comfortable pajamas before she settled down on the couch with her phone still in her hand and her eyes trained on the clock on the wall.

Her mind drifted to and from, worrying about her father mostly, but also thinking about just how different her life had been in the last decade since she had left Storybrooke. In September of 2006, she left her hometown, and she ran as far away as she could from her broken heart and the life she had been living all those years. With nothing more than what she could carry in a suitcase, a pocket full of money she'd drained out of her savings account, she ended up on the other side of the country after a long drive to California.

It had been nearly three days straight of non-stop driving and when only when she reached Los Angeles, she finally stopped. She was only twenty-three and in a big city on the other side of the country, far from home and nursing an insufferable heartbreak. It was several months of non-stop partying in LA, drinking and drugs and dancing, but it didn't last much longer than a few months before she realized she wasn't thatperson and the people she'd met and hung around with there were not only not her type of friends, but they were also badpeople.

From there, it was San Francisco, but it turned out to be much of the same. Even years later, she still wasn't quite sure how she ended up in a small town along the coast of Oregon by January, broke and homeless and living in her car, the same car she still drove to that day and the car that her father had gifted her on her seventeenth birthday. It was the first time in four months she had called anyone and that first phone call went to her father, who flew out to Oregon days later and helped her get back on her feet.

After California, she went back to Maine, taking a week-long trip across the country with her father in tow. She adamantly refused to return to Storybrooke. At least her father understood why she wasn't ready to come home then, though he never mentioned the real reason why until years later. She moved to Portland, just an hour's drive from Storybrooke, where she stayed until that summer. When things began to feel too comfortable, too stale, she packed up her car and drove south with no destination in mind. She spent the month of July in South Carolina, the first half amongst the coast in different towns, and the other half in the city of Charleston.

It was really no surprise when she ended up in Tallahassee that summer. It wasn't intentional, but after spending a few weeks working as a waitress in Charleston, she'd started thinking about the reasons why she'd left Storybrooke in the first place and that led to her thinking of another place to run to, another place where she might be able to find a place to call home one day. She knew now that she'd spent that year running away from a broken heart though she didn't quite know it at the time, at least not until she was in Tallahassee all those years ago, once again broke, nearly homeless, and alone.

It was her fault. Her broken heart was her fault. Solely and completely herfault.

It was that realization down in Tallahassee that led her back up north and from there, she re-enrolled into the Boston University School of Law where she spent the next five years getting her degree in criminal and family law. She created a life there but she never returned to Storybrooke despite it only being a few hours away. It made it easier, however, for her to spend time with her father on weekends and during the summer months between semesters.

Not even in Boston could she mend her broken heart no matter how much she tried to move on. And she had desperately tried to move on from her past and to move forward in her life when it came to matters of the heart and love. It didn't matter how hard she tried. Nothing she did ever mended her broken heart.

Regina had been in love with Emma Swan for just over six years, and they had been together for five years, three months, and nineteen days when they had a rather stupid and petty fight that ended their relationship and led Regina to leave Storybrooke for good the following morning. Their relationship had been complicated at best, but they had a lot of good memories together. It was those memories that she held on to, even now a whole decade later, because it reminded her that she once had love, and the emptiness in her heart served as a reminder that it still remained broken to that very day.

It was no secret now that she had once loved Emma Swan with every fiber of her being or that Emma Swan had been the only one she'd ever loved that deeply and truly. None of that had mattered though, because, at the end of the day, Regina had been a coward, too afraid to be open about who she really was and who she loved more than life itself. She had spent her whole life it seemed closest and shut off from her family, her friends, and her life with Emma Swan hadn't really been that different in the end.

Emma had been so patient and so very understanding while they'd been together. She never once pushed for Regina to step out of her comfort zone, always assuring her that it was okay even though they both knew it absolutely was not. Regina had always been so afraid of what her family would think, especially her mother. Her cowardliness had put a strain on her relationship with Emma over the years as she felt like she was living two lives and both were based on lies. Still, she played happy little family with Emma Swan for over five years before she had left and it wasn't just Emma she had left behind, it was Emma's five-year-old son Henry, too.

Leaving had been easier.

Leaving had been the only thing she believed at the time that was a solution to her crushing heartbreak. She'd been young andstupid. It had been such a rash decision she'd made in the heat of the moment and one that still, all these years later, she regretted terribly. She had no idea if Emma Swan would ever forgive her and she had told herself over the years that if that was the case, she deserved nothing less.

Unfortunately, it hadn't gotten any easier after she graduated from university with two degrees and moved into her first house in Boston where she started working for a rather large firm there that kept her busy. Long days, longer nights, her only comfort was her bed and several large glasses of wine-or whatever else was her poison of choosing that day. It wasn't her time in California that had started the problem, no, it'd been in Boston with her coworkers and chasing the relief from the stressors of her job and her lonely life.

After being in Boston for four years, she burnt herself out. She decided after a long conversation with her father in the middle of the night that she was going to relocate to New York City and start over there, a brand-new life. Relocating to New York had given her the opportunity to start her own firm and it also gave her more opportunity just to immerse herself completely in her work, in her cases, overloading herself so much at times that it took having too many clients and too many cases for her to stop, reassess her priorities, and only take on what she could handle, and she made sure she allowed herself time away from work, too, most of it spent bar hopping with colleagues until that too had become an ongoing problem.

Her father had voiced his concerns over the years when it came to her drinking too much, staying out too late too often, and she never listened to him. Over the last ninety days since she had last had a drink, she had a lot of time to think back over the years to the parts she could remember and hated, she hatedthat so much of it was nothing more than a blur.

It wasn't the conversations she'd had with her worried father that led her to the sobriety she fought to keep every single day. It had come after she woke up early one morning in a puddle of her own sick and in a male colleague's bed half-naked to realize she had lost all control of every part of herself and her life. There was nothing worse than waking up with zero reconciliation of how she ended up in that man's bed after a night of drinking heavily.

Regina had a lot of guilt. And a lot of regrets. Those first few days of being completely sober had been an awakening for her.

Everything she had tried for years to forget by drowning them in copious amounts of alcohol and occasionally drugs, it all came back tenfold. She struggled to deal with the ramifications of every choice and every decision she had made over the last decade. It felt harder to deal, to remember, to move on, especially with a newfound sense of clarity that came with being clean and sober. It was hard because she'd been running from those memories for a very long time, and it was hard because all those dreamless nights that she'd had before were now filled with dreams of Emma Swan and the life they once had together.

And she was struggling now, more than she had since she'd gotten sober, because her father was in the hospital. A heart attack. Nobody had called her back. Nobody had called to tell her if he was okay or not. Nobody had called to tell her if things had taken a turn for the worse and it was made her feel useless, helpless, and angry.

The clock on the wall above her small television was loud as the second hand ticked around slowly. It made her think back to the last conversation she'd had with her father just a few hours before they had to check out of the hotel a few nights ago. Three, her mind reminded her. It had only been three nights ago.

Her father confessed to her that he had not been as oblivious as she had originally thought he'd been all through the years. He had known all along about her relationship with Emma Swan and he knew all that time that they had been madly, deeply in love with one another. He had laughed when he called her on the lie they'd lived and told, the one where they had everyone believing they were just friends and roommates and there was no way or even a reason for her to deny any of it now. Regina hadn't remembered crying like that for years as her father told her that he wished that things had been far different than the way they ended up and that all he ever wanted was for her to be happy.

Her sexuality, her short-lived relationships with woman in general, none of it had been a secret between them for years, but that? That? It had brought back far too many emotions she wasn't quite ready to deal with again. Her father, never being a man of too many words, ended the conversation by telling her he had wished she never felt that she had to hide and that she never would feel she'd have to do it again.

And all she could now think of was the unconditional love she'd felt when he talked about her and Emma. The way he looked at her as they talked, the way he had hugged her when the tears had started to fall, it said more than any words he could've said.

By nine o'clock, Regina still hadn't heard back from her mother and she was distraught with worry that something was terribly wrong. She called her sister several times but her calls went unanswered and the number she had for her mother had been disconnected. Just as she was about to look up the number for the hospital in Storybrooke, her phone started to ring. Private Caller.

"Mother?" Regina said as she immediately answered as she jumped up from the couch. "Is everything all right?" She held her breath for a moment, waiting. "Is Daddy-"

"I wanted to inform you, dear, that your father has passed away a short time ago." Cora's voice was quiet and cold. Distant.

And then came that soft clicksoon after.

Regina's heart sank. And the world faded away. A high pitch ringing echoed in her ears as she walked over to sit down heavily on the edge of the bed, her legs too heavy, too weak, to keep standing. She dropped her hand, pulling the phone from her ear, and she just stared blankly down at it with tears in her eyes.

Her heart was shattering into a million pieces as she stared down at the now black screen for a moment longer and then tossed it blindly behind her.

The numbness settled in as she crawled up to the middle of her bed and grabbed her pillow, sobbing softly into it as she buried her face and then screamed. Her chest felt so very heavy and her heart ached in a way unlike any other pain she'd felt before. Shattered didn't begin to explain the depth of the pain she was feeling, it didn't even come close. It hurt more-if it were even possible-than a decade of living with a broken heart did.

Her phone started to ring and she just didn't have the strength nor the desire to answer it. All she could do was lift her head from her tear-stained pillow to see her sister's name on the screen before she let her head fall back to the pillow with an exhausted, anguished sigh.

Her father, the one person she was closest to for all her life, was gone.

It didn't feel real. It felt more like a bad dream that she couldn't wake up from. It just didn't feel real.

As the realization dawned upon her that she would have to return home for her father's funeral, her heart sank even deeper. She knew she would never forgive herself if she didn't return to bury her father and she already had more than enough guilt to last her a lifetime. No matter how hard it would be to go back there, she had to. She had spent ten years finding every excuse not to come home and now, she knew now was not the time to be a coward. Though the thought of spending the next couple of days back in Storybrooke was terrifying in itself and had her filled with dread, she had to do it. She had to go home for her father.

She had to go home to bury her father.

And she had to say goodbye one last time.

[X]

The drive north to Maine had been a long one, nearly all day, and Regina was growing endlessly annoyed with all the idiot drivers on the road. She had packed a bag and left the city early that morning after she had finally called her sister back. Zelena informed her that the funeral was on Friday. Cora certainly hadn't wasted any time in making those arrangements and her father, Henry Mills, was to be laid to rest on that Friday, the 23rdof June.

It was just after seven when Regina drove past the "Welcome to Storybrooke" sign. An incredible feeling of anxiousness crept up on her as she drove through her hometown for the first time in over ten years. Nothing had changed, she noticed, as she drove down Main Street. It was if she had gone back in time to a place she once knew better than the back of her own hand. It was surreal, in a sense.

She took the long way to Mifflin Street to avoid the house she had once called a home with Emma Swan and her son. It didn't lessen the heavy burden of guilt she felt suddenly weighing her down.

The brakes squeaked as she came to a stop after pulling into the driveway of her childhood home and parked next to her mother's car. It felt surreal and strange to be back home after a decade and still it almost felt as if not a day had gone by. Regina turned off the engine and sat there for a moment, staring up at the house that hadn't changed at all like the rest of the town. The guilt she'd harbored for years hit her even more as she got out of the car and stretched her stiff legs.

She should've come back a long time ago and it shouldn't have taken her father's sudden and unexpected death to bring her home. She tried to swallow past the rising lump in her throat and fought back her tears.

After deciding to leave her bag in the car, for now, she walked up to the front door and wasn't surprised to find it had been left unlocked. She entered the house quietly and shut the door behind her, the soft click echoing throughout the foyer. She placed her keys into the front pocket of her jeans as she walked up the few steps and then came to a stop just outside the den.

For as long as she could remember, especially growing up, her father always spent his evenings in the den around that time every day, sitting in his chair by the window with the radio on, the paper or a book in one hand, and a glass of his homemade cider sitting on the table beside him. It was absolutely devastating to her just knowing she would never again walk into that house and find her father sitting right there in his favorite chair. She was trembling, fighting back her tears, as she walked over to the chair and ran her fingers over the slight water stains on the little table beside it, laughing a little because her father had always forgotten to use a coaster.

Regina turned around when she heard a few small yips coming from the little Yorkie that had suddenly run into the den. The yips slowly turned to a slow and steady growl and Regina scowled down at the little dog. She loathedZelena's dog that was idiotically named Snow White. She was surprised it was even still aliveas she'd only met it once before, months before she'd left, when Zelena divorced her husband and made the move from London to Boston that summer with her young daughter Robyn in tow. That first and only encounter with the little dog had left Regina with a nasty little scar on her right ankle.

"Go on, get out of here, you stupid little mutt," Regina snapped. "Gods, of all the animals in the world she could've chosen, why-"

"Regina."

At the sound of her mother's voice, she looked up suddenly. "Hello, Mother," she said and the sight of her mother took her back a little as she was not expecting her to look so worn and withered. "How are you?"

"As good as can be expected, I suppose," Cora replied and she walked over to the dog, picking her up with a scoff. She motioned for Regina to follow her as she walked out into the foyer. "Zelena and I are just having a cup of tea in the kitchen. Join us."

It wasn't a question. It was a request.

An order.

Regina hesitated for a moment before she followed her mother into the kitchen in silence. Regina hadn't even had more than a mere moment alone in the house to wallow in the grief of her father's death and it angered her to no end that her mother hadn't been courteous enough to allow her that much. She couldn't show her anger, not with her mother, but it was there, buried deep inside, boiling and bubbling its way to the surface ever so slowly.

There was a time and a place for everything and now was not the time nor the place.

Zelena was sitting at the little table by the window when she walked into the kitchen. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, filled with tears that spilled over the moment she looked over at Regina. Zelena dabbed at her eyes with the crumpled tissue in one hand and reached for the cup of tea in front of her with the other. Tears stung hotly in Regina's eyes as Zelena stood up and walked over to her, sobbing quietly as she wrapped her arms around her. She held on tight, too, and her grip only got a little bit tighter when Regina reluctantly wrapped her arms around her older sister for the first time in years.

Aside from the surprise-and unwelcome run-in they'd had when Regina had been at school in Boston, she hadn't seen her sister for many years before that. Zelena had been living in England with her now ex-husband and before Regina had left Storybrooke, Zelena only ever came home for Christmas, more so after her daughter had been born and she'd been hell-bent on Robyn knowing her family on the other side of the ocean. Her ex-husband, Walsh, he never came with her and Regina had one met the man once, at the wedding. Regina hadn't seen her niece since Robyn had been five years old, and realizing that, it made the guilt she'd felt heavier than ever.

"Do you still like your tea nearly black, dear?" Cora asked. "Just a dash of milk?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Nearly black, just like your soul, hmm?" Zelena said jokily, her voice flat. She stammered as she sat back down at the table and dabbed at her red-rimmed eyes with the worn tissue before plucking another out of the box.

"Hush, Zelena, there is no need for any of that now," Cora chided her as she got a teacup out of the cupboard for Regina. "Is it too much to ask that you two behave yourselves for once?" Cora shook her head and reached for the kettle on the stove. "Even after all these years, you two are still at each other, hmm?"

"I was merely joking, Mother," Zelena scoffed. "Am I wrong in trying to make light of this whole dreadful and unfortunate situation?"

Regina waited. She watched and waited for her mother's usual reaction that would always come after Zelena talked back at her, but it never came. Cora simply just sighed heavily, pouring in a splash of milk into the teacup before she brought it over to Regina. She was still taken back a little at the somber mood her mother was in, the grief, the heaviness of a broken heart over losing her husband of nearly forty years so painfully clear in her eyes.

"Thank you for coming home, Regina," Cora said gently. She smiled sadly before she walked over to the table to sit in her usual chair. "Please, sit. How was the drive?"

"It was fine," Regina replied and she eyed the chair her father normally sat in and reluctantly sat down in the chair beside it. "It took longer than I had expected. There are far too many idiots on the road."

Zelena laughed and their mother just shook her head, another small and sad smile curling over her lips for a second. Regina stared down into her cup of tea and placed it down on the table in front of her. It was only truly beginning to sink in that she was back home for the first time in far too long. It felt much like it had the night before when her mother had called her back. It felt surreal. She never did imagine she'd be sitting there at the kitchen table with her sister and her mother again, drinking tea and it almost felt like she had never left in a way.

Zelena, in typical Zelena fashion, jabbed Regina in the arm with a wide grin. "So, Ms. Big Shot Lawyer, how are things in the big city?"

"I am not-"

"Daddy always talked about you, Regina," Zelena continued without missing a beat. "He always told us how well you've been doing for yourself, especially lately." Zelena sat back in her chair with an expectant look on her face. "He told us you have your own firm now," she said. "How is that going for you, sis?"

"It is going well," Regina replied. "And for the record, I am not a big shot lawyer. Far from it, sis."

"Always so modest, hmm?"

Regina laughed. "Not at all."

"What the hell are you doing with your life if you aren't striving to be the best of the best?" Zelena asked incredulously. "Really, what are you doing? Are you happy only being some mediocre-"

"I am living my life the way I see fit, Zelena. What are youdoing with yourlife?"

"Enough," Cora said tiredly. "You two will have plenty of time to bicker after the funeral." Silence filled the room and Regina stared at her mother as Cora took a sip of her tea gingerly. "How long are you planning on staying, Regina?"

"A few days. I'm only here for the funeral, Mother. I'll be driving back to New York right after."

"We're having a wake after the funeral," Zelena said and Regina didn't miss the deeply disappointed look on her mother's face. "You must stay for the wake, Regina. The whole town is likely to show up to celebrate Daddy's life."

"The whole town?" Regina asked in surprise. It was just another reason for her to leave even sooner. "Really?"

"It shouldn't surprise you, dear," Cora said. "Your father is-waswell loved and respected in this town, after all."

Henry Mills had been the principal of Storybrooke Elementary for over thirty-five years before he had retired last spring. He had been a well-respected man and loved by many people in that town. Everyone who had grown up there had known him at one point or another, some better than others. He had gotten involved in the community too over the years and Regina knew the loss would be felt heavily amongst everyone who had known her father at one point or another over the course of his life.

"Everyone simply adored Daddy. We all know that," Zelena said and she grew quiet for a second. She scoffed and dabbed at her eyes with another fresh tissue. "Why wouldn't they want to come and pay their last respects and why shouldn't they deserve to celebrate his life with everyone who meant a great deal to him?"

"Let's not talk about your father anymore," Cora said, her voice wavering with emotion. "It is already far too unbearable knowing that he won't be coming to bed with me again tonight. I cannot fathom the thought that he never will again. It is just too much. It is just too painful."

"You're right," Zelena said and she reached across the table to pat Cora's hand gently. She plucked another tissue from the box and handed it to Cora. "I'm sorry, Mother. You're right. The pain is just so unbearable. I'm sorry."

Regina stood up from the chair with a frown. "I think I am just going to go and get my bag from the car and call it a night," she said quietly. Her cup of tea sat there untouched and she frowned again. "Is my uh, room still-"

"Yes, dear, just as you left it," her mother replied. "Your father insisted that we leave it be as he was so sure that you would come back home one day. He was a fool if you ask me. I don't think that he ever imagined that it wouldn't be until after he died. It shouldn't have taken your father's unfortunate passing for you to come home. Perhaps you are the fool, Regina."

No, Mother, I am not a fool. I am a coward.

"Perhaps I am."

"Yes, you are."

Regina ignored the bitter bite in her mother's words and didn't offer her the apology she knew was expected. She walked out of the kitchen, her tears falling finally as she headed for the front door. Her mother was right, though she was hesitant to admit it at all, it really shouldn't have taken her father's death to bring her back home again. But it was what it was and there was no changing that now.

Her room had been left as she'd left it so very long ago. She walked in after retrieving her suitcase from the car with a heaviness in her chest and a hard lump in her throat. There was a fresh set of folded sheets that sat on the edge of the small bed and the drapes had been drawn and the windows opened in anticipation of her return. Regina placed her suitcase on the bed and tried to fight off the flood of memories that came back suddenly.

She should've come home a long time ago. She should've done it for him. She should've come home for her father because she knew, deep down, that was all he had wanted since the day she had left so many years ago.

Truth be told, she'd been so afraid of coming home and running into Emma Swan and it was that fear of facing the sole reason for her broken heart that had kept her away. She was a coward. She was a coward who could not face one of the biggest mistakes that she had made in her life. Emma had stayed in town after she left, she knew as much because Zelena had told her during their unfortunate run-in a few years back. Emma was still there and it was only a matter of time before she would see her again.

And she would have no other choice but to face the one thing-the one person-that she'd been running from all that time.