Regina hadn't believed in soulmates for the longest of times. The potential for one of her own had been ripped from her many, many years ago, by none other than her own mother. She'd believed that her red string had been severed. Since then, Regina had lived life with a hole in her heart, one that Rumpelstiltskin had claimed she'd never fill. Usually, Regina wouldn't ever believe the words of The Dark One. But now, she was starting to think maybe it wasn't such a lie.

She had Henry, and of course, the Mayor wouldn't trade him for the world. But her heart still longed for more. For something she thought unobtainable. Until she found you.

You were unaccounted for in the curse. A mere visitor in Snow White's Kingdom when the curse encased it. You had been the princess of another Kingdom in your past life. Without a cursed life built for you, you remembered everything, finding yourself in a strange land that you had grown to understand in time. You had avoided the main town, instead living out in a small cottage in the woods surrounding it. And though you missed your old life, your family - this new one wasn't so bad.

When Regina first realised you were here, she was perplexed; how had you ended up here? The Mayor was skeptical of you, at first, but with time, she grew quite fond of you. Perhaps more, if she would allow herself to entertain the thought long enough to realise it. It really hit her when she found herself allowing you to Henry. She protected her son with her life. So seeing how you were with him, so gentle and almost motherly - it made her heart flicker with a rekindled hope.

It was strange to have found someone to accept her for who she was, even as they remembered her past. You knew everything she had done before, and she'd explained the curse to you. And yet, you stuck around. You were happy with her, and now with Storybrooke, too. And for once, so was she. She was content in her office, doing her paperwork as she usually would, while you and Henry sat looking through his comics.