Oh poor anon I’m sorry. You don’t have to feel silly. I should be the one feeling silly or at least a little embarrassed. I joined the fandom in May, but in the previous October for reasons best know to myself, I started writing a Once Upon a Time fanfic. I wrote about 12k actually of a season one rewrite.

You see when I can’t sleep at night, I tell myself stories. This particular story all hinged off Regina’s line at the end of the pilot – “A place where the only happy ending will be mine.” – as for some reason that kept playing back in my brain and raising the obvious question of “what if Regina did get her happy ending?” and basically then led to me asking the next question of “how would season one be different if Regina wanted to break her own curse?”

To cut a very long story short (seriously it would have been long, that 12k only covered up to Emma’s second day in Storybrooke). Regina and Rumple made a deal, which meant that Belle got given new cursed memories, like David did when he woke from the coma. Belle thought she’d just moved to town to open up the library, with no recollection of the previous twenty-eight years in the asylum. If Regina could have woken Belle from the curse completely then she would have, but it’s impossible so cursed!LibrarianBelle was the best option.

Anyway, none of this answers your question of who is John Mills? He’s Regina’s husband basically. An original character of my own creation, which is a very dangerous thing to do in fanfic. It’s quite rare that it actually works well and to be honest in this fandom, with the shipping wars the way that they are, it’s probably an even worse idea. However, I do have a certain fondness for that first fanfic idea. I plotted it all out in my head, going up until the end of 3A. So seeing as I was just messing around with random ficlets, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to amuse myself. I’m sorry I confused you.