Are there any fanfics out there where Regina helps break the dark curse in season one?
There was the whole “victory was boring” thing and imagine 28 years in a cursed town, where next to nothing ever changed. Plus you know – Henry. It’s like one day he noticed that he was the only one aging and therefore there had to be something wrong. She had a choice then, like the road not taken. Regina could have explained things to him, instead she went with denial.
They can’t flat out tell Emma “you are the savior, now break the curse” because she’d think they were crazy. They can’t show her magic because “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing”, unless she believes in magic, then she won’t see a damn thing.
The curse trapped Regina as much as it trapped everyone else. She could leave on short trips e.g. to get Henry, but I doubt she could leave for good because she was tied to the curse – she wasn’t aging.
I can just imagine it. Regina and Rumple teaming up with schemes to get Emma to believe. The first thing Regina would have to do – obviously – is admit that she had Belle in the asylum and let her out because otherwise that would come back to haunt her later when the curse broke. She could give Belle new memories, like she gave the new cursed memories to David and Belle could come to town as the new librarian.
Oh the angst. Rumple wouldn’t know what to do with himself, his true love right there but with no memory of him or what happened between them (I have definitely read this more than once). It would be like slowburn Rumbelle with Rumple trying to apologize every way he could think of for throwing her out, in the hope that she wouldn’t hate him when the curse broke.
In my headcanon Regina kept Mary Margaret and David apart because she feared true loves kiss would wake them from the curse. It wouldn’t be able to be break the curse, just lift it from them. If she wanted the curse broken, there would be no reason to keep them apart, or frame Snow for murder etc. but man I can see Regina regretting that decision. I mean the Charming’s have no subtlety, a hot minute after getting their memories back they would be wanting to run to Emma who would obviously think they were crazy. I could see Regina having to lock them in the loft and try and talk sense into them.
Obviously in this AU Regina and Henry would be closer, because he would understand more. Emma would be another person in his life to love him but she would never be his mom exactly. Genetics don’t make parents. I’m not sure exactly how Emma would feel about that. On one hand she gave Henry up to give him his best chance, and him having a mom that loves him is all she wanted. Then again, Regina took her place in Henry’s life and even though it was Emma’s choice, that has to hurt. Then again she doesn’t have to be pleased or unhappy, she can be both, we are complex creatures who can feel more than one emotion at a time. Sort of mixed I guess.
How the curse broke in the end would be up for debate. I mean using Henry to break it would be wrong because he’s a child and kids should be protected. I guess it could be rationalized that there would be no danger because Regina could wake him with true loves kiss if Emma failed. However, it would still be a bad thing to do. I could see Rumple maybe going that far in desperation, Emma wouldn’t believe for anything less than a massive crisis. Personally I prefer a fluffier option not using Henry at all, and instead the Charming’s, reuniting Emma with her parents – true loves hug or something.
I might possibly have a ton of ideas about how this would change everything moving forward. I mean there are certain things that would still happen. Like I can’t see Cora and Hook not finding their way to Storybrooke eventually. Tamara is engaged to Neal and Peter Pan’s minion, so kidnapping Henry isn’t a stretch. That doesn’t have to involve Tiny and the magic beans, Pan could have sent his shadow over as that seems to hop realms no problem.
However, there would be no wraith and no side trip to the Enchanted Forest for Emma and Snow. There would be no Lacey and to be honest I never understood why Rumple didn’t make Belle her own memory talisman. The reunion with Neal would have gone much better with Belle’s support and mediation. I might have head canon that if Rumple and Regina were allowed to be their awesome selves, that they would have stormed Neverland and had Henry back in like an hour. Pan would have been dealt with properly which means no reversed curse.
Did they ever explain how Walsh got to New York? I always figured it was the slippers but then recently they said Dorothy had them, and Zelena only got them back when she returned to Oz this past season. Because if Zelena could use Walsh’s method for getting to Storybrooke then she could turn up early. Otherwise there would be relative peace for over a year before Dorothy would hit Oz and Zelena got the slippers. She could then come and attempt her time travel thing but without Rumple as a slave, I don’t know how far she’d get.
Rumple was fine with the darkness until his ‘death’ and time in the vault, then Zelena controlling him for a year and Neal’s death. So there would be no sorcerer’s hat, there would be no sucking the darkness out, no dark swan, no Camelot and definitely no underworld. There would be no Frozen without time travel (unless it got worked in some other way). No Lily, no author (I hate how that takes away free will), no Queen’s of Darkness, not how that was done on the show anyway.
With no reversed curse there would also be no Robin, which if we’re sticking with canon pairings could be sad. I have to confess to a really, really AU storyline involving Rumple and Belle having a son, the blue fairy being the sanctimonious bitch that she is and banishing the baby to the land without magic because the baby is the spawn of the dark one and therefore ‘evil’. I mean that is not out of character for Blue. Emma came through in the wardrobe not all that far from Storybrooke, so perhaps that’s where the realms sort of meet. Emma went back to find more info, I imagine the son could do the same and then naturally he meets Regina who occasionally takes sanity breaks outside of Storybrooke.
I don’t ship OutlawQueen, I always thought Regina needed somebody who could understand the darkness a little more, so that she didn’t have to be fake with them. So yeah I know, super AU, with Regina’s true love being an original character of Rumple and Belle’s son. Imagine though that adds an extra twist to Henry’s family tree (his adopted father is actually his uncle), then with all the history between Regina and Rumple, not to mention Regina’s actions against Belle, that’s going to cause friction. Think of the angst possibilities.
There are other possibilities too. I never liked that Neal and Emma just magically somehow met, it was a massive coincidence. What would have made more sense is if Neal either originally (or when he escaped from Neverland) came over in that same spot. Then when Emma is searching for answers, she finds a newspaper article about a confused 14 year old boy. She tracks him down and that’s how they meet.
Of course the problem with this is once the curse is broken, and then Cora, Pan and maybe Zelena have been dealt with, then there’s the “nothing is happening” problem. It would just be regular life, so time for the fic to end I guess.
It would be happy though. Charming and Snow would have their baby (not named Neal probably), Neal wouldn’t be dead, Rumbelle would probably have a baby, I’m thinking a baby girl. Without the ill-fated trip to the underworld, the contract wouldn’t be an issue; of course it could still rear it’s head but the whole underworld thing, why were people scared of being dragged there? It doesn’t seem so bad. Whether it’s SwanFire or CaptainSwan ultimately doesn’t matter, so long as neither Neal nor Hook get bashed so it can happen, and that it happens properly with Emma remaining herself and not just becoming a ‘love interest’.
I just think it would be really fascinating to read a story where Regina wanted to break her own curse. She said the only happy ending would be hers, what if she got it (with Henry) and then was trapped by her own past mistakes. The curse trapped her just as much as everyone else, more so because she remembered everything, everyone else had ‘ignorance is bliss’ going on.
