A Curse Upon Thee 2-3

“You must be loving this, aren’t you?”

The breath that left him felt like an entire weight and yet it still didn’t leave his shoulders. David kept walking, heavy leather boots striking the flat pavement of Main Street in a steady marching rhythm. Too smooth…

That was something he was still getting used to.

The ground in this realm was far too smooth, too level.

Years of the bone-jarring bite of cobblestones and rutted roads of the Enchanted Forest had a comfort to them, something natural and normal; nothing like what he walked now. Regina’s curse had taken that from him, among many other things, when it had shoved them all into this frozen fishing town and locked the heavy door from the outside.

“Oh, I bet you are.”

A week. He ignored the voice as he kept thinking on exactly how long it had been since the rolling wave of purple fog had washed through Storybrooke, ripping the comfort of not knowing away from them as their stolen memories came pouring back. David couldn’t even decide if gaining his memories made anything fundamentally better, or if the sheer weight of two irreconcilable lives just made his daily headache worse. Seven days…

Since Gold had done what he did.

Since Finn had vanished into the well.

Since Snow and Emma had disappeared into another realm entirely.

“Don’t bother pretending, Charming.” Her voice slid out into the crisp afternoon air with a sharp bite to it, her tone just as poisonous as one of her apples as red-painted lips quirked upward in a tight smile that David doubted was even a fraction real. “You simply must love being in charge again.”

Deep-set blue eyes slid sideways, landing squarely on the former mayor walking briskly at his side with sharp clicks of her black heels. 

Regina Mills kept pace, her prim and proper black pantsuit worn like armor. Even without leather or a crown, she still managed to make sure she showed off just as much of her neckline as she always did.

Then again, this was the Evil Queen.

Her clothes were the least of things to question when it came to the deeply damaged woman who had actively cursed an entire realm just because she refused to let go of a grudge. The exact same woman who had ripped twenty-eight precious years of his daughter’s life away from him and cursed him to rot in a coma just torture his Snow.

“What I would love,” David breathed again, hand tightening around his belt buckle to calm himself. Holding on to the burning anger in his chest took more energy than he currently had in him. “Is my wife and my daughter, Regina.”

“Yes, well.” Regina’s voice came snapping back almost immediately, crisp and cold as the wind off the harbor. “You know you simply can’t expect to have everything, Charming.” She rolled her dark eyes, dismissive as always. “I know I certainly can’t.”

He didn’t rise to the bait.

As much as his jaw tightened, the new mayor of Storybrooke didn’t flinch at the verbal knife Regina jabbed in his gut. Years of forced courtly lessons had taught him how to deal with her kind, and they all just wanted you to play their game.

David just kept on walking past the colorful storefronts full of people still living the second lives they knew. The suffocating smoke of last week was finally gone, at least; vanishing off into the edges and carried away by the wind. The effects remained, though, stranger than just the return of magic and memories. Old grandfather clocks running backward, delicate flowers drying up to nothing after being moved from planters and into the ground, freezing spots of dead cold in the middle of June; magic was definitely back in the world and in a way none of them had ever dealt with before.

Least of all David.

He was the least connected to Storybrooke, after all. Barely five months of memories in this life filled his head, considering he had gone from waking up confused in a hospital bed to being a quiet pet shop worker. Somehow, in between the curse breaking and this exact moment, he had ended up with the honored positions of both Mayor and Sheriff of Storybrooke.

The entire town had taken one look at Regina and another at him, and collectively decided that Prince Charming absolutely belonged at the head of any crisis in town. What am I, a cowboy?

He didn’t want either job.

David never even wanted to be a prince 

Magic was back, and nobody knew what to do with it.

Least of all David, who’d gone from waking up in a hospital bed with no memories to animal shelter volunteer to somehow both Mayor and Sheriff in the span of a year because the town looked at him and decided Prince Charming belonged in charge.

He didn’t want either job.

But apparently, what he wanted didn’t matter. 

A nod caught his eye from across the street, one of the people behind his new headache greeting him. Grumpy — Leroy, he had to remember to use the Storybrooke names — stood outside the pharmacy with that permanent scowl that managed to look supportive.

David nodded back, right hand resting on the pommel of the sword hanging at his hip. A gift from the dwarves, forged in the back room of the pawn shop Gold had graciously allowed them to use. They were nearly as good with a forge as they were in the mines, and the razor-sharp blade — the item of his office — was proof of that.

The part of him that was David still felt ridiculous wielding a blade while wearing a cardigan, but people seemed to expect it. Prince Charming with a sword. The image they needed even if the man with the actual steel was mostly just exhausted.

The dwarves had decided the matter for everyone, as stubborn as they were, Grumpy loudly leading the charge at that first town meeting three days after the chaos. ‘David Nolan’s Prince Charming.’ That was the town’s war cry. ‘He led armies. He can lead us.’ 

And just like that, with the bang of a pickaxe, Regina was out and David was holding two complicated positions he had no idea how to fill, all while his wife and daughter were trapped in another realm and he couldn’t do a damn thing to bring them back home.

“Is there any way, Regina…” David was already forcing out the question even though he already knew the answer, “Any way at all, that you can fix the hat?”

“That thing?” Regina’s laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. “I don’t know what miracles you expect me to work with ashes, David.” 

His frown deepened, the sight of the top hat burning up after Emma and Snow fell into it still firmly in his mind. Regina had even tried, no matter how much she tried to pretend like she didn’t care. The woman had been in that big house of hers testing magic that she’d already told him felt wrong. 

She’d even shown him earlier, flames in her palm that flickered orange but darker than they should be, like someone had mixed ash into the fire. 

Contaminated, she’d called it. Tainted.

Ruby had a better word for it. Cursed.

Magic had come back, but it hadn’t come back clean.

“Even if I could repair it,” Regina kept going, the woman not even looking at her as her smile faded to match his frown. “I wouldn’t know how to make it work again. Jefferson’s the only one who understood that particular piece of madness, and he’s… he’s…”

“Gone.” David finished for her. “Like….”

He let his words fade as he walked in silence for a few steps, passing the diner. The smell of burnt coffee and frying bacon drifted out, familiar and wrong at the same time because David could remember breakfasts in stone castle halls and rustic hunting lodges and none of them smelled like this.

“How’s Henry?”

Regina’s question came quieter than expected, as sudden as it was.

“Henry…” David blinked at the woman, not expecting the question even as an answer came to his lips anyway. “He’s fine. Worried about Emma and Snow, handling it as well as can be expected.”

“He’s staying with me.” David kept his voice level, factual. No point rubbing salt. “Both worried about Emma and Snow. He’s… handling it as well as can be expected.”

“I’m sure he is.” The sweet poison crept back into her tone, coating every syllable. “With his doting grandfather taking such good care of him.”

David stopped walking, Regina stopping too as she turned to face him. Eyes were on the both of them, a good chunk of the town staring. “Regina, the town demanded you step back from the mayor’s seat. I didn’t have a choice i-“

“Oh, spare me your sympathies and the noble martyrdom, David. Without a war to fight, it’s all you’re good for.” She cut him off clean, but he barely felt the heat in it. “You were willingly handed another crown and a badge to go with it, and what did you do? Exactly what everyone who claims they don’t want power does. You eagerly took it, because you’re the prince and that’s what princes do.”

“I can’t be Sheriff and Mayor at the same time,” David grunted back at her. “I’m barely managing one, let alone—”

“You were a grand hero before and a mighty prince on top of that, David.” Regina’s smile was back as she cut him off for a second time. “Surely leading one insignificant little fishing town can’t be any harder than leading armies against little old me, now can it?”

This witch… David wanted to argue. 

He just needed to find an argument first, but Regina was already turning away, heels clicking against pavement as she put distance between them without a goodbye.

…damn it.

He knew why she was being harsh — Henry hadn’t bothered to talk to her since that day in the hospital. The boy loved his mom, both of them, but Regina had lied for his entire life, making him go to therapy like he wasn’t more sane than everybody else in town, and tried to poison Emma.

That kind of betrayal didn’t heal in a week.

David started walking again, this time in the opposite direction, heavy boots carrying him back to the station. A week of work and he already had towering stacks of reports to file and he barely knew what half of the modern legal terms in them even meant. 

As he passed by the diner for the second time, he caught a blur of movement through the large front window of the eatery.

Ruby Lucas walked through the booths, the young woman deeply worn down with dark shadows under her eyes. She’d been working back-to-back double shifts as aggressively as she could, ever since Finn disappeared. David had tried to get her to stop, to relax. He would’ve done it even if Granny hadn’t asked him to.

But the girl wouldn’t be stopped, throwing herself into the grind as if staying busy enough would keep her from thinking about the boy Gold had dropped down a well in front of her.

The town was on edge about that too. 

Some people wanted to leave despite the curse being broken, terrified of what magic’s return meant. Others were afraid to leave, especially with the news that stepping past the town limits would just make them forget again.

Ruby’s dark green eyes found his through the glass. The girl didn’t waste a moment in pulling off her apron, and turning to snap something quick to Granny. The old woman shook her head, but Granny Lucas didn’t bother doing anything to stop her granddaughter.

Ruby pushed her way through the diner door, bells chiming loudly as she stepped outinto the summer afternoon in just a simple white shirt and jean shorts.

“David.” Her voice was hoarse, whether with tears or tiredness. “Anything?”

He shook his head slowly . “No… no sign of Finn.” He wanted to tell her the truth, that he wasn’t even looking for the boy anymore because there was nowhere he could be found, but she needed comfort more than hard answers. “I’m sorry, Ruby.”

She nodded back quickly like she’d fully expected the bad news. But David didn’t miss the way her jaw worked, dark eyes brightening with unshed tears, before she blinked them back. “Yeah, yeah. Okay.”

“We’ll find them,” He spoke the words like he believed them, the reassurance helping him as much as it did her. “All three of them. We’ll figure this out.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Just outside of the town limits, a sleek, expensive blue car pulled slowly to a stop right at the edge of the border, the powerful engine purring, sounding entirely expensive and completely out of place as a figure leaned out to look at the sign.

“Storybrooke, huh?”