Two weeks after Robin's death, Regina Mills is doing what she's always done best: functioning. Getting up, showing up, holding it together, one council meeting at a time. She doesn't expect comfort to show up on her porch every morning in a red leather jacket with bad instincts and worse coffee — and she definitely doesn't expect to notice it.
Then two strangers walk into Granny's Diner wearing the future.
They call themselves Emma and Regina. They're older, they're married, and they've traveled back to stop a weapon built specifically to kill them both before it ever finds its targets — and they intend to do it with as little contact with anyone as possible.
That plan does not survive first contact with a nosy town, a sarcastic sister, a smug teenager who already knows exactly what's going on, or the small, inconvenient fact that present-day Emma and Regina cannot seem to stop finding excuses to be in the same room. Somewhere between the grief, the growing danger, and the increasingly unsubtle future versions of themselves, they're going to have to face the one thing neither of them has let themselves think too hard about.
Words: 3672, Chapters: 1/5, Language: English
Fandoms: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Emma Swan, Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Captain Hook | Killian Jones, Henry Mills (Once Upon a Time), Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard, Red Riding Hood | Ruby, Prince Charming | David Nolan, Robin Hood (Once Upon a Time), Widow Lucas | Granny
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan, Red Riding Hood | Ruby/Wicked Witch of the West | Zelena
Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Season 6, Post-"Tougher Than the Rest" (6x11), Grief/Mourning, Slow Burn, Established Relationship (Future Emma/Future Regina), Getting Together (Present Emma/Present Regina), Future Selves, Married Couple, Jealousy, Break Up, Angst with a Happy Ending, Humor, Family Feels, Protective Regina Mills, Protective Emma Swan, Emma Swan Has Feelings and Doesn't Know What to Do With Them, Regina Mills Has Feelings and Doesn't Know What to Do With Them, Zelena & Regina Mills Sibling Relationship, Original villain - Freeform, Proposals, Moving in Together, Eventual Smut, multiple POVs
