Chapter Text
Snow looked up from the paper in her hand when the small office clock chimed seven. On instinct she glanced across the room to the bassinet where Neal was sleeping and held her breath while she waited to see whether or not the noise would disturb his slumber. She let out a sigh of relief when he didn’t stir. With that worry tucked away Snow’s tired and stressed brain finally registered what that sound meant. Seven o’clock! She was supposed to have headed home an hour ago. She had just come into the office to try and get a little paper work done. It wasn’t supposed to be difficult paper work. All she had to do was take the forms filled out by the town residents and file them in the correct place. She realized she had been at it for almost six hours and not only were the forms not filed, the files themselves were now a disorganized mess. Mayor Mary Margaret started to cry.
Emma opened the door cautiously, her muscles tense and a defensive spell on the tip of her tongue. What she found when she opened the door was in many ways worse than anything she had imagined. If there had been a villain holding her mother and baby brother hostage she would have at least known what to do. Kick bad guy butt. She was good at kicking bad guy butt. But there wasn’t a bad guy in sight. Instead when she opened the door to the mayor’s office she found Snow White sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by mounds of papers and boxes sobbing. David rushed to his wife’s side. Checking for injuries and demanding to know what had happened. “I can’t even to do simple paperwork.” Snow sobbed. “I can’t find anything. How am I supposed to run a town? I’ve let everyone down. I’m useless.” She looked down at the paper in her hand and burst into renewed tears.
David was wrong footed as his daughter. He would know what to do if someone had hurt or threatened his wife or son. Kick bad guy butt. He was good at kicking bad guy butt. He had no idea how to help his wife with seemingly impossible paper work. He looked helplessly at his daughter who was still standing stunned in the doorway. Emma stared back at him feeling just as helpless. Desperate to do something, anything, to make the situation better she finally broke the silence. “I’m going to go find Regina.”
Regina grudgingly followed Emma to the Mayor’s Office. She had only agreed to come because Henry had been there when Emma had arrived practically begging for her help. Henry had clearly expected her to go and she hadn’t want to disappoint him. At the sight of what had been done to her beautiful well ordered, perfectly organized office she nearly lost her composure. She felt her temper start to burn and she automatically reached for her magic. Then she heard the baby. Snow got up from the chair Charming had helped her into and went to pick up her son who had finally woken from his nap. Little Neal’s cries reminded her of her own days as a mayor-mother of a newborn. She took a deep breath and let go of the destructive magic. She took another deep breath and began to gather a different kind of magic. She made two quick motions with her hands and the paper began to fly around the room. When things settled back down every paper was back where it had come from and the forms Snow had been trying to file were stacked neatly on the desk, in alphabetical order. Regina liked to do things right.
“What is going on here?” Regina asked her voice terse.
Mary Margaret’s eyes were still red but she had regained her composure. Now that she was no longer half hysterical she felt rather embarrassed by the whole mess. With Neal in one arm she motioned to the forms on the desk with other. “I was trying to file the housing forms so that we could try and find places for the people caught in this curse who weren’t part of the last one but not all of the names are in the town registry. I thought you said the town registry was complete.”
Regina didn’t miss the note of accusation in the last sentence. “It is complete” she snapped “It had to be because of the way the curse was designed.” She walked over to the forms and started looking through them. It only took her a moment to find the problem. “The registry is part of the curse so the names recorded on it are the names given to the citizens by the curse. Not everyone used that name when they filled out the forms. It seems several of them put down their Enchanted Forest name.” She picked out one of the forms. “Like this one. Jack B. Knimbal, he was late with the castle’s monthly order of candles once. In this world he’s paralyzed from the waist down and his name is Cameron Wheelwright.” She made a note about the name in the corner of the form and filed it in the correct place.
Mary Margaret felt foolish. It should have been obvious that none of the names on the registry were ones she remembered from the Enchanted Forest and that some of the names on the forms were. David looked relieved. “Well that problems solved. Just insist that people fill out forms with their curse name.”
Mary Margaret looked at her husband with horror “David! We can’t do that. These people had their identity stolen from them and replaced with one from the twisted imagination of a wicked queen, no offense Regina,”
“None taken”
“We can’t just force them to accept the identity she gave them in replace of their own.”
David looked confused. “Then how are you going to do paperwork? You can’t spend all day trying to track down these people just to match Storybrooke names to Enchanted Forest names.”
Without even looking up from the paperwork she idly and automatically filling out Regina replied, “Oh that’s easy. Just take a census and have everyone put down both names so they can be cross indexed. The fairies and the shoe elves can probably help.”
Emma, Mary Margaret, and David all stared at her as she continued to swiftly take care of the neglected paperwork Mary Margaret had left on the desk. She eventually felt the weight of their combined stares and looked up. “What?”
Snow White looked at her son and made a decision. “I don’t want to be mayor. I think I was alright at being Queen but Queens get a lot more advisers than mayors do and there’s not nearly as much administrating. You’re good at this Regina. You make a much better mayor than you ever did Queen. Please take the job back.”
David looked at his wife, “Are you sure abou-“ “Yes I’m sure, I am absolutely sure.” “Alright”
They looked at Regina. She sniffed. “Well, if it’s what’s best for the town I guess I don’t have a choice. I am trying to be good now. For Henry’s sake.”
Mary Margaret looked relieved. David just seemed glad that the problem seemed to have been handled. Only Emma seemed to realize that they would now have to explain the town that Snow White had put Regina back in charge.