The Night I Woke Up Beside You

[SEASON 1] Chapter 1: It Happened One Night

"Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Water sloshed around me... Like a waterfall, flowing from the edge of a cliff. The sound is like a melody until it slowly descends into silence. Endless. Rhythmical.

It's a fascinating discovery to figure out that water can make you feel not only like floating but deaf as well. As the force of current blocks your ear canals, making you lose the sense of hearing and the only thing you feel is the heaviness of the dense water over your chest, constricting your lungs, you begin to feel obstructed; almost like a dead conscious person.

You try to open your lips, you try to breathe like a normal human being who is so used to the air like a second skin, but you just feel even more suffocated. The water slowly makes you immobile, weak, unresolved. Like a tire slowly losing its air. Slowly deflating into flat rubber... So, I gasped and wriggled.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

More tiny flowing bubbles appear in my vision. Then, I went numbing cold. I felt my heart gone paralyzed. Yet, my eyes remained open. And there was a shadow, followed by a blinding light... It was captivating.

I try reaching out for it. A moving figure from a fading blur above me; a surreal frightening dream of floating. Until I slowly weaken. And the dream that felt real disappears from my sight. I close my eyes to rest, and suddenly everything just turned into swallowing darkness."

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CRASH!

She woke up in a jolt, her body felt like it was violently thrown down from the sky without the actual impact hitting her for real. She could feel the slight dizziness as she blinked her eyes open. Her entire vision had immediately started from a very blurred image of something bright and she grunted back as she tried to move her head, feeling like it somehow weighed a ton. But she can still feel all of her muscles, there were parts that felt slightly sore but she did not feel any slightest bit of discomfort. If anything else, she even felt so pleasantly warm and okay. And she tried to figure out where and how she was.

She felt strangely comfortable and it made her feel unsure of this.

As she began to think of what had happened, she immediately remembered that she had been driving just a few moments ago. She then soon recalled the entire scene just before she hit the windshield when her car was falling down the river past the barricades on the highway. She almost died. But for some reason, the pain was not yet there when she tried to move this time. But instead, she only felt much lighter... She can still move her hands and both of her feet. She felt extremely fine, which was surprisingly not what she would have expected after going through that whole thing.

Was this all real? She blinked her eyes a few more times again and when she had finally gotten a clearer view of her entire surroundings, her eyes widened in disbelief and she paused for a second. She blinked some more and she started looking around. She turned from left to right, her head never hurt in any way. But she was still confused as hell. She stared down at her hands, and her body, there was no IV stuck on her, no wounds, bruises, nor even any signs of injuries. She was not wearing any hospital gown like she thought she would be and this was surely not a hospital room at all. 

Upon checking everything else, while completely muddled over the entire bizarreness of everything, she felt like she had been in this situation before. She was just covered with a thick blanket and she instantly knew that she was naked underneath. What the hell just happened? She must be in some kind of a really insane dream... Or was she already dead?

"This is not real," she muttered out loud. But it felt so real. She could immediately recognize the place she was in but she was still not sure yet how in the hell she had even ended up there. And as if to prove to her that it was not a dream, she felt someone moving behind her over the bed. She had been lying on her side and it did not cross her mind yet to turn around. But before she could even move to check what or who was behind her, she felt that same familiar warmth that she had grown so accustomed to.

This must not be real... And without even hesitating, Regina immediately looked over her shoulder.

Son of a b-

She quickly jumped out of the bed as soon as she saw who was it, resisting the urge to punch that liar's face right in that instant. What the hell was he doing there in the same bed with her? And why was she in this place? Out of all the places she will ever be... What kind of a freaking dream was this?

"Regina?" 

Somehow the noise and frantic movements that she had made stirred him awake as he slowly squinted his eyes open to look at her across the bed. He frowned and stared at her with a confused expression.

"What's wrong? Why are you out of the bed?"

"What the hell's going on here?" Regina demanded, her eyes glaring at the face of this man she had sworn to never touch nor ever see again. And was she supposed to be in a hospital? Or was this some kind of a test that you take after facing death? Was she really dead?

"What are you talking about? What's going on?"

Charles, who was now slowly sitting up from the bed, frowned deeper as he tried to comprehend what was happening to her girlfriend. She looked so out of herself and she was giving him an angry scowl from the distance. He really did not understand why she was acting like this all of a sudden. And as he moved and tried to sit by the edge of the mattress, still a little bit befuddled as he felt her stepping back, he took a deep breath. The wave of nausea hit him but he was still sober enough to handle this, fortunately.

"Regina, are you okay, babe?" 

"Don't f*****g babe me!" Regina shouted back, a complete one-eighty from her pleasant and pristine personality. This was not Regina, Charles immediately thought. And hearing her speak like that was a total shock to him who had never once heard her curse or even use any kind of profanities before. This somehow bothered him as he quickly got out of the bed and tried to approach her.

"Don't come near me," She, on the other hand, strongly warned him back making him stop on his tracks. She quickly put more distance between them as she took two steps behind her. 

"What's going on? I don't understand why you're acting this way now," Charles worriedly inquired. They were still okay just a few hours ago. Drinking aside, he had never once seen her got so livid like this even when she had gotten drunk once in the past and there was no other reason he could think of that could have caused it at the moment. They were pretty much doing well... She even told him she loves him just a while ago and this had been the best night of his life, so why was she acting all mad and disgusted with him now? What just happened?

Regina tried to absorb everything that was going on. She still could not understand why she was here with a younger version of Charles inside his old bedroom back in their hometown which now reminded her of their old high school days. This was when they just had started dating... Was this the past? Was she having some kind of sentimental, real-as-f trip down memory lane, because she really died? 

She felt extremely confused and overwhelmingly lost in all of these surreal things going on around her that she immediately slapped her own face just to see if she can still get out of this total illusion.

This is not real. I am hallucinating. She must have gotten herself stuck in some kind of a parallel universe because there was no way she would have been standing right here inside Charles' old bedroom after what happened. She was supposed to be dead, right? She was just in a car accident, not more than a few minutes ago... So how come did she end up here with this cheating bastard? This was all going crazy and she was no longer sure of what was real between the two and what was going to happen next.

"Ouch!" She exclaimed with a groan, feeling the two kinds of pain hit her at the same time: one on her face and one on her palm. She just really slapped the s**t out of herself and Charles was so quick enough to be on her side in an instant just after he watched her hurt herself that way, and she did not even realize that he was now touching her again.

"You're scaring me now, Regina," she heard him say in a troubled yet still sweet and dreamy voice of his as he gently held the cheek that had been hurt, "What is going on with you?"

She really had no idea yet but as she caught a look of herself in the mirror from a near distance, she found an exact image of her young sixteen-year-old body and face staring back at her. 

Was that me?

She looked so real, and she kept staring at it with a bewildered face. Did she just go back in time? Was this all for real? What the hell's going on, seriously?

"Regina?"

"Get away from me!" The horror and the reminder of the pain she had just suffered through, gave her a bold move to violently push Charles away from her. She felt horrible just having him near her right now. She can never get used to it anymore. Everything had already been ruined, since the very second she found out that he cheated on her. She can no longer look at him the same way. And it was slowly breaking her inside. At this point, she just wanted to get out of there. She had to get out of there. 

She does not want to see him anymore... Just the sight of him infuriated her. But if this was really Charles from ten years ago, he might never really understand the reason for her sudden repulsive flight. But she was too hurt and still not over the entire ordeal to even reconsider his innocence right now.

"What's wrong?" Charles frantically asked with a deeply troubled expression, "Can you please make me understand why you're suddenly pushing me away?"

But Regina was not listening to him, she was still stuck thinking about how she was suddenly here at this time and place. Was that car accident even real? Or did she just sleep too deeply and got swept in a really long dream where she thought she was actually living her life for a decade until twenty-six and then died after finding out that Charles had cheated on her? Or was this some kind of time traveling? Was that even possible?

There were so many things going through inside her head. But no matter how much she tried to face this current situation she was in, only one thing remained in her mind: she wanted out.

"This is over," She spoke with finality, her voice sounded so hollowed yet very firm despite the crowded thoughts clouding her mind and the blaring sound of loud music that was partially being drowned out by the thick walls and the heavy front door of Charles' bedroom. 

If she was remembering it clearly, he had hosted a party that night in his own house because they just finally got their spot in the finals at the League. It was tradition and it was also a part of the celebratory ritual to sleep with his girlfriend as a treat. If this was still Regina back then, she would still think of it as a sweet thoughtful offer to be a part of his reward. She even agreed to lose her virginity with him since she still had no idea that he would ever cheat on her. If this was still back when she was an i***t who was so blindly in love with him, she would still go back to bed and let this all pass. But this time, she was different.

She was no longer the same girl that she used to be... She was no longer the fool one. She already woke up, or maybe in a twisted sort of way, she saw what was coming and was given a chance to avoid that one tragic fate in her future. She already learned from it, real or not. She had changed.

"What are you saying?" She heard Charles asking her in a nervous voice. For some reason, the way he had sounded with his question satisfied her. This was for what you would do to me ten years from now...

"I want to break up," Regina rephrased, not even hesitating as she looked straight ahead to stare back into his eyes that were looking like they were still in shock. She wanted this. She needed this, and she was never going to take it all back again. 

"I will never get back with you anymore," she added in one breath, "We're over, Charles."

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