DISCLAIMER: "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.
"Heartbeats"
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2012
Tick-tock. Like a pulse. Like the clip-clop of horses' hooves on firm ground. Like wind through winter-brittled branches.
She used to lie in bed, nestled beneath the heavy knit afghan her grandmother had knitted for her, listening to the sound of the mahogany clock in the hallway. The sound brought comfort. At eight years old, Regina begged and bargained and finally promised to ride side-saddle for three months if her mother agreed to let her adopt a puppy, a golden little wriggly thing Regina loved with all her heart. Her mother had given in, in exchange for a month's worth of daily comportment lessons. Her father told Regina to place a ticking clock in bed with the new puppy, to mimic the beat of the mother animal's heart, to soothe the lonely creature late at night.
The image stayed with Regina through long lonely nights in the solitary chill of her room. She listened to the clock. Years after the dog was gone.
Tick-tock.
Regina fell asleep on the hillside in the afternoon sun. Straw tangled in her hair and her skin smelling of grass and apples. The thought drifted through the haze...Mother will be angry...as slumber overtook her. This was all too beautiful, his tan skin like sand in the sun. The nightmare hit out of nowhere, an unnatural contrast to the peace and beauty of the day. She woke and fell into the safety and wonder of Daniel's arms. She had never felt so warm and loved in her life. She curled against his stable-dusted body and his kind hands soothed her like she was a skittish steed entrusted to his charge. Her breathing slowed and her head lay heavy on Daniel's chest, calmed by the steady beat of his heart. She remembered her puppy.
Tick-tock.
The ancient grandfather clock in the palace chimed and ticked incessantly in the upstairs master hall. The sound crept into her dreams and scratched her skin in raw patches. Leopold's heavy breaths did nothing to mask the unrelenting rhythm. Less than a year into the marriage, and she took a hammer to the clock in the middle of the night. She smashed one of the most valuable pieces of tradition in the royal family. She woke half the household. The servants were in shock. Her mother was flaming. Snow was terrified she would somehow be held to blame. Leopold was too shocked and confused to be angry. Regina suspected he feared for her sanity and wanted only to keep the incident from ever escaping the castle walls. They never spoke of it again. The clock was never replaced.
She needed it to stop. She needed it all to stop.
Give it to me.
Darkness. Betrayal. Distance. Deep and cavernous sacrifice. Vacancy and fear in eyes she loved and a mix of fleeting memories of soft hands teaching her to nurture her beloved pet.
Flames and darkness.
She stopped it.
She stopped it all.
No tick. No tock.
Not another second, not another heartbeat, not another empty moment. The most important beat she had ever felt in her life had been silenced; the realm's beat should cease in mourning.
Clocks would not tick.
Her lover's heart would not beat.
Silence.
For years upon years.
The small heart beats insistently against her chest as she rocks her boy into slumber in the fathomless silence of her marble palace. Their marble palace. She has not yet adjusted to the breaths of another person within these walls. To growth. To a pulse. To life.
Regina feels sick when she dozes in the moonlight and dreams of her mother's cruel fingers. A heartbeat like the ocean in her ears, a dream, a spirit crushed to the dust of the stable floor. Henry's skin is warm. She lays him in his crib and retreats to her room.
She gazes out the window at the clock tower.
Silence. Stillness. She can breathe.
She dreams of blonde hair and a bumpy yellow seashell that refuses to go out with the tide. Henry's eyes are the blue of the water.
Tick-tock.
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