This was originally going to be a flashback in a longer story, but since I can't quite get that story to work (young Emma and I are not getting along, it seems) I thought I'd post just this. Fairly straightforward: Regina is 6. Olivia and Dr. Huang are borrowed from SVU - she's a detective, he's a psychiatrist, lost and abused children are right up their alley.
Just a one-shot. I don't have any more little Regina material.
Regina stopped in the doorway and crossed her arms over her chest. "You know no one is allowed in there but Mother."
Henry glanced over his shoulder at his six-year-old daughter. "Well, I'm your father, and I say you can come in."
From the look on her face it was evident that Regina didn't believe that any more than Henry did. "Mother said no," she said firmly.
Henry shook his head, reaching out to grab Regina's arm and tug her inside, closing the door behind her. "You shouldn't listen to everything she says," he told her. "That's the whole reason why I have to do this."
Regina looked around her, curiosity about her mother's secret room momentarily pushing aside her fear. There were heavy books on the shelves, and bottles of bright liquids. There were two wands resting on a table, bizarre trinkets scattered about. Strangest of all was the throbbing sound that got louder and louder the farther in she got. It sounded almost like when she'd curl up in her father's lap for a story and let her ear rest against his chest. Like a heartbeat, but not so muffled.
"Here we are," Henry said, taking a pouch from a high shelf. Regina hurried to his side, watching as he tipped a translucent bean into his hand.
"What is that for?"
"It will create a portal to another world, Regina," he said with a gentle smile. "One where your mother can't find us."
Regina looked up from the bean to Henry's face, shocked. "Why would we leave Mother?"
Henry did his best to crouch down to her level, a hard feat given his ever-widening girth. "I know she hurts you," he said, reaching out to run a hand over Regina's dark hair. "You don't deserve that, darling. You deserve a happy ending."
Before the words could even sink in, she heard the door open and cringed. There was only one person who it could be, only one person who was allowed to be in there in the first place. Regina watched in terror as Cora snatched the empty pouch from her husband, and Henry cast the bean into the far corner of the room. Regina took a few steps back from her parents, staying out of her mother's reach.
"You think you can run from me?" Cora fumed as the portal began to form. "You think you can take my child away from me?"
"You're no mother," Henry said bitterly, and Regina realized that it was the first time she'd ever heard anyone contradict Cora. Her father hurried to her side, taking her hand so they could enter the portal. Regina wasn't sure she should go, wasn't sure she wanted to, but she couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of punishment would come after she'd been in her mother's room. So she jumped, and had just entered the portal's pull when her father let go.
Henry took a moment to realize why he was in such pain, why he'd suddenly lost his grip. He turned around to see his heart in Cora's hand.
He'd always expected that his wife would kill him, but he'd pictured her delighting in the moment, prolonging the torture. But all of the rage that had just been on her face was replaced by devastation as the portal swirled shut.
She finally looked like a mother. She didn't look at Henry, her eyes fixed on the spot where Regina had disappeared. Without a word, Cora crushed his heart to ash.
"My name's Olivia. What's yours?"
Olivia Benson sat at the small table in the children's room, looking at a girl who was unlike any six-year-old she'd ever seen. The fear in the girl's eyes was familiar. Olivia had seen it in dozens of lost children. But none of them sat so primly or managed to look that condescending even when terrified.
Regina was reluctant to trust a woman in short hair and trousers, but it was better than being out on the terrifying street, or in that strange, too fast carriage, or the man who'd come in to talk to her before this. She hadn't spoken a word to him.
"I'm Regina," she said cautiously.
"Regina," Olivia repeated with a smile. "Can you tell me your last name, too?"
Regina somehow managed to sit up even straighter than she had been. "Only commoners have surnames."
Yeah, nothing at all like the long line of children who had sat across from Olivia in this same room. Still, she kept smiling. They had to get something, some clue as to who Regina was or where her parents might be, so Olivia figured she'd play along. "Commoners? Are you a princess?"
Regina scoffed at that. "I'm a Lady. Snow White's the princess. Everyone knows that."
"Do you like Snow White?" Olivia got up and went over to the bin of coloring books, searching for one from that movie.
"I haven't met her. She was at my naming ceremony, but I was only a baby." Regina watched as Olivia set a flimsy book and a small box between them. "Mother hasn't been allowed to visit the palace since then."
Olivia nodded, glad for a mention of parents. "Where's your mother now, Regina?"
"Home, I suppose."
"And do you know where home is?"
"Nelcardia Manor."
Olivia was sure that someone on the other side of the mirror would be looking that up to find out what it was – a town? A building? In the meantime, she opened up the coloring book to a picture of Snow White surrounded by animals. "Why don't you color a picture for me?"
Regina looked at her skeptically. "Color?"
"You know." Olivia opened the box of crayons and spilled them out onto the table. "Fill in the picture."
Regina looked at the book and then at the strange little colored sticks. "All my books have color pictures to begin with," she said.
"Maybe you'd like to draw something, then?"
"No," Regina said simply. Mother had always said that drawing was a waste of time.
Olivia put the book aside, studying Regina for another moment. No kid ever refused to draw. What was with this girl?
She clearly wanted to be talked to like an adult, so Olivia shifted her tone and fought to maintain her smile.
"Regina, can you tell me why you were alone when those policemen picked you up?"
"Father sent me away," Regina said, glad that this question seemed more relevant than the offer of coloring.
Olivia leaned forward again, concern rising in her eyes. "Why did he do that?"
"He didn't want me to live with Mother." Regina glanced down at her hands, uncomfortable with telling this to a complete stranger. But if she was going to find a way back home, she needed to trust someone. "She hurts me."
At the hospital a few hours later, Olivia got confirmation in the bruises hidden beneath Regina's old-fashioned dress. But nothing else was so easily confirmed. Nelcardia Manor didn't exist. Regina hadn't been reported missing anywhere in the country. And her DNA, oddly enough, didn't resemble anyone in the system – it was so unusual that the lab ran it five times.
Dr. Huang, when doing his psych analysis, finally persuaded Regina to draw, and the meticulous picture – no crayons, just pencil – showed three figures in what looked to be a cartoon witch's lair, the little one hovering over the only splash of color in the picture. A swirling green hole that Regina claimed was a portal, grown from a magic bean.
"An elaborate fantasy life isn't unusual for a child who has been abused," he told Olivia when he'd finished talking to Regina. "But I've never seen one that elaborate and consistent."
"What does that mean?"
Dr. Huang frowned. "Whatever she's been through, it's traumatic enough that she doesn't remember reality. She truly believes that she came from another world, that she got here via magic bean."