A/N: Written as a tumblr prompt: snow & regina talk about her marriage with leopold. maybe just 1 specific moment or the marriage as a whole. wherever you want 2 go with it.

"Regina... I've been not wanting to ask this..." Snow said hesitantly from the door to the Queen's private study. It was actually one of the warmer rooms in the castle, a fire place and lined with books. The first time Snow had been in here after they arrived back in the Enchanted Forest it had been when they were searching the castle for booby traps left by the witch and she'd been surprised to see that most of the books weren't about potions or dark magic, but crop yields and statecraft.

Somehow she'd never thought about Regina in that way. The raging mad woman persona had been so overwhelming. Or was it the lost hero?

"I didn't have a pet cemetery full of your woodland friends if that's what you are about to ask..." It was random, and it took Snow a minute to realize it was her stepmother's sense of humor. "I had wondered given your taste for feathers."

"That's another story..."

Snow actually paused mid step for a moment before deciding to ignore that and press on with her question. "I wanted to lay flowers at my father's grave. I don't know what you did with his body. I never got to visit it after the funeral."

Regina got the dark look she always got when the subject of Snow's father came up. "He's next to your mother in the crypts. Where he'd have wanted to be."

That surprised Snow, and Regina saw the look on her face. "It wasn't a kindness. I needed to establish my legitimacy so he had to be treated with all the respect of a fallen monarch."

Regina looked like she wanted to say something else but thought better of it. Snow knew she should leave, having gotten the information she wanted. "I'm sorry you were so lonely. So was he..."

"Stop."

"What?"

"Stop. You are about to tell me what a good man your father was. How he felt helpless to give me the happiness he wanted everyone to have... Really Snow, you lived 30 years in the other world, did that not give you enough perspective to see how twisted what you were about to say was?"

Snow was stunned into silence. She hadn't really thought much about Regina's marriage to her father since she was a girl and helpless to figure out how to help her stepmother find happiness.

Regina sighed. "Well, what should I expect, I made you a fourth grade teacher not a women's shelter counselor. I didn't want there to be any need for those in Storybrooke."

Snow just stood there, paralyzed now. Knowing she should leave. Knowing this was a conversation she didn't want to have. But perhaps it's one she should be having. "He raped you."

It came out numb even to Snow's ears.

"We wouldn't have called it rape here, Snow. He was my husband. He had rights."

In that moment, memories flooded back to Snow. With new meanings. All the signs she knew now, but ignored than. How could she have missed them. How could her father...? He was a good man. Regina looked up at Snow, and something Snow hadn't seen in years ... decades crossed her eyes. Pain? Concern. Concern for Snow.

The stables, that was the last place she'd seen that look from Regina. So many years ago.

"Snow ... these are old wounds. Long closed for me. You didn't know because it wasn't your place to know. The King... your father... he was yours. And you were his. What happened in my marriage was..."

"My fault. If I hadn't told... if I hadn't been on that horse... I thought you were just lonely. I'm so sorry." She started crying and despite all the raw pain on Regina's face she took Snow in her arms.

"Shhhhh none of this is was the fault of the living."