I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not.
Shit goes wrong when rescuing Henry from a reanimated Daniel. Use your brain kiddos, if you can't handle a major character kicking the bucket, maybe close out of this. If you can, or you like pain, be warned there is what could be classed as graphic descriptions of blood. I'm describing a murder scene after all.
She never saw this coming.
She's thought about death and how, eventually, it would come for her often throughout her years. As a child, too young to understand why Mother's room behind the fireplace was off limits (just that it was), Regina had had nightmares of Cora ripping out her small, developing heart for getting grass stains on her petticoats. She'd daydreamed about slipping beneath the surface of her bath water as Queen and never coming back up, of slipping over the balcony railings and falling down, down, down into blackness and away from humiliation and pain night after night. But a servant would ultimately knock on the door, or a fairy with misguided good intentions would catch her, and eventually Regina stopped courting Death and became her.
Pitchforks and burning at stakes is honestly how she imagined this would go. Especially since the curse broke and everything she held dear shattered around her by her own fucking hands. She didn't think it would happen like this, because of him, and she was starting to hope—she let it twist and carve its way into her being—that she might yet live to see her son forgive her.
She really should be used to being wrong by now.
You stupid, insolent, little girl, Mother's voice hisses. Did you really believe you could have this?
Daniel is in ashes at her feet, and Regina has one hand over her mouth and one over her midriff, vainly trying to keep the blood in. The shears that he'd lodged deep into her gut, once, twice before she'd managed to stop him—kill him—clatter to the floor, staining it with drops of red. Where did he get those? is all she has time to think before her knees give out.
Her hands are shaking so much that by the time she hits the hay-strewn ground they're not making much of a difference to the blood leaking rivers under her torn shirt. She'll need to throw the damn thing away, she thinks hysterically, there's no saving it now, ruined and sullied as it is. As she is.
Her mind hasn't stopped racing since David had caused the world to grind to a halt with just four words—Henry's at the stables—but he's safe. They both are. Daniel can finally rest easy, and Henry… her little boy is safe and sound and out of harm's way.
Darkness creeps in from blurred edges, and someone is choking—she has a moment of clarity where she realises it's her; there's blood clogging her throat, drowning her slowly from the inside out—but it's better than burning, so she focuses on her little boy and tells herself it's okay as long as he got away. David will never let anything happen to him, and he'll be reunited with his real mom, and maybe, just maybe she can be with Daniel at last.
She's thought of death often throughout her life, and she never thought it would come for her on the dusty floor of the stables, the love of her life in pieces around her, her son outside but not speaking to her, but it seems oddly fitting. That she should die in the same place where her life ceased to have meaning, and that Daniel be the one to take it. Her hands aren't doing much to hold the blood back, letting it seep from between her fingers, and it's getting harder and harder to concentrate so she stops trying. Lets her arms grow limp and one slips to land on the floor, fingers spasming towards Daniel's remains, the blood and ash mixing together to clump at her fingertips.
"Regina?" David's voice calls to her through fog.
Blinking back awake—when had she closed her eyes?—she sees his face swimming above hers, eyes wide and face pale, and she feels warmth pressing down over the holes in her stomach. Whimpering, she tries to push his hands away, but she barely manages to flex her fingers.
"Don't," she mumbles, pushing it through the blood in her mouth.
"Shit," he mutters, frantic as he pushes down uselessly on her torso, ignoring when she cries out as a pain registers for a handful of seconds. Regina hadn't realised she'd gone almost completely numb until then, there's a very small, quiet part of her that tells her that the lack of pain means it's nearly over. "Shit, it's… it's alright, we'll call an ambulance…"
A soft laugh that sounds more like a sob forces its way from her lungs, bubbling out of her mouth, as blood gathers and slips down her cheeks to pool at another spot beneath her. "W-won't… co-come…"
"What? Of course they will," he says, but even with her vision going in and out of focus Regina can see the moment the good Prince Charming realises that they won't. Not for her. "We'll take you to them then, it'll save time—we won't have to wait…" but he trails off, because she won't make it that far and they both know it. "FUCK!"
Keeping one hand over her stomach—still not giving up, she muses—David shuffles around until he has her head and upper back in his lap, smearing red down her chin and neck when he pushes her hair away from the sticky tear tracks still streaming down her face. She hadn't realised she was still crying until then. She coughs, more blood flooding her lungs and throat as David tries in vain to hold her so she can breathe easier. How redundant, she thinks.
"W-where's Daniel, Regina?"
She tries to speak, but it's getting harder and harder to stay awake, and sleep is much more attractive than he is. He shakes her back awake, hushing her when she whines.
"Where is he?"
A gurgle is all she manages, but her head lolls to the side, fingertips jerking across the cobbled ground and she knows he understands when he sees the abandoned shears and the pile of dust that used to be her fiancé.
I broke my promise, she realises as she stares at the mess her blood is making of Daniel. I used magic… Henry will be so disappointed in her.
"Hen… Henry," she says, each word feeling like a wall; near impossible to get around.
"Fuck," David swears again, and if she had the energy she'd laugh because who would have thought the noble shepherd had such a filthy mouth? "H-he's outside… he's okay, he's safe."
And that's good, but she knew that, she knew he'd be safe with David—wouldn't have ever let him walk away from her house with her son if he wasn't. "Te-tell him… sorry… ma-agic," she's slurring, barely making any sense but David nods at her.
"You can tell him yourself," he tells her. "You're going to be fine, you're gonna be fine and you'll get the chance to mend everything with him."
Liar, she thinks, almost fond of how panicked he is as he holds her, bleeding out in his arms. She certainly never saw this, she always died alone in her daydreams—in her nightmares.
"D-david?"
David goes rigid when they hear Henry call to him from the open stable doors, Regina closes her eyes—tears still leaking from them—and prays that she's hallucinating.
Don't let him see, she begs.
But she's not hallucinating, at least not completely, because then he's whispering a broken Mom? and running over to them, skidding in her blood as he drops to his knees beside her, sobbing and placing his tiny hands over David's, red staining him too.
"We have to help her!" She hears him say, hears the tears in his voice, and she feels soft vibrations from under her where David must be telling him that they can't help her, but her ears are fuzzy and everything sounds muffled until Henry is screaming and she's ripping her eyes open again. "Mommy…"
Regina wishes desperately that she could hold him, but even just opening her eyes is taking everything she has. She's not strong enough to stay, but she hates herself even more when she sees her baby boy's face—tearstained and flushed as he heaves with the force of his sobs.
"L-love…" I love you, she thinks, screaming at herself now because she can't get the words to come, and she owes him this, she owes him much more but she can't.
"You have to use magic, Mom, you-you can't leave me," he cries.
I don't want to, she thinks, and she doesn't, hasn't wanted to since the moment his squirming, tiny body had been handed to her in a bland office in Boston. But she doesn't have a choice. The magic she'd used to freeze Daniel was difficult enough, especially with two holes ripping her open, honouring his plea for her to stop the pain, let me go had taken every last bit of energy she had. She'd be gone before she's even half-healed.
I'm sorry. It's not fair, she screams in silence, it's not fair that she's survived this long, survived her mother, and Daniel dying, and the King and doing her wifely duty, survived being the Evil Queen and hating herself more than her people did, only to die in the dirt with nothing.
Henry is still screaming at her, begging, telling her he's sorry and he'll come home, but she needs to get up, crying into her hair that he loves her and please, please, don't go Mom, please, I love you. I'm sorry, Mommy.
But she's been dancing with Death for too long, and when it finally comes for her, wrapping darkness and warmth around Regina's cooling body, she thinks she might finally find peace.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau.