For ninzied, who asked for sob-worthy angst.
Footfalls pound above Regina's head, one person, two, three, four, they call her name frantically. (So they have found the shattered wine glasses from her fit of anger, the half-drunk bottle of whiskey and the other half spilled over the kitchen floor, the scorch marks on her kitchen wall where she'd burned through Roland's stick figure drawings of the Evil Queen and the little boy she saved.)
Why does she always destroy things that remind her of love? (Because it is what she does to the love itself, it is what she does to everything she touches, like King Midas, but on her fingertips are ash instead of gold.)
They find her then; she has left the usually hidden door to her secret room in plain sight. Snow, David, Emma.
Robin.
Snow gasps, her steps halting in front of her husband and daughter, but Robin blurs into her vision, sinking to the ground before her. He cradles her face, his thumb sweeping under her red eyes.
"Regina, are you all right?"
Her breath hitches, and when he looks down it is to see her bloodied hands, shards of glass broken in them, red stains on her sleeves and shirt. She tries to scramble away from him, impossible with her back bent against the wall. "M fine," she mumbles.
"You need a doctor," he argues.
He stands, supporting her at her elbows so she will too, and when she starts to stumble he goes to lift her, carry her, hold her.
"No!" She pushes, fighting him, tears welling up in her eyes as she aggravates the injuries on her hands, pressing the glass deeper.
"Regina!" Snow and David run up, each of them supporting one of her arms, tearing her shoving hands away from Robin, until David scoops her up and starts to walk them to the door, Snow beside them holding Regina's hand.
Robin feels a hand grasp his shoulder, Emma saying, "She'll be okay."
He chokes on a sob, his shoulders crumpling, his face in his hands, and when he draws them away they are red with Regina's blood.
They keep Henry away from her that night. Or they try, anyway. David isn't really surprised when, during his turn outside Regina's hospital room, where they're giving her saline and stitching up her palms and fingers, Henry appears with the creeping air of a kid out after bedtime.
"I want to see her."
"Henry, she's-"
"I just want to see her, Gramps. Please."
David heaves a sigh, knowing arguing will be pointless-he really is Regina's son. "All right, kid."
Henry walks in almost hesitantly then, but the minute he catches sight of his mom, her face blank, eyes trained on her wounds as Dr. Whale stitches her left palm closed, he runs to her.
"Mom!"
"Henry?"
He reaches the side of the bed quickly, and she almost lifts her right hand to hold his face, before she remembers she can't right now. Henry reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder anyway.
Something comes back in her eyes, a little warmth, and with it the pain. "Hi, Sweetheart."
And then he does the best thing anyone could do for Regina when she's hurt. He asks her nothing about it. Almost pretends he doesn't see the bandages they're wrapping around her palm, or even the doctors and hospital bed and IV running into the crease of her elbow. He just eases onto the bed beside her and rests his head on her shoulder. When the doctors finish their work, hand her painkillers and a little cup of water and take out her IV, and she gives Whale a withering glare for attempting to have her sign discharge papers when she's the Queen-Mayor of a town that doesn't really exist, Henry goes home with her, back to the house Emma and Snow have cleared of all remnants of this afternoon and evening (yesterday's, really, it's well past one in the morning).
(It doesn't help Regina, much, to have the traces of Robin erased from her home. His absence is everywhere, in the spots where their wine glasses should've been and the misshapen sofa cushion depressed from several hours spent under Robin's elbow. Snow and Emma will not have noticed the leftovers from their picnic in the fridge, or that the very sight of the fireplaces makes Regina's skin warm the way it had been when he eased her out of her dress and kissed his way from the curve of her neck to the swell of her breasts.)
Still, Henry's presence keeps her head less foggy than it had been before, keeps the stomach-dropping, haze-inducing panic at bay. Mostly.
Henry's always been a terribly curious kid, but when she gets ready for bed and heads to the guest room next to his, rather than the master bedroom at the end of the hall, her hands weak and sore even from the efforts of changing into pajamas and washing her makeup off with a cloth, he doesn't ask questions.
He does, however, rise early to make her coffee and toast and bring it to her in bed. (The coffee, she needs, as she's slept a grand total of two hours for the six and a half she's spent in the room. The toast, she nibbles at, for Henry's sake.)
Days pass, enough to blur together, without seeming like many, each one much like the last, little sleep, no appetite, Henry to keep her sane. (And others, sometimes, though she hates it when that thought creeps into her mind. Snow and the baby Regina can't help but love. David with them sometimes, Archie once with a sad smile that makes her want to choke. She even manages to behave indifferently to Emma's presence.)
It is on the fourth day after her return from the hospital that someone else knocks on her door. She looks out the front door, and, seeing no one, stands bewildered for a moment before another knock sounds, clearly from behind her.
Ah. The thief is using the back door, of course. Never one for ceremony.
The first thing she feels is shame. Humiliation. For being so openly nothing before him that night, so weak, when he's nothing to her now.
But, she figures, to deny him entrance would be to admit to those feelings, and that's something she'll never do.
"Can I help you?" she asks cooly, swallowing and looking at the ground.
He crosses the room in a second, Regina looking up at the sound, and before she can read the intention in his wide-blue eyes, his lips meet her forehead. He lingers as her eyes fall shut and her lips part with a gasp.
"I'm sorry," he whispers when he retreats. "I-How are your hands?"
She stares into those eyes as he slides his palms from her shoulders to her wrists and lifts her hands to look at them.
They're covered by the dressings she has to change twice a day, and she tried to tell Snow she didn't heal them because the magic wouldn't work on herself, but the truth is she could have, and she likes the pain, the physical reminder that this thing between them was real. (Not quite as much as she likes the way he's cradling her hands so tenderly, his thumb brushing over her knuckles.)
And then he's saying these beautiful, impossible things, he has worried about her and hasn't slept wondering if she had felt better and she can't, won't believe him. Not yet.
He understands. How could she believe in him when she does not believe in herself? She thinks she turns everything around her to ash, but that is not true, not anymore; her touch makes things real and alive. (Robin, too, she awoke him from years spent with one solitary joy-of being Roland's father-to other joys, to living.)
Regina saves the town. Again. Helps Elsa find her way back to family and happiness, at once quickly and patiently, the way a fire melts ice. And finally, at last, she begins to believe again.
When they come back together, her now-healed hands twined with his, their kiss is not the curse-breaking stuff of fairy tales. He does not turn to gold; he is not perfect, neither is she. They are not perfect.
But the fire coursing through their veins, their love, makes something new out of the ashes of the old. A second chance.