"Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."—Buddhist proverb
The man had a peculiar habit of always turning up at just the right moment, but he had absolutely no concept of modern technology. Even if he wanted to call her, his lack of a phone to do so most certainly played to her advantage.
Besides, Regina was quite skilled at finding places where she intended not to be found. Marriage had been a great way to practice, with an entire castle's worth of options for being anywhere her dear husband Leopold the King wasn't. Then for 28 years she had basically hidden in plain sight as mayor of Storybrooke (the apple tree had been a brilliant stroke of irony, her own private joke), amongst fools who didn't even know they had something to search for—at least until the first curse had been broken.
Obviously the forest was out of the question; he could track her there as lazily as a fox did a chicken in a henhouse. And there were only so many places in her own home offering solace from the doorbell that would chime at various times in the night, and sometimes again as the dawn began to show through cracks in the sky, when she could visualize with a clarity that pierced her heart his resigned return home to his wife, to their shared bed, before his Marian could wake and realize she had slept in it alone.
Of course, even if there was no longer a man that belonged in Regina's life, there was still a boy, and he had no trouble locating her at all.
"Mom?"
"Henry," she sighed, and his presence at her side was like a balm that soothed and eased her eyes closed, for one rare, wonderful moment of calm.
"Mom, I…I didn't come alone." Henry looked down at his feet, sheepishly kicking up dirt.
Goodbye, calm.
"What," said Regina as evenly as she could muster for her son's sake, trying to swallow the slow, bitter burn of anger rising up like bile. She could never be ready for this; to fully feel loss of his touch only when he was close enough to deny it; to know that he had chosen someone else, and that his choice would be written plainly in the apology on his face and in the way he would no longer reach out to steal her kiss. And if that man had imposed upon Henry to facilitate this confrontation, she swore to God—
"Mom, please." Henry spoke earnestly, as he always did, endlessly trusting, and so strong to open his heart the way he alone knew how, where it only made her weak the times she'd tried to do the same. "She said she had to see you."
She?
"Regina, please don't blame Henry. I absolutely insisted that I come along, and I'm afraid I didn't give him much of a choice." The source of Regina's misdirected angst had maintained a cautionary perimeter around her field of vision but stepped directly into it as she spoke just now. "I only wanted to—"
"You used my son," Regina said, rounding on Tinker Bell.
The fairy stood her ground. "You can't shut everyone out forever."
"Watch me," Regina snarled, fury sparking her magic like steel to flint, and shards of light crackled in her open palm. All three of them drew their gazes down in surprise.
Purple once more.
"Mom! Please, play nice." Henry must have inherited that look of exasperation from her, but this stubborn inclination of his to be a team player all the time most definitely came from his other mother.
Regina folded her hands into her lap with a long-suffering sigh and looked up at Tinker Bell expectantly, one eyebrow poised upward, haughty, deprecating, scornful.
"Great. I'll see you at Granny's later, Mom?" Henry put a hand on Regina's shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. She hummed in a noncommittal manner and his answering frown was so comically stern that she snorted out a laugh.
"Fine, fine," and with a playful shove away, "You win. Have it your way."
Henry bounded off with a megawatt grin and an exuberant spring in his step. Regina, realizing too late she had a smile to match, hurriedly rearranged her features to more appropriately express her general annoyance at having let herself get backed into a corner.
"I was on my way to see Blue when I ran into Henry. Walk with me there," Tinker Bell urged. She looked about them, taking in the almost hauntingly quiet atmosphere of their surroundings. A chilly, sinister vibe still emanated from the obscured markings in the dirt floor. "Honestly, I was surprised to find you here."
"That was the idea." Regina rose to stand in reluctant defeat, dusting off shreds of hay and what looked to be some rusted bronze metal debris from her wool skirt. She cast one last glance around the abandoned space before following Tinker Bell past what remained of the door—jagged and broken at the edges, where the Wicked Witch of the West's time portal had blasted it open and sent Regina's life into a downward-spiraling emotional cyclone of hell.
With every word that Tinker Bell left unspoken accentuated by the silence between their soft footfalls on the dirt-packed ground, Regina's vexation grew to volcanic proportions and then exploded forth. "This is your fault, you know," Regina accused her. "I know I barely dated the man for three days, but I spent decades before that with this insane idea in my head that you put there about how he was my soulmate, my second chance at happiness. And look how well that turned out, again."
"He is your second chance at happiness," Tinker Bell corrected, nimbly sidestepping an overturned rock with her graceful fairy feet. "And quite frankly, you're the one who blew it the first time. But now this is your second chance with him."
"Are you blind?" Regina demanded to know. "This is your idea of me getting a second chance." An incredulous shake of her head. "The whole town witnessed his precious family reunion with that woman Emma had the nerve to bring back from the dead."
"And what have you been able to see since then," Tinker Bell retorted, "while hiding in your mansion, behind your mayor's desk, behind Henry?"
"Do not bring Henry into this."
"Then don't pretend to know what's going on around you!" Tinker Bell's sudden, uncharacteristic outburst made them both pause for a moment by the side of the road. "I'm sorry," she said after a beat. "But we're not in the Enchanted Forest anymore. You can't sit on your throne high up in your castle, so far removed from the rest of the world and blaming everyone but yourself for your problems."
"I own my mistakes," Regina said, an echo of words he had spoken to her once, but the declaration lacked conviction coming from her. Did she, really? What fault of her own had she allowed herself to acknowledge, other than apparently not killing Marian properly the first time around?
No, she told herself vehemently. No. You don't have to be the villain anymore. And killing people who get in your way is not an acceptable thing for heroes to do. No matter how much her fingers may have been itching to do so.
"And do you have any idea what this is doing to Henry? It's tearing him apart, to have this rift between his families."
"He is my family," Regina said, but she knew deep down Tinker Bell's words came from a place of legitimate concern. It wasn't fair to Henry, for her to keep pulling him down with her.
"You're not the only one who's suffering," said Tinker Bell, with a whopping load of subtext that made Regina's chest feel too small to contain the violent thudding of her heart. "There are no easy decisions to make for anyone under these circumstances."
They had ascended the steps of the convent. Tinker Bell sighed. "Look, Regina, why don't you stay for dinner?" Sensing Regina's hesitation and pouncing on it before it could become a definitive no, she gifted her with one smile, simple but effective in how rarely it occurred. "Come on. You'd be hard pressed to find better company than that of a nun and a misfit fairy."
Regina rolled her eyes but rapped her knuckles against the door. A scuffling sound and a high-pitched giggle issued from within, followed by the pitter pattering of many small steps and Blue's voice saying, firmly, "Sweetheart, just one moment—"
Before Regina had a chance to see if Tinker Bell looked as confused as she felt, the door swung open and she was greeted by the Blue Fairy, and from behind her skirts, an unmistakable mop of hair with matching brown eyes was peering up at her.
"R'gina!" Roland burbled through a mouthful of crackers, and promptly flung himself straight toward her torpedo-style.
"Oh," was all Regina could say, instinctively crouching down to absorb his excess energy, and all her reasons for wanting, for needing, to stay away suddenly made no sense at all—not when confronted with this tiny vehicle for love in its purest form, now encircling her neck and tugging delightedly at the ends of her hair. Bless his heart; the past week's events that had wrenched her presence from his life with such cold surgical precision hadn't seemed to temper his memory of it, or his fondness of her.
Maybe it really was as simple a thing as winning his heart with ice cream.
"I've been babysitting him for…" Blue trailed off, awkward and apologetic.
Regina realized her head had been swiveling here to there, everywhere, searching, for him, but her pulse dropped back down to a more normal rate upon registering Blue's words.
"Can I pour you some tea?" Mother Superior rushed on, leading them into the kitchen with exaggerated purpose, as if she intended to leave that uncomfortable start to the conversation back on the terrace like an ugly patio chair.
"I want to help!" said Roland, and Regina, who had been about to politely decline, simply couldn't resist letting him.
"All right, Roland," said Blue, hoisting him up into a cozy little perch on the counter. "We have so many kinds of tea to choose from! Put any you like in these teacups while Tink pours the water. Careful! They're hot." She was opening cabinets for him as Regina turned away and let her mask fall for a split second.
She felt ashamed as a familiar anger washed over her, and it was such a disservice to dear sweet Roland because of all people, he was utterly blameless, could not possibly disappoint her even when he had approached a woman he had no memory of and knew to call her "Mama," had done nothing to deserve the emotional upheaval in his life that even a four-year-old boy could perceive if not fully comprehend. But oh how she missed him, and she missed the one glorious afternoon they had spent together, with her mansion as their playground, and now she could smell in his hair not just the phantom kisses of his father, but another, foreign, feminine touch as well, and it made her stomach turn in somersaults.
"Here." Tinker Bell was handing her a daintily gilded cup, painted apple blossoms extending leafy tendrils around the handle that Regina accepted into her grasp. "Just remember what I said, Regina. This has been a hard adjustment for others too. You need to know that."
At a loss for words, Regina sank onto the nearest cushy surface and took a sip. A dash of cinnamon, heavy on the honey and, of course, infused with apples. Go figure. But it felt comforting sliding down and scalding her throat, and three swallows later it was gone.
Roland left Blue to bustling about the kitchen and toddled over in Regina's direction, to begin drumming a random, excited beat onto her knee; she playfully captured his hand in hers and they touched palms; she tickled his fingers and giggles bubbled out of him like a glass of champagne.
"How is he," she wanted to know suddenly, hoarsely, leaving no room for ambiguity about who she referred to. When Tinker Bell didn't answer right away, Regina shifted impatiently. Tink was clinking a spoon around in her own teacup, staring intently into it like it held some sort of secret; she wasn't even looking at Regina. It was like she hadn't spoken at all.
She noticed then that Roland had undertaken the business of tracing blobs into her palm, but she could barely feel a thing. In fact, all her senses seemed rather dulled, and where it might have been apt to respond with some alarm at her condition she felt only an indifferent curiosity, as though she were seeing something strange happen to someone else from afar.
Her skin began to tingle all over, like an army of ants was marching across it. She closed her eyes.
"Regina? Are you feeling all right?" Tinker Bell's voice hovered close by, and then hands were examining her forehead, checking her pulse, wiping sweat beading off of her skin.
Obviously not, Regina had every intention of saying, but at that moment the cup slipped from her noodly fingers and shattered impressively all over the hardwood floor. She tried to put out a warning hand in case Roland decided to investigate, but her arm felt strangely like lead and rubber all at once.
The cup.
"What did—what did you put in my tea?" Regina managed to gasp out as she felt her body crumpling like a sock and slipping down the edge of the sofa. "Are you trying…to…poison me?"
Tinker Bell knit her eyebrows into a withering glare at Regina's ludicrous accusation before turning to Blue, who was shaking her head in complete bewilderment as she coaxed Roland away from the shards of broken glass.
"Not me," Blue said, looking down at the boy with dawning comprehension. "Roland…Roland, which tea canister did you use?"
"That one," Roland said happily, a chubby little finger directing everyone's attention to an emerald green tin that had been generously festooned with sparkles, nestled innocently behind a large ceramic cookie jar.
"Oh, no…"
Regina vaguely registered the consternation in Blue's voice as she began to see dark spots invading her periphery and coalescing toward the center.
"I made Regina's tea!" Roland beamed, with dimples on full display, looking pleased as punch.
Tinker Bell hurriedly grabbed the tin and snapped the lid open. "It's empty," she said, holding it out for Blue to examine.
"Empty?" Blue gasped. "That's…that's extremely concerning."
"Why? What was in it?"
Blue's uneasy gaze lifted up slowly to meet Tinker Bell's anxious one. "Pixie dust."
Tinker Bell's eyes were round as saucers. "What happens when you…ingest pixie dust?"
With trepidation Blue surveyed the Queen, now slumped on the floor against the couch. Roland had inched his way back over to her side and was touching a concerned hand to her cheek, but Regina was out cold. Blue looked back at Tinker Bell, apprehensiveness clearly evident in the crinkling of her brow.
"I couldn't say. It's never been done before."
Her head was killing her, slowly and with what felt like many small knives. God, whatever was in that tea had really done a number on her. The fresh scent of earth reached her nose, which seemed odd, even after considering whatever the hell had just happened to her, for which 'odd' didn't even begin to cover it.
It occurred to her then that she was no longer propped up, but lying down. She extended an arm outward to inspect the situation and encountered a thin sheet of blanket, and beyond that, nothing but…dirt and blades of grass.
Maybe now was as good a time as any to panic, because the only plausible explanation for her current predicament was that she had very nearly been beaten at her own game, and only by some stroke of dumb luck had the two fairies managed to neither kill her nor dispose of her body properly.
She felt ridiculous even thinking it.
There was a dull flap of a heavy-sounding fabric and her eyelids were immediately assaulted with piercing rays of sunshine. Groaning, she lifted a hand to disrupt the stream of light, massaging her temples with a thumb and forefinger. At least her limbs seemed willing to play ball with her brain again. That part was promising.
"Ah, I see you've finally decided to rejoin the land of the living."
Regina's entire body went rigid as though it had been submerged in arctic waters. Her eyes flew open, blinded briefly by the beams of light dancing circles around the silhouette of a man who towered above her near the opening of the tent; then, slowly, they realigned to illuminate a smirking, rakishly handsome face she had hoped against hope to never see again for as long as her heart still beat in her chest.
"Robin?"
A/N: Many fun things planned for Regina coming soon, if you guys are interested… :)
