Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters.
A/N: A little experiment to try and coax my muse back to work.
Regina is fascinated by sleep, maybe because she has so much trouble finding rest at night.
o o o
Her mother tosses and turns in her sleep. As a child Regina always imagines her mother is running from something, like the yard dog they keep chained outside next to the house. But the dog also whimpers in his sleep. Her mother does not. She twitches and turns but it is always silently. Regina rarely watches her mother sleep, always in fear of how she would retaliate should she ever find her daughter watching her. In fact, Regina only does it twice, and both times come after she hid from her mother's rage in her mother's own room, hoping that she would never look for Regina in there. Both times, Cora gives up and goes to bed after a while, allowing Regina to escape to her own room.
The first time Regina stops in the door and turnes around only to make sure her mother is still asleep. The second time she stays for a few minutes, watching in fascination as the terrors of the night haunt her mother's sleep.
She smiles as she leaves, even knowing she would feel her mother's anger the next day, and would pay for hiding with welts on her skin and mottled bruises.
o o o
Her father's body is calm during sleep. At first Regina isn't surprised; it is her father's natural state. He sleeps on his side, curled up slightly, breathing deeply. Every other breath or so his throat rattles, and a snore escapes. Regina sometimes stays long enough to recognize the pattern in her father's snoring. He would snore softly for a few moments, then increasingly loudly for a few more, only to culminate in a mighty roar that shocks his own body out of snoring and is followed by a number of slow, even, silent breaths until the cycle begins anew.
Regina remembers giggling the first time until the roar scares her into running out of the room, afraid her father would wake. The second time she stays to see if he really wakes up, but he doesn't. The third time she begins to wonder how he manages to sleep so calmly, quietly, when sleep eludes her at night, especially after one of her mother's beatings. She loves her father dearly but she hates him for being able to sleep when she can't.
o o o
Daniel is the first person Regina ever sees smiling in their sleep. His face is totally relaxed, soft, and his breathing is even and silent. Regina enjoys watching him sleep, the few times she is granted the pleasure after some stolen moments in the stables. She watches over Daniel as he sleeps peacefully, studying his face, listening to his breaths, feeling his heartbeat under her hand. She always wishes she could just join him in slumber, even for a little while, but she always knows she has to be careful, be on her guard lest her mother decided she needed Regina for something.
When she watches Daniel sleep, she imagines their life together. A small house somewhere in the woods. Just a couple of rooms for them and maybe a child or two, that would be enough. She knows she could be happy there, working with horses, Daniel by her side. She would love him and the children – definitely more than one, she decides – and she would be able to finally get some sleep at night.
She smiles happily at the thoughts, which is how she should have known that it would never come to pass.
o o o
Leopold is obnoxious even in sleep, Regina thinks. She dreads the nights he comes into her bedchamber, demanding his marital rights. He's obsessed with producing a male heir, so he comes by much more often than Regina can bear. Actually, once would have been more than enough for her. Her wedding night is … uncomfortable, to put it mildly. There is no pleasure in it for her, no consideration for her feelings. Her new husband mounts her, drunk on wine and on having a beautiful young bedmate, ruts on her for an agonizingly long time, babbling about his love for his first wife all the time. When he is done, he rolls over and falls asleep at once, snoring loudly, taking up most of the space, his bride lying next to him, silencing her sobs with a pillow.
The nights Regina has to spend in her husband's presence are long. As soon as she can be sure that he is deeply asleep, she leaves the bed and sits on the windowsill, staring into the night, the freedom it offers, while listening to his snoring.
He disgusts her, and she can't sleep.
o o o
Little Snow sleeps with a smile on her face that Regina wants to carve off, preferably with a spoon. She can't understand how someone who destroyed her happiness can find sleep so easily, and sleep so … righteously. The first time she watches Snow sleep, she sits by her bedside, waiting to see if the girl had nightmares after what she's done. Then she realizes that of course she wouldn't. Snow doesn't know what she's done, and somehow that makes it worse.
Snow never wakes up in the night, and Regina assumes she's dreaming of unicorns and puppies, completely unaware of the growing darkness next to her bed. Regina wonders what would happen if she just killed Snow in her sleep. Smothering her smiling face with a pillow, watching the struggle, listening to the final gasping breaths, dampened by goose-down.
Regina has that image in her head for the longest time, but she never acts on it. She doesn't know why.
o o o
The first night after the curse is the first night Regina sleeps deeply, peacefully in as long as she can remember. She wakes up feeling weird, as if sleep has become unnatural to her.
But she smiles when she wakes up, excited to be in her new world. The world that is her happy ending.
The peace doesn't last long. After a week, she has explored her new world, the excitement has worn off a little, and her sleep is restless once more.
o o o
Mary Margaret Blanchard tosses and turns in her bed at night. The smile is gone from her face, and the longer Regina watches the better she feels.
Until she goes home and still can't sleep.
o o o
Henry sleeps like a baby. Literally. Regina figures that it's a good thing she's used to going without much sleep because the first few months with Henry consist of him crying every few hours. She doesn't mind spending the night walking around her mansion; it's not like she needs much sleep these days anyway.
He settles down a little more after the first four months but Regina doesn't. She watches him sleep in his cot, then his tiny bed, and later his big-boy bed. She soothes him when he's agitated in his sleep, no doubt chased by dragons in his dreams, and smiles softly when he calms down immediately.
His sleep becomes more restless once he suspects his mother of being the Evil Queen. Regina only looks in on him once or twice a night after that because she can't bear to see it. She has a feeling that her presence would hurt, not help his sleep.
She spends many nights crying in her bed after that. And then she starts asking Graham over more.
o o o
Graham never stays over, never sleeps beside her, and Regina never goes to watch him sleep in his own bed. That would be too intimate. He only serves one purpose: exhaust her enough so she can sleep.
It never works.
o o o
At first, Emma has the lightest sleep of anyone Regina has ever seen. She wakes up at the smallest of sounds, and when Regina asks about it, Emma's one-word response — prison — really explains it all. Maybe that's why Regina feels so comfortable lying next to Emma at night. She doesn't move, doesn't make a sound, just holds onto Emma and listens to her even breaths. She rests.
After a while Emma notices that Regina doesn't sleep much and she tries her damnedest to change that. They cuddle, they argue, they have energetic sex for hours. And while Emma slips into an exhausted sleep afterwards, Regina does not.
It takes about a year for Emma to lose her fight-or-flight instinct hen she sleeps. Regina realizes it one night when she accidentally drops her book on the floor next to the bed with a loud noise and Emma sleeps right through it instead of jumping a foot in the air. Regina turns off the light and gets a little closer to Emma to rest her eyes as usual, and there's a smile on her face that she can't seem to shake. The bed smells of them and the love they made earlier that night, and Emma rolls over in her sleep and wraps herself around Regina like a vine. She mumbles something in her sleep that sounds like love ya and tightens her hold.
Regina's smile widens as she closes her eyes with a sigh. I love you too, she thinks.
Then she sleeps.
The End