A/N: This takes place after the episode Going Home in the Enchanted Forest. Major plot change: Zelena has not taken over Regina's castle. In fact, Zelena has not been introduced at all.
While it may seem "canonical" at first, I'm sure I'll make it plenty AU, as I usually do. I'm really excited about this, and while I can't promise as fast updates (and by fast I mean daily) as I have done for some of my other stories, I'll be updating steadily and reliably. Let's see where this goes :)
Warning: There is a brief and sudden scene of self-harm, but its relatively short and doesn't divulge deeply. Still, I know some people do prefer warnings for those types of things.
Regina sat stiffly at her wooden armoire as she looked blankly her own reflection. Her eyes trailed over the elaborate black dress that crushing her abdomen to the point that she was convinced any minute she would hear the sound of her own rib crack.
She watched her own hand snake up to her chest where an elaborate diamond necklace lay, the center pendant lying in the valley of her cleavage. Her hand delicately cradled the sparkling diamond for a few seconds before her face twisted into displeasure. She scowled audibly and tightened her fist around it, the edges of the gem piercing into her palm sharply. But in response to the pain that was snaking up into each of her fingers, she only clutched harder.
Her lifeless eyes watched herself squeeze tighter and tighter, warm liquid eventually leaking from her palm. With a flick of her brown orbs, she watched the blood trickle down her forearm slowly, like drops of rain on a window.
"What are you doing?" Snow's voice rang out from behind Regina. The noise did nothing to deter Regina's self-harming action though, for her hand continued to tighten, her eyes still piercingly detached.
"Regina!" Snow screeched as she raced up to Regina and pulled her hand back from the pendant. Cradling the injured hand in her own, Snow inspected the blood-coated wounds on Regina's soft flesh.
It was the initiation of contact that caused Regina's eyes to flicker away from their permanently zoned-out position and landed on Snow's concerned face. She looked at the younger woman surprisingly, as if she had just now realized that she wasn't alone in the room. She simply watched as Snow grabbed a cloth and frantically blot at her hand, feeling it sting and burn when water was poured on it.
"What were you doing?" Snow asked moments later, her voice calmer now. She kept her eyes down, trained on Regina's hand as she continued to work at cleaning it.
"I was…" Regina trailed off, she didn't even really remember what she was doing. The only thing she remembered was what she had been thinking. Snow waited patiently, but Regina's vision zoned out again, staring off into somewhere else.
"I was thinking about Henry," Regina pushed out in a weak voice. It had been exactly eighty-two days since she'd seen Henry. Eighty-two days of torture in which she had no idea if he was alive, healthy, safe. She had no way of knowing if he and Emma had even escaped the remnants of Pan's curse.
Were they off in New York living a life of their own? Roaming around Storybrooke in an effort to find all the others who had been transported back to the Enchanted Forest? She had no idea. And it was exactly that, the complete uncertainty, that had been growing and festering inside of her for exactly eighty-two days. It was exactly that, which had driven her to the point of insanity as described by her actions.
She looked back in the mirror and stared at the dark circles under her eyes as Snow went to retrieve a new bandage for her hand. When she came back with a pile of cloth that Regina, herself, had no idea she even had, Snow began to unwrap the long strip of material.
Around and around, the pixie hair woman bandaged her hand; around and around, Regina's head spun with the miserable, wretched, life she was currently living. She looked down at her pendent that still sat nestled in her chest, each corner smeared with her own blood.
Oh, how have the mighty fallen, she thought to herself.
"Your hand should be good for now, but Regina, please don't hurt yourself. It's not going to fix anything." Snow said as she stood back up and placed a hand on Regina's shoulder. Strangely enough, Regina didn't flinch. Yet again, she didn't seem to do much of anything these days, except sit at her armoire and stare into the mirror as if it was a window into another world, hopefully one with Henry in it.
"What should I do then? There's nothing I can do to get my son back. Nothing," Regina's attitude, which had started out as one of vigor and determination had waned and waned until all that was left of her was a skeleton of bitterness and a shriveled up heart that circulated more pain than blood.
"There's always something you can do. You can't give up hope...which is actually why I came here today," at the change of Snow's tone from pity to something else, Regina's ears perked up. She jerked her head away from the mirror and looked into the brunette eyes of Snow White.
Snow seemed nervous to continue on, as she should be, for what she was holding behind her back was something of great power. And while great power was the exact thing she knew Regina needed, she knew it was also something that could finish off the uncharacteristically fragile woman in front of her.
"Well, what is it?" Regina encouraged. Ever so slowly, Snow pulled a book from behind her back. It was brown, leather-bound, intricately designed with steel tendrils that snaked up the cover. The pages inside of it were thick, as if made out of animal hide, and while Snow couldn't decipher the symbols that appeared on the pages, she knew Regina would be able to.
At the sight of the book, Regina's eyes opened wide, her hands shot out in front of her and immediately wrenched it from Snow's grasp. She plopped it on her armoire unceremoniously and began leafing through it. When she got to a page that seemed to be in the exact middle of the book, she stopped. She stared at the symbols that appeared before her, even going as far to trace her fingers over a certain line of dried black ink several times.
"Where did you find this?" Regina asked suddenly and brashly; she hadn't meant for her voice to come out so harsh, but old habits die hard. Snow wrung her hands together nervously.
"It was in my bedroom."
She had been cleaning underneath her and Charming's bed yesterday and had come across the book. It had immediately looked out of place and Snow couldn't imagine ever allowing the book into her castle at any time, not before the curse, not after the curse. The cover itself looked sinister, and even holding it in order to bring it here, she felt a sense of doom and heaviness settle over her. In fact, she felt a physical sense of relief the moment Regina had taken it from her hands.
A snarl erupted from between Regina's painted lips, "Of course. Rumplestilskin would hide it in the one place he knew I would despise."
"I had a feeling it was his. Well, that it was the Dark One's..." Snow trailed off in a quiet voice. Her body was absolutely vibrating with nerves, and the fact that her sinking suspicions of the previous owner had just been confirmed only set her farther on edge.
"Regina?" Snow asked after Regina continued to flip through the pages, her hand keeping bookmark on the original page she found. Regina didn't answer.
"Regina?" Snow repeated, louder this time.
"What?" Again, with the harsher than necessary tone.
"Be careful." Snow warned in a motherly way. Regina had the urge to snort at irony of the situation, but instead just waved Snow off with an, "I will, I will."
At that, Snow hesitantly retreated to back to the doorway of Regina's room and walked out. As she closed the door behind her she hoped and prayed Regina would be level headed, calm, reasonable.
The moment Snow left the room, Regina continued to sort through the book at a pace that was anything but level-headed, calm and reasonable. After going through almost three quarters of the book, she finally found what she was looking for.
Page three hundred and twenty-two. The Magic Mirror.
She scanned over the words carefully, trailing her finger down the page as she read.
The Magic Mirror: a two way mirror that can transcend realms. One can walk into the mirror and enter a random realm out of chance, or one can be retrieved from a specific realm.
Further down the page, she searched for instructions, a chant, a secret ingredient, anything that she would need to get it to work, but there was nothing. Nothing except a history of its origins, a roughly drawn picture, and a detailed physical description.
With a loud grumble, the brunette smacked the book closed. Useless. Even when he was dead, Rumplestilskin was useless. Who doesn't write instructions to a magical device?
But in the state of delusion and heartbreak that Regina was in, she brushed off the minor obstacle and stood up sharply from the armoire that had become her permanent place of residence for the last week. She paced the floor of her room in a couple of swift steps, as she struggled to remember where the Magic Mirror Rumplestilskin had given her all those years ago was.
His original purpose had been to have her push her mother into it, banishing her to another land, but of course, that had failed. She had been so weak, then, so new. Not now though. She was willing to do whatever it took to get Henry back. She didn't care the consequences.
After pinpointing the location of the mirror in her castle, Regina flicked her manicured hand in the air, and within seconds a mirror appeared perched against the wall. It was just how she'd remembered it: tall, decorated, menacing. She stepped closer to it and ran her wounded hand along the frame of the mirror, her fingers jumping up and down with the textured surface. She had no plan, no clue how to make the mirror work, but blind with newfound hope, she forged on blindly.
"Come back to me, Henry," Regina whispered as she willed the magic inside of her to concentrate in her hand. The magic fizzled a bit, providing a slight glow on the frame of the mirror where her hand made contact, but nothing happened.
Seconds later, she pulled her hand back, her face creasing with a frown as she touched the mirror again, this time on the glass. A fizzle, a glow, and a low grunt of frustration sounded as she willed more magic and pressed harder, mumbling incantations that she made up in her head.
With each passing second of failure Regina only focused harder. Fizzles and glowing. Usless fucking fizzles and glowing, she thought to herself.
After exerting so much magic so forcefully she ripped her hand back and tumbled back into her chair at the armoire. Her body sagged in fatigue, but her eyes roared with a fire. She remained sitting for only seconds before summing what was left of her energy to grab the book of magic. Without hesitation, she opened it to her bookmarked page of three hundred and twenty-two.
Desperately, she read it again. And again. Nothing, there was absolutely nothing. Inside her anger built higher. Here she was, with a glimpse of hope, an opportunity to get her son back, and she couldn't even get the goddamn mirror to work. What was left of her magic began to pick up speed inside of her. Fueled by her rage and frustration, she felt her control slip from her grip, the magic inside of her doing what it did best: fizzling and glowing around her as she approached the mirror.
"Give. Me. My. Son." She screamed in maniacal rage. She thrust her hand hard at the mirror, hoping the force would cause the magic to transfer from her hand to the glass surface.
Surprisingly, it did. The plate of reflective material began rippling as if it were the surface on a clear body of water.
"Please," Regina whispered. She stumbled to lean on the wall but kept her hand dutifully in contact with the rippling surface. Her knees were becoming weak and her skin was paling quickly. It was as if her bones had disintegrated and replaced with gelatin, but still, her hand remained.
"I need my son."
In a movement that seemed to happen in slow motion, Regina slid to the floor as the little blood that was still circulating in her face diminished to nothing, her skiing turning nothing more than a ghastly white. She collapsed on the floor in complete exhaustion, having exerted every ounce of energy in her effort to keep the surface glowing, her magic fizzling, and her hope in tact for as long as possible.
For a moment, nothing happened and the room was still. Regina remained lifeless and passed out on the floor as the surface of the mirror continued to glow an eerie green.
It was only until a full minute later, that the mirror seemed to brighten and expand as it hurled a body through it. The body landed on the stone ground hard, with a sickening slap, sliding slightly across the floor as remnants of the powerful force behind it wore off.
The mirror slowly dimmed, becoming less green and returning to its naturally reflective, yet lackluster state. It was then, when the room had been rid of all magical properties, and replaced with nothing but the cooler than comfortable air, that that the two bodies on the floor began to simultaneously move. At first it was only twitching of the fingers, a nudge of the foot, but they were moving.
"Aghh," The body groaned as it rolled over.
Regina's eyes lurched open. She had thought she was alone. She had failed, the last thing she remembered before she passed out on the floor was that. She had failed.
Slowly, she moved her head to the side, wincing at the tight muscles that surrounded her neck, needing to know who had made that sound next to her. When she saw the mop of blonde hair that spilled across the floor, her breath caught in her throat.
"Emma?"
I've got big plans guys, big plans!