A/N: First I have to thank my friend gamilton for reading through everything to try and save you, the readers, from my many mistakes.
Plus, you know, without her I'd likely not write period. LOL.
Hopefully you will enjoy the story, I suck at naming and summaries, so hopefully the name will fit this story.
Warnings. This story will be slow. There is probably something in here that will annoy/anger someone or something and I prob won't remember to put any other warnings in here.
I will post every Friday should I manage to actually get a (hopefully) decent chapter out.
Regina,
I do not know what to call you anymore. For many minutes I sat, thinking of how to head it. You are not Mayor Swan. You are not my wife. You are my beloved, but you do not love me. Have never loved me. Regina. Simple, direct. It was the most fitting I could find. But then, I am but an idiot. A fact I have always been fine with, especially because I believed I was your idiot.
Long, hard, excruciating hours, days, and weeks have been spent thinking. Thinking about what I wish to say to you. What I have no choice but to say. At least once. Everyone has said that I am a person of few, if any, words. This is true. As stated, I am an idiot. I leave the talking to you whenever possible.
Once upon a time I believed I could be your idiot. Let's leave this statement for later shall we? For now I feel I must warn you that I forsee this being the longest letter, or any document I've written period, that I have ever taken the time, or had the gumption, to write.
Today is the twenty-third of October. My fortieth birthday. Twelve years ago I met the most beautiful, amazing, magnificent, and just extraordinarily majestic being that I have ever, in my years, laid my eyes upon. You. I'd not felt my heartbeat in such a long time, but that moment my eyes landed upon your own glorious orbs i could feel it bang against my ribcage like a jackhammer.
In that moment it was like some overdone cheesy romantic comedy, the ones I call chick flicks. Girl sees girl for the first time, falls irreversibly, undeniably, in love. Well. It's the truth. That shit really did happen - at least it did for me. I loved you in that moment, and not once have I ever stopped. Honestly speaking I don't think I could, and I have tried. I will admit that freely. I have tried, so hard, to stop loving you. I hate feeling like a failure because I simply can't.
Everyday I have to force myself out of bed because I can't. My love for you is final and infinite. As long as my body takes breath I shall continue to love you. With that said I can no longer trust you. Can not sit by your side any longer. My life of pretend must end.
Just hearing your voice. Just a simple thing as that, it makes me die further inside. Yet. Not hearing it hurts just as much. No matter what I do I shall be forever tortured as long as I live. Because. No matter how I wish to, I can't stop loving you. It's just not something I am able to do.
Do you remember that first night we spent together? Holding you in my arms that very first time. My arms around your waist, your back against me. All that was between our skin was our shirts. I vowed, on that day, I would never hurt you. I vowed I would protect you until my dying breath. As you slept I kissed your shoulder and prayed to higher beings that do not exist that the night would not end. We hadn't even had sex, hadn't even been on a date, but I would have been happy dying like that.
I wish I had.
When we, finally, began to date I was elated. You were, are, my everything. My happy ending. I had never loved a partner like I have loved you these past years. The very reason why I took the very first forgetting potion. Why I took the second. And the third. Are you getting the picture?
Let's start with the second time. Henry was thirteen, we had finally defeated Zelena. Everything was starting to calm down and we were a mere six days away from our first wedding anniversary. I came home early to try and surprise you, just to show that I still loved you. That now that the drama was over I could focus solely on you again.
With a thudding heart, a flipping stomach, lead feet, and a throat drier than the sahara I followed the sounds into the living room. Once more praying to a being I do not believe in that I was wrong. However. I sensed that I wasn't. I could hear your moans, your screams of pleasure. I watched for just three minutes, but it felt like months. As you reached your climax you scratched your nails down Ruby's back.
That was the second time you broke my heart, but I did not know that at the time. I couldn't handle the reality that you were cheating. So, I wished upon stars and internally screamed at the gods of olympus. I convinced myself it was a one time thing. I brewed a forgetting potion, and I drank it. It erased my memories once more, but not the distrust and fear that was in my heart.
Let's get into the first. Think back to the third week after we were married. You told me you wanted a child. Not once, not ever, had we discussed more progeny. Henry was nearing twelve, and I had truly believed you did not, could not, want any more. I, being me, got scared. Do you remember? How I nearly fainted as I ran out of the house saying I needed to be at the station? It was because
there was a secret I was far too scared to tell you.
The next day I arrived home. It was your day off, and I had slept the night, and morning, at the station. I had roses, a heavy heart, and was filled to the scalp with fear. I was going to tell you why I didn't want any more children. Tell you the thing that I was petrified you'd divorce me over. The secret that would keep us from having children, and worse, keep you from ever letting me near our son again. But. I loved you, so I was hoping against everything that my fear was misplaced. I hoped that I would tell you my deepest, darkest, secret and that you would forgive me. That you would understand.
The bedroom door was closed, and sounds that made me crinkle my brow were escaping through the wood. I assumed that perhaps some work had to be done and Leroy or some other chump was having sex in our bed so I cracked the door open just an inch. I was shocked by what I saw. We were not even married a full month and your face was buried between another woman's legs. She was laying back on the bed, her face partially covered with a blindfold. But I knew, I knew you were fucking my best friend.
I raced out of the house. I vomited in your precious bushes and shoved the roses into the garbage can. I raced to the crypt. Not sure what I was going to do, but then I knew. You had spoken of forgetting spells. I convinced myself that it was a one time event. So I brewed it, and I swallowed it. Forgetting the horrible scene.
After that each time I went to tell you my secret something inside of me would stop me. I would become so overcome with fear, a terror, that I would get physically ill. The guilt of not telling would be just as bad. And because I couldn't remember the events which initially caused the extra fear and distrust I did not know why I couldn't ever bring myself to finally tell you.
For my own sanity I will refrain from going into the details of the other times I have caught you with Ruby. To be exact, it has been seven times. The seventh time was fifteen months ago. I brewed the potion, but it did not work. Not wanting to go to Gold I thought I would win you back. I got rid of everything about me you hated.
Everything about me that I loved. My jackets, every single one of my 'disgusting' leather jackets were thrown out. Well, I did hide the red one, more on that later. The bug, though she did not work, I finally gave her away. My camaro, the one I rebuilt and attempted to get Henry interested in cars with, sold. The Ducati monster you called a two-wheeled death trap I was forced to keep at David's. He too was sold.
No longer did I eat bear claws, burgers, or anything you had ever complained about me eating. I had stopped exercising as much years ago, and while I wasn't fat I wasn't flat and toned as I had been. So I began to run again. I started using the gym in the basement for at least an hour a day. And still, you slept with her.
So, realizing I could not win you back, I tried the potion again.
Once more it didn't work. Having no other choice I went to Gold. I told him I needed to forget something that could affect the future. Knowing he wouldn't ask questions. Even his didn't work, and I asked why it was that I was immune. This made him very curios, as he told me immunity is extremely rare, and only ever happens to those who have been repeatedly exposed to the potion.
As you well know the blood of the creator of the potion is needed for the anti-potion or whatever you call it. So we brewed one together using my blood. It is much more difficult than the initial forgetting potion. I am so very thankful that I drank it in private, because what I remembered sent me to my knees. I nearly cried, but I held it in.
Do you know what it is like to look into a mirror and all you can see is a dead person staring back at you? A corpse? I gripped the sink of the station and I stared at myself. And I realized that no matter what I did I could never win you back. For the simple fact that I had never truly had you. You had never loved me.
Only two reasons have come to mind when I have thought of why you would agree to date me, let alone marry me. Why you would pretend to love me for so many years. The first was for Henry. Perhaps you were scared you would lose your son should you not date and marry me. Perhaps it was simply an easy way to your revenge on Snow without pissing people off, and after all, I made it oh so easy.
Not that you have ever believed me but I would have never taken
your son from you. For six months I tried to win you back and never once did I use him as a tool. For nine months I have known about every single time I caught you with her. I have understood my fears about speaking my secret aloud, a secret that only I know. A secret that, shortly, I will take to my grave.
Savior. It's nothing but a title. A cross to bear. All any of these people have ever wanted from me was to use me. To fix their lives. To blame all their problems upon. To accuse if one little detail did not go to their plan. And I have accepted it and taken every punch because I had you. It came in handy the past nine months
For the first two weeks after the anti-potion I was angry. So very, very enraged. I wanted nothing more than to kill Ruby. To tear her limb from limb. In fact I honestly wanted to hurt anyone I could get my greedy malicious hands upon. Thankfully I did not act on these urges. I kept it bottled tightly inside. Then I fell into depression. No one noticed that I stopped eating. Not even you or Granny. She believed I was eating at home, and you thought I was eating there.
No one noticed that I made sure that I was never at the station when Ruby was. Well that's not exactly true. Mulan made a few jokes here or there, but I have long since learned to be a good liar. I was given no other choice. These mints you think I am addicted to? That everyone thinks i'm addicted to? Hell, Mulan calls me the tictac King.
I use them to cover up the drinking. I sit in my car and drink irish coffee from the moment I leave the house to the moment I get back to the house. I rarely eat. Not even the dinners you leave in the microwave. I magic the contents to the outside garbage, alongside the empty bottles I drink before I can bring myself to crawl into the bed that feels more like Ruby's then it does mine.
Our last kiss, do you remember it? It happened six months ago, before I left for work. A quick peck, closed mouthed. I don't mind that it's been that long. We haven't touched, not so much as a bump in the kitchen, or the brushing of fingers as you hand me a document at the office in three months. In bed I curl up and hug the side, and you stick to your own.
Depression. I have survived it. There were many nights I thought of just blowing my brains out with my service weapon. Many times when I had the gun to my temple, or even the taste of the barrel on my tongue. Those times the only thing that stopped me from ending my pitiful existence was that somehow, someway, they'd blame the evil queen. I didn't want them to hurt you, but I just don't want to hurt anymore.
Two months ago I changed. Again. Something shifted. I still feel everything, but at the same time I do not. Like I'm on painkillers and there's a fuzzy line between myself and my emotions. It was like a sort of freedom. It allowed me to covertly and strategically plan my death. Knowing that I had to find a way to do it where no one would ever suspect foul play, one where they could never twist it into me being some sort of victim.
I wish that nineteen months ago, when Hook returned with that horrid boat and worse stench of his to get his vengeance against me for not loving him, and against Rumple for killing Milah that he had killed me like he had promised he would do. Then I could have never remembered that you not only hate me, but that you love Ruby. That both you and she could hurt me like you have done for all of these years.
Alas, I can not change the past. The only thing I can do is fix my future.
Tonight I will give a grand performance. I will lie better than I ever have before. The performance I will give tonight will be worthy of the oscars. I will state that I want a divorce, something that I could not do. Would not do, tonight I will say I have fallen in love with a prostitute that I have been seeing in secret for the past few months. Something I could not, would not do. I could never be intimate with someone who was not you.
Of course they will believe me, I am the savior. The sheriff. Surely I would never lie about such things. That is what they foolheartedly believe. Right before I start to say these things, before I lie my ass off, I will swallow a powder that I have put into a pill capsule. It will take effect within twenty or thirty minutes. It will stop my heart.
Which I find funny, because as far as I am concerned my heart no longer beats. I truly feel dead. This life? It has always tortured me. I can no longer bare to live. So I will take my own life, and no one will know the truth. Only two people on these earth will ever know the truth. Myself. And you.
Death is the gift I have chosen for myself. I ask that you give me one last gift as well. When everyone is gone I wish you to go into the basement. Go into the closet. Duct taped above the door on the inside, where you can not see, is a messenger bag. Do not open the bag, just place it on my stomach. Cross my arms over it. We haven't discussed our deaths, but I would like to be cremated. Just like that. Got it? Bag on chest, arms crossed over it. Place body in fire. Simple.
You probably don't even care about what is written here, but I needed to say it. I needed to write it down. I needed you to know. And I needed you to know what I wanted done with my body. I needed to say goodbye to the only partner, the only woman, I ever truly loved. Heart. Mind. Body. and Soul.
With death I will finally be released from the love that I have for you.
Goodbye, my love, and may she bring you the happiness I could never hope to give you
E. J. Swan
A/N: Thoughts, likes, dislikes, random pina coladas are always welcome! I hope you enjoyed, see you Friday!