This is a tiny little thing that came to me while seeing an edit (the cover image for this fic) by the-polina-post on tumblr ( the-polina-post. tumblr post/ 105161856586 full functionning link in my profile), and while I was procastinating writing the epilogue of Coming Back to You. Betaed by Tbuddah
Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT or Regina, if I did, she wouldn't get screwed over during each mid season and season finale!
She instilled fear in the hearts of the bravest men each time she led her army in the battlefield. Not that many of them could tell the tale. Slaughter and destruction were all she left in her wake, and survivors were rare. No one knew her name, not even her own soldiers. She was the Dark Knight, conquering lands for the highest bidder. Some said she was immortal and had been fighting for generations. She had no allegiance, no family, no one to go home to when the battle was over, so she kept on fighting. As she would cross swords with the enemy, she could enthrall them, they would get lost in her dark eyes, filled with fire, and it would be the last thing they ever saw.
Death favored her wherever she went, and women hid their children, locked their doors, barricading themselves inside as her army would march on, but she never let her soldiers pillage or rape. She only lived for the battle, bringing the enemy's leader's head on a plate to any King or Queen she served at the time. She was the Dark Knight, Death's right hand, her sword and her eyes as her only weapons, keeping no gold for herself, for what could she do with it?
One day, Death asked her if she wanted to stop the fight. That day, the world held its breath as the Dark Knight looked right in Death's eyes, and told her "I lived several lives as the Dark Knight, and did everything you demanded of me. Now it is time to let me die as Regina. Let another lead my soldiers into battle, I am weary of this world." She planted her sword in the nearest rock, and the legend says that when Death will find someone as worthy as the Dark Knight to lead her army, they will be able to take it out of the rock.
As the Dark Knight became Regina again, she walked for miles and miles, and at last, she stopped in front of three graves, side by side, in a land long deserted, her parents and her fiancé, gone long before their time. She weeped for the first time and she laid on the ground, her tears a balm for the dry ground, a bed of grass growing underneath her. She, who had been Death's right hand, was giving life back to a forgotten land, her own force leaving her slowly as each teardrop fell from her eyes. Death looked down at her most faithful child, and preserved her body to retain its beauty for all eternity. She is still there, on a high hill, in a now luxurious land, keeping watch over her loved ones.
She was the Dark Knight, instilling fear in the hearts of the bravest men, her terrible beauty, the last vision of their closing eyes, but in death, she is revered as a Goddess of Nature, who gave life back where there was nothing left.
What did you think?