Reasons behind a name
"And so is this the truth?"
The girl looked up to his elder brother and stared at him with her big brown eyes for some moments, moments in which the heavy silence and a half nod were taken as a more than valid confirm for that already rhetorical question. Because she knew that: the book couldn't lie, Henry couldn't lie.
"It has really been her to rip Daniel's heart, right?" she asked again stopping just for an instant to choose the exact word to express a similar horror.
Among all the things she had heard about her grandmother, such as Queen's Eva, Snow White's mother, homicide or the too many cut heads and collected hearts, it was the murder of the stable boy, her mother's true love, to have left on her that unbearable feeling between disgust and terror.
How is it possible to do something like that to a daughter?
"Yes, she did horrible things and I don't think that the fact she didn't have a heart can be a justification" he answered sincerely, closing the big volume of Once Upon a Time.
"Why did she do that?"
The question escaped almost unwarily her lips, while she was staring now with an apparently empty look the wall in front of her. The young man put the book on the desk and approached her cautiously, sitting on the bed right next to her.
"In her crazy ambition, she believed that killing Daniel would have…"
A hand twitched up suddenly and the attempt to explain the unexplainable was abruptly interrupted by that simple meaningful gesture. It was another thing the one that she wanted to know.
"Why did she do that?" the girl repeated, while a note of anger started to color her voice "Why did mom named me after her?"
Henry put an arm on her sister's shoulders and gave her a hug, inviting silently her to ask that question again to the only person who could have answered it. And she would have done that, because that question mark in her mind had been following her for fourteen years as a shadow made of crimes committed by another person, a person whose dark presence was felt even in her own name.
How is it possible to do something like that to a daughter?
It had been two days since the conversation with Henry and Cora Jones hadn't been able to think about nothing else; she had ignored all the phone calls and even the prospect of a Saturday in the sign of shopping with her best friend, Eva Nolan. Damn it, just thinking about the irony of that friendship made her sick… What if history repeated itself? It was the story written in her DNA and that ran into her veins as magic, to teach how Eva and Cora were two names meant to create a feud made of death and pain.
She stood up from her bed where she had been spending all the afternoon and approached the desk; she touched the rough cover of the book of fairytales that her brother had given her and after some moments of indecision, she removed her hand and looked away. But when her eyes feel upon the big mirror set in the closet, she immediately understood that it had revealed to be a bad move; she extended hesitantly her fingers to the surface of the glass and it almost seemed to her to see in that reflection, the features of another person, a person who she had taken from more than just the color of the hair or the shape of the eyes: even Mr. Gold once said that she resembled her.
She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, it was like that perception was suddenly disappeared, but unluckily the feeling she had felt was still there. She shook her head as to shoo away that thought, then she put on the slippers and almost ran down the stairs.
"Mmm, it looks really good, can I taste it love?"
"Captain, if you don't remove that hand from the pancakes, I swear I'll cut it!"
That exchange of words coming from the kitchen was the first thing that attracted Cora's attention once she arrived downstairs ; the strong smell of apples the second one.
"I'm sorry to inform you, but someone thought about that before you did"
And then a laugh, ironic and yet joyful: his father's one.
"Just about the left one, not the both of them"
And another amused one, that let perceive anyway a trace of annoyance: her mother's one.
The girl let escape an almost unwarily smile hearing that funny squabble, a typical scene of a familiar evening of the Jones' family, and she usually wouldn't have hesitated to join it, but not now, not that evening. She suddenly opened the door and remained for some seconds still to regain her breathe: she hadn't probably become aware of it, but the running down the stairs and the more dangerous running of thoughts into her mind, made her breathless.
"Is everything okay, love?"
Hook was the first to speak, casting her daughter a clearly surprised look for that sudden entrance, but when she remained silent, it was Regina the one to approach her with a worried expression written all over her face.
"Are you okay, dear? Do you need anything Co-"
"No!" the girl interrupted her immediately, moving aside the hand that the other woman had extended toward her.
It was the imperious exclamation, the unexpected gesture or simply the icy glare that not ever she was aware to have made, but a lamp of confusion and almost pain crossed the older woman's eyes.
"I talked with Henry and now I know everything about her, about Cora" she explained, stressing with a hint of evident contempt the two last important syllables "Now I want to know from you why you called me with her name" she added, looking suddenly down, with a voice reduced to a whisper.
Regina closed her eyes for a moment and then heavily sighed to that request; she had known that that day would have come for fifteen years and she didn't wait for it unprepared.
"Killian, leave us alone" she murmured, giving her husband a look.
Hook looked at her for a while as to receive a confirm and when in those eyes he found the reassurance he was looking for, he just nodded and curved his lips into a small smile; he moved quickly, reached her daughter, putting dearly his only hand on her shoulder and finally left the room, closing the door behind him.
"I love you" the woman said with a convinced tone, breaking immediately the silence.
The expression on the girl's face gradually sweetened and any trace of anger seemed to have disappeared leaving place to a mask of bitter sadness.
"I love you too, mom" she answered, giving her a quick smile "But I want to know"
The mayor of Storybrooke found herself sighing for the second time, she knew it would have been difficult, but she wouldn't back out of that conversation for that reason; she pulled out a chair from under the table and sat, inviting her daughter to imitate her.
"My mother, your grandmother, did horrible things, but you already know that…" she started with a certain difficulty, while the memory of so many awful moments in her life emerged strongly in her mind "What you don't know is that before she dies, when finally she had her heart back, she had been for a moment a different person…"
"Different?" Cora repeated, raising both her eyebrows, showing now a sincere interest.
"Yes, different from how everyone remember her, different from how I'd ever known her… She looked at me and I saw for the first time love in that look… And she told me that that would have been enough, that I would have been enough" her mother revealed, closing her eyes as to relive again that precious instant.
"You… You loved her and… and she loved you too… For this you…" the daughter stuttered confusedly, trying to metabolize the unexpected revelation "That's why you called me like her? For the affection between you two?"
"No… I didn't called you in her honor, but in honor of the final teaching she gave me" it was Regina's simple answer, while a smile full of bitterness and yet veiled of hope was appearing on her face "I want you to learn in life to be satisfied; not to look for revenge, not to let yourself be tempted from power, from magic; not to be afraid to love, even when hate and pain can seem all you have left; to understand that what you have, what you feel, what you are, is enough… Do you understand? The same person who told me that love is weakness, in the end told me with her last breath that love is enough"
Her last words ended in a sudden cry and seeing her mother so sorrowful for the first time, some tears started to form in Cora' eyes too and she didn't hesitate to approach her chair a little bit more and hold her in a warm hug.
"I want you to know in every moment… That you are enough for me, always" Regina whispered in her daughter's ear, finishing that way her speech and placing then a kiss on her forehead.
The girl let herself be lulled by that hug and hearing the last words, freed her tears. She found herself crying openly for a person she never met, for a grandmother she would have like to meet now and for a name she was starting to understand and even to love.
It wasn't too much after that, that the door opened again and the face of the former pirate appeared in the kitchen.
"What do you think, can we have pancakes now?"
A joyful laugh escaped both the women's mouths from what was only half a joke and after some moments, the plate of pancakes, still hot, was taken by assault.
And Cora loved her splendid family too, but that was no news.
Hi everyone! I have a lot of ideas and also have a story and a collection to update, but on the other hand I'm really busy with school and lately this one-shot is what I've been able to write! I hope you like this version of a possible Regina's daughter and the hints to Cora as well!:) I had this idea since I first watched "The miller's daughter"... It's something I would like to see!
See you soon!