The hearts are beating and the walls are closing in.
She knows it's not real. It isn't her first time locked inside the vault and she's aware that the walls closing in on her are nothing more than an illusion, caused by Mother's magic and meant to teach her to be good.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she sobs as she wraps her skinny little arms around her tiny body, rocking on the balls of her feet.
She knows it isn't real, but she can't stop feeling frightened.
The walls don't really close in on her, she tries to tell herself. It's not real; it's just Mother's magic.
But she can hear the walls rumbling, the hearts beating. She can feel the walls drawing nearer and a treacherous whimper spills forth from her lips in response. A hand flies to her mouth to muffle the sound.
You silly girl mother would say if she heard. Scared of an illusion. Weak.
"Mommy, please!" she begs. She knows that Mother can hear her, that she's watching her through the mirror upstairs.
She can feel the walls touching the soft skin of her arms now, pressing against it.
It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. The tears come flowing nonetheless. They always do.
Don't cry, silly girl.
But she's only five years old and the tears come so easily and they're so hard to stop.
The walls feel so close now, the hearts beating right next to her ears, louder than hearts really should. Regina presses her hands to her ears, but even they do little to silence the rhythmic thumping.
She starts humming, singing one of the songs Father would sometimes sing when he soothes her to sleep after a nightmare. She doesn't know the words, it's too rare an occasion that he sings to her, but she knows the tune and mumbles sounds without meaning, desperate to recreate moments of peace without bodiless hearts pulsing next to her ears.
And then it's over.
The torches in the walls are alight again, the ancient murals no closer to her shaking little form than they were before Mother left. And Mother stands in the doorway, looking displeased as ever. She approaches the girl, and Regina fights the urge to flinch away.
You need to be brave, Daddy always says.
Cora takes a rough hold of her arm, with fingers holding on too tight and nails digging too deep. Regina's still crying, silent tears of both fear and relief. It's done. It's over.
"You stupid little girl," Cora hisses, "Stop these silly tears and come upstairs."
And Mother drags her out of the vault, Regina's own legs still shaking violently in residue terror.
She'll go to sleep without a meal tonight.
—-
"Hello." Regina says tentatively, later that night, when her tears have dried and her stomach hurts from hunger. "I'm Regina."
She's alone in her room, standing by her window on her tiptoes in order to peak over the windowsill and out into the night. Father told her about the fairies this morning.
"Daddy says that the fairies help all children." She continues and ducks her head, shy despite being alone in her room. She peaks up into the midnight blue sky through dark lashes, blushing before she even utters her request.
"And I thought…maybe… you could help me?"
She pauses and stares up at the sky, observes the stars for any kind of movement to tell her she's being listened to. She frowns when nothing happens, unsure of how to proceed.
"My mother…" she eventually continues in a whisper, because Mother's eyes are everywhere and Mother cannot know. "She frightens me a lot. Daddy too, I think. And…" she hesitates again, ponders how to word her wish.
"I just don't want to be scared anymore." She says eventually. "I don't want to go to the vault anymore. The vault makes me think I'll die. And sometimes I wet myself when I'm scared and then Mommy's even angrier. I don't like when she uses magic."
She nervously tugs at a stand of her long, dark curls.
"I just want Mommy to be nice. I'll be good, too, I promise. I'm not very good at being a good girl, Mommy says, but I'll try even harder. Please just make her nice, like Daddy. I just want us to be happy."
She lets out a puff of air when she's done, relieved to have send this message, and crawls under the thick covers of her bed.
She turns her head to the window one last time.
"Thank you." She whispers, grateful in advance and hopeful of a better future.
—-
Weeks pass and her wish stays unfulfilled.
Cora sends her to the vault for dirtying her dress, restrains her with magic when she tries to fight her in a rare moment of bravery. And Regina decides that something must've gone wrong.
"Hi." She mumbles shyly that night, back by her window, this time having climbed up to sit on the windowsill. "Maybe you didn't hear me last time. I made a wish some time ago, and I've tried really hard to be a good girl and earn it. My name's Regina, and I want to not be scared of Mommy. I want us to be happy. Please. I promise I won't ever wish for more."
She stops to contemplate the stars in the night sky, imagining some of their twinkling lights as fairies from afar.
Regina falls asleep on the windowsill, and Mother is so displeased that she binds her to the bed with magic the night after.
Years pass by, and Regina's request remains unheard.
She sneaks out into the woods, afraid her whispers in the night might've been too quiet, and so she shouts it from the top of her lungs in a clearing.
Mother hears, and she's forced to stay seated in her bedroom for the next day, once again restrained with magic.
"You need to be patient." Father says when she tells him one night on one of the few occasions that Cora has left them alone. He holds her tight and strokes her hair and hums the same tune that makes the vault bearable.
"Don't give up hope, child."
He smiles, then, but it doesn't look like a smile is supposed to. It looks pained, and Regina starts to doubt.
—-
She waits anyway, hoping and wishing without abandon, especially when Mother's being cruel, when Father's eyes look as fearful as she imagines her own to look sometimes. But her wish doesn't come true, and she begins to wonder if maybe, Mother is right.
Mother says they're a myth, that there is no such thing as magical beings that grant wishes just because.
And Regina's more and more convinced that Cora is telling the truth.
—-
As she grows, she stops crying. She endures her life in silence, not wishing, but waiting in silence for a better time to come.
She stopped talking to the fairies when she turned twelve, but sometimes she still thinks of them, and she finds herself staring at the sky at night and wishing for a miracle.
—-
And a miracle she gets.
Granted, it is not in the form of her Mother changing her cruel ways, but in the form of their new stable boy.
He doesn't save her, he can't fight Mother's magic any more than Regina or her father can, but he makes her feel light, like there is something other in life than lessons and punishment. He's gentle and soft, and the night after they share their first kiss she looks up at the sky and smiles, for the very first time.
Hope feels warm and fuzzy in her chest, and although it is constantly overshadowed by doubt and fear of her mother, Regina feels the closest to happy she ever has.
—-
Her miracle is short lived. She saves a young girl - the royal princess - and finds herself engaged to the King all in a matter of less than 24 hours. She tries desperately to hold on to Daniel, but Mother is ruthless and cruel and Regina realizes she'd gladly spent years trapped in the vault reliving the worst days of her childhood if only Daniel could live.
She doesn't think of fairies anymore. She comes to the conclusion that either mother was right and they don't exists at all, or that if they do, they're not the generous, benevolent beings they're made out to be.
She doesn't learn that they do in fact exist until later in her life, after Mother is gone and she's free to roam the royal library- her only sanctuary in the wretched castle that she reluctantly calls her home.
She wonders, sometimes, when she lays awake at night, the heavy bedding almost suffocating and the phantom touch of the King still lingering, what she's ever done to deserve this kind of fate.
And as the darkness slowly takes over her, she comes to the conclusion that the fairies, just like almost everyone else in her life, have wronged her, and that she'll have to take what she wants with other means.