Just like her mother.
It felt, quite frankly, like the earth had fallen from its reliable and steady home beneath her feet, like it'd been swept away just as the dust of Daniel's crushed heart had blown in the wind in its plummet to the hay-packed ground, just like the life she'd hoped to have at the beginning of her second chance. It was as if time had lacked the mercy to not repeat itself, as if every element of the world in every part of its history was set against her, as if fate itself detested her and wished to make her suffer.
It was, Regina knew, unbearable, watching Robin fall away from her with that astonished, wide look of disbelief painted onto his face, the same one she'd been wearing when a newly resurrected Daniel had stood before her with his familiar eyes and pleading expression. It was unbearable to see him collide into the woman, Marian, just in front of them both, to see him fold his arms around her and hold her tight, to see Roland stumbling on his tiny legs in his rush to reach his long-dead mother, with her eyes so teary and her smile so warm.
It was torture to watch it all, to feel the painfully, sickeningly, familiar sensation that her love was slipping from her tight grasp as she remained idle and helpless. It was agony to realize that, despite her efforts, her change of heart had been for naught, had left her with nothing to show for it but a son that would forever be torn between two families.
It was sadistic irony, fated and destined, so it seemed, to turn her watering eyes toward the reason for her heartache, to watch as Emma's face fell with shock, with remorse, just as Snow's had, young, impressionable Snow, the moment she'd thought that she'd done something wrong beneath the hard glare of Regina, dressed in white and stoic and cold and already falling apart at the seams.
Regina stared into those eyes and relived her past, delved into history and watched the scene play out, too far gone now to do anything else but stand there, trembling, no longer young and no less broken and no longer crumbling, but collapsed.
Based off a prompt given by rodlox over on Tumblr.
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