Part Three of SwanQueen Week 2016
Theme: The 7 Deadly Sins
Prompt: Greed
Summery: Regina fondly eyed her two favourite trophies, the fragile illusions of her insatiable desires, yet her collection was incomplete.
Loosely influenced by Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie.
A huge thank you again to CacheDog and Imperfectionisunderstated for betaing this fic.
There was/is meat to be cover art to this, but I ran out of time to finish it - maybe one day.
The Glass Menagerie
'Love is blind and greed is insatiable' - Chinese Proverb
Greed, like lust and gluttony is a sin of excess, an excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation.
Regina stood alone in her underground vault, she found a certain comfort here, surrounded by her favorite possessions, by the books and ingredients that helped make her strong, the memories of her past. She was safe here against prying eyes, against questions and meddlesome do-gooders. It was her own private sanctuary untouched and untainted by the cruelness of the world.
She had been born into a family of hoarders, for as long as she could remember her mother had collected hearts. Cora's vault had held countless lives. Some hearts were trophies of war, some punishments of those who crossed her, and some had just been harvested for sport, to add to her ever-growing collection. Once as a young woman, newly married, she had gotten to glimpse the true extent of her mother's obsession, the hundreds upon thousands of glowing boxes stacked neatly, filling the room with a pulsing red glow. As frightening as it was, it had left Regina in awe of its impressiveness.
Far less blood was spilt in her Daddy's pursuits; he had collected the wax seals from all the great houses in the realms. When she was a young girl, the importance of his collection meant little to her, but none the less she loved the lessons he gave her as he filed them each away. He would tell her stories of the houses', of continuous undulation of their rise sand falls, he would tell her which houses were allies and which were sworn enemies. He had taught her of their strengths and weaknesses. When she became sole ruler of her kingdom these lessons had become invaluable to her; with a little information one could apply pressure in just the right way to manipulate the game, and so she used her knowledge to become one of the biggest powers any of the realms had ever seen.
Her birth father had collected something far more sinister; he traded in secrets, lies and information. He collected weapons in the forms of a strand of hair or a baby's first laugh. Ironic, that the man who collected secrets had failed to keep his most guarded; Rumplestiltskin was Regina's true father and she knew it.
It may then come as a surprise, that the daughter of the Queen of Hearts and very darkest of Dark Ones collected beauty. As a child she had collected tiny glass figurines of small creatures, it was one of the few hobbies she had had that her mother had actually approved of. The way she rode a horse was too masculine, her love of baking was servants' work, but her glass menagerie as Cora called it was a suitable hobby of a young woman of good breeding. Suitors would find it endearing, potential mother-in-law's would see it maternal and her gentle touch would show all of her grace and love of beauty.
Regina just liked their whimsical nature, they were so delicate, so small, and when no one was looking she would hold them up to the light, spellbound every time as they refracted every colour of the rainbow, she had only ever seen magic used for evil, for punishment. But the way the colours sparkled as she spun around her room, the lights dancing off every surface as she hummed to herself, this had to be magic, beauty like it couldn't possibly come from anywhere else.
She had stopped collecting her figurines when she had become Queen, they somehow seemed childish to her now, and their frivolousness made her angry, their innocence seemed to taunt her reminding her of the loss of her own. She had tossed them away in a box, forgotten and unloved for many years, until after the death of the King. Trying to reclaim an essence of her childhood she had brought them out into the light once more. Soon after a new obsession had begun, and she began collecting another kind of beauty in the form as those she took as lovers.
She looked at the ornaments now, they sat in their own alter, in three rows, a subconscious tiered seating. At the back sat her childhood friends, the glass animals of her youth, she remembered each and every one, most were gifts from her Daddy for her birthday or when he returned from his travels. In the middle row sat her conquests, the spirit animal of all those with whom she had slept with that she deemed worthy of such a place on her mantle. There were more than a few, but she smiled at them with fondness, each one a specific memory. She converted beauty, and these were souvenirs of avarice.
In the foreground sat her two favourite trophies the fragile illusions of her insatiable desires, the delicacy of their form seemed ironic from the force of their encounters. Her fingertips caressed against the ears of the wolf as she thought back with fond memories of her many wild nights with Ms Lucas, the young pup was needy and eager to please which made for a fantastic lover. In the Enchanted Forest, in Storybrooke before the curse was lifted, and after, collecting Ruby was one of her biggest achievements.
She moved her fingers glassing over the other crystalline creature, letting it slowly travel down the long strong neck, body and tail of her dragon, Maleficent would always be one of her favourites. She held the figurine up to the candle watching the flames as they licked behind glass, starting in her belly and erupting from her open mouth, flames of passion soaring.
Placing the dragon back in the foreground her digits stroking over the bare mahogany that sat between them, there was still one missing, her collection was incomplete. She needed a trophy to take pride of place, in between her wolf and her dragon she needed a swan.