Reflection of Happiness
by Erin Griffin
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: Swan Queen (Emma/Regina)
*Written in 20 minutes without being edited because I am a lazy mother fucker. This is not my best work, sorry.
Written for the-queen-and-her-sheriff's gifset.
She never asked the mirror, and yet it hinted. She never thought after his death that there was a chance at a Happily Ever After. Not for the Evil Queen in a world where good prevailed and wrote the fairytales. She would create a slice of happiness, be it false, and that would have to be enough, but the mirror saw everything, including, it seemed, a glimmer of hope. "I see happiness in your future as well, my queen," it had said, when she had inquired after the demise of her greatest enemy and was told that sadly, Snow White does live happily ever after. "Would you like to see?" She paced in front of the mirror, letting the question hang in the air. She was curious now, for if she gets a happy ending, then it meant that her curse works. She smiles and sits in her grant chair. She waves her hand towards the looking glass. "Proceed, Mirror. Show me my happy ending."
Right away a blonde woman with familiar eyes stare at her, a smile on her face that already stirs something within the heartless queen. "She is Emma Swan, your soulmate," the mirror tells Regina, though she barely hears it as images of this blonde woman show up. She sees a strange version of herself in even stranger clothing with this woman, holding her hand, sitting upon a desk located in a dungeon, and creating magic, a magic so strong that it really could only be created by true love. "Your weakness and your strength. She will never leave you. And no one can take her away from you." Regina tries not to feel the one emotion she had almost forgotten all these years hense: Hope. She swallows as she watches her strange future self interact with this woman. "With her your majesty, you'll find the true love and happiness you've always deserved." The final image before the mirror fades was of her future self and this Emma Swan smiling. It was the image she kept in mind when, many moons later, she cast her curse.
And many moons after that, when she finally meets Emma Swan, she doesn't realize that the struggle for true love is just beginning. Though she is taken from that very first "Hi" she is hurt many more times by all of the "my son" cutting into her, everytime she thinks she is going somwhere with Emma Swan, she tries to remember what the mirror had shown her. She would have her happily ever after, but sometimes she wonders if maybe the mirror was wrong…