Okay, I know I really should not be starting a new story, seeing as I already have a billion I'm writing currently, but this is an idea that just came to me a 3 AM when I was feeling super lonely and super depressed, and it just wouldn't leave me alone.

Although I won't be able to update as frequently, I hope to get at least 1 chapter up each week - hopefully. I have moved to a new school and I start Tuesday, and school will definitely be a huge factor in my writing. Seeing as I do most of my writing during the night, I will no longer be able to write until 4 in the morning.

But alas, here I am, and here is this story.

P.S. I got the beautiful cover art off of tumblr. Credit belongs to its respectful owner.

Enjoy!


Chapter 1

You didn't know why you felt pity for her.

Maybe it was the almost palpable sadness in her eyes, or the way hurt emanated off of her in waves.

Maybe it was the way she plastered a fake smile onto her unfairly gorgeous face, not letting her depression shine through.

You didn't know why you wanted her.

Maybe it was the way she moved, with such poise and grace that only a queen would have.

Maybe it was the way her laugh echoed through the room, carrying the beautiful monotone sound in waves through your entire being, even if it was fake laughter.

It could be the way that she kept looking at you, as if she had seen you somewhere. As if she knew you.

Or maybe, it was the way she stared longingly at you as she danced with him, as if she would much rather be dancing with you.

You didn't know her, although you wanted to. You wanted to know everything about her, because she was so fascinating just to watch, and you couldn't imagine how intriguing she would be to talk to.

You don't know what pulled you towards her, but it's as if some magical force was bringing you two together.

And you don't know why you suddenly want to murder a complete stranger.

Maybe it's because of the way he looks at her, with enough hate and lust in his eyes to drown the entire realm.

Maybe it's because of the way she flinches, and careens away from his touch.

Maybe it's the way he whispers something into her ear, causing tears to well up in her dark, enticing eyes.

Maybe it's the way he dances with her, with his hand on her backside and his eyes on her chest.

Or maybe it's the way that just by seeing her reaction to him, you know he's the reason she's sad.

The reason she's broken.

He asks you for a dance and you kindly accept, taking the man's hand as he leads you onto the dance floor. He places his hand on your waist as you place yours on his shoulder, taking his other hand into your much smaller, smoother one.

As you dance around the room, you can't help your wandering eyes as they land on her again.

And she's looking at you, too.

You stare into her dark, hollow eyes for what seems like forever, before the man she's with leans down and whispers something into her ear, cupping her backside roughly.

When she looks at you, pleading, you break and you know what he's said to her has frightened her.

She's scared, and you can't do anything about it.

She's dancing with him and you're dancing with this unknown man, and it's only then do you take the time to really study her.

Her dress is an elegant dark maroon, with black lace and a flowing train. The diamond necklace around her neck is enough to tell you that she's of royalty, as if you couldn't already tell.

Her hair is done up flawlessly, a few strands falling down in curls on the sides of her face.

The man she's with spins her, pulling her roughly into him and kissing her neck.

You cringe at the look on her face, and also because this is supposed to be an elegant ball, not a royal sex club.

The man you're dancing with looks at you and furrows his eyebrows, studying the worried look on your face.

"Are you alright, love?" He asks, and his deep accent is surprisingly comforting.

"I'm fine," you reply.

"You just seem...distracted." You look up at him and smile reassuringly.

"I'm fine," you say again.

He studies you intently for a few more seconds before finally turning away, and you let out a breath of relief.

You search the room and see her nowhere in sight. You suddenly feel panicked and worried and you don't know what to do and-

And then you see her.

She's in the hallway near the edge of the ballroom, and the man is with her. She is crying and he is roughly groping her breasts, which are dramatically pushed up and out of her dress.

She is letting him touch her and harass her, and you feel sad and helpless.

She looks so broken and so scared that it physically breaks you, and you just want to hold her.

And suddenly the man is gone, leaving her crying in the hallway.

"I-I need to go somewhere," you say suddenly, pulling away from your dance partner.

"Are you alright?" He asks.

"Yes, I just need to talk to someone." You smile tightly, and nearly run away in your haste to get to her.

You find her leaning against the wall, and the sounds coming from her mouth are the most heart wrenching sobs you have ever heard in your life.

You take a step closer to her and she looks up, sniffling and wiping angrily at her tears. Once she realizes who you are, she furrows her eyebrows.

"Who are you?" She asks. Although she's hidden by the shadows, you know she's studying your features.

"No one important," you reply, because it's true.

"Just someone who admires true beauty."

She looks up at you again, and the hollowness of her eyes is heartbreaking. This girl is more broken than yourself, possibly.

"You think I'm beautiful?" She asks, and her voice is quiet over the sounds of the music and the people chattering in the next room.

"Yes," you reply. "Very much so."

"You don't even know me," she sniffles, standing up straight. "Not all of me is beautiful, you know."

"But I want to know you. The outside is beautiful, and I'm sure the inside is beautiful, as well." You take another step towards her. "Did he hurt you?"

She shakes her head.

"Are you lying to me?"

She nods.

"What did he do?"

She laughs, and the sound is so sadistic that you actually think she's going to either break into sobs again or rip your heart out.

"It's not what he did. It's what he's doing." She sniffles. "Present tense."

"What is he...doing?"

"Why should I tell you?" She spits out. "I don't even know you."

"That's exactly why you should tell me," you offer. "Because you don't know me."

She seems to be studying your face before she steps out of the shadows, and your breath hitches in your throat as you are finally seeing her up close.

Her features are hauntingly beautiful, and the palpable sadness and the betrayal emanating off of her is enough to make you reach out and gently place your hand on her shoulder.

She flinches away from your touch and you pull your hand back as if she had burned you.

"Does he hit you?" you ask warily.

"Yes," she whispers quietly.

"Does he…" you halt your speech, because you can't bring yourself to say it.

"Does he force me to make love to him? Yes." She laughs sardonically. "If you can even call it that.

"Does he force me to...to please him? Yes. Does he hurt me verbally and physically? Yes. Does he force me to bend over and let him have his way with me? Yes. Does he force me to keep my mouth shut by threatening to rape me harder than he did the night before? Yes. Does he force me to let him have his way with me, all night every night until I can barely stand? Yes.

"But does he also treat me like a queen? Yes. Does he give me food, and a roof over my head? Yes. Does he want to give me children? Yes. Does he do random things for me out of the kindness of his heart? Yes. Did he save me from my mother? Yes. Did he save me from myself? Yes." She pauses there, looking at you with such fierceness in her eyes that you think she's going to slap you for making her admit all of these things, even though she chose to tell you herself.

"Does he love me?" Her voice cracks on her next word, "Yes."

"No, he doesn't," you reply. "He doesn't love you. That's not love. That's lust, and that's not…what he's doing to you is not human. What's he's done to you, what he's doing to you. It's not right. He's not kind, so don't you dare think for a second that what he is doing is okay. He has a darkness in his soul that can never be diminished, not even by someone as kind-hearted as yourself. He is a lost cause."

"You don't know him," she spits out, pointing an accusing finger at you. "And you don't know me."

"No, I don't. But I've known someone like him. They're not helpable. They're not able to change, for anything." You pause, and sigh heavily as she looks away from you, refusing to meet your gaze. "And I know someone like you."

"Who?" She asks.

"Me." She finally looks at you then, and the look in her eyes is unreadable. "You can be helped. You can get better. You can leave him, and-"

"I can't!" She yells.

"You can," you insist. "I was changed, I was fixed. Yeah, I'm still broken. I always will be in some aspects of my life. But that's the thing about pain…it doesn't leave. You just have to make room for it."

"I can't leave him," she replies, tears soaking her already wet cheeks. "He loves me. He's the only person who has ever loved me."

"Does he tell you how beautiful you are?" She nods. "Every day?" She nods again. "Is it only while he's forcing you to have sex with him?" She averts her eyes, and you already know the answer.

"Does he show you that he loves you? Does he tell you every single day how lucky he is to have you, and tell you just how much he loves you? Does he hold you when you cry, or make you laugh when you're sad? Does he make you feel as if you're the most beautiful, perfect woman in the world? Does he dismiss your flaws and love you for them anyways? Does he make you feel loved?" She refuses to meet your gaze yet again, and as tears well up in your eyes, you gently bring your fingertips to her chin, lifting it up and forcing her to look into your green eyes.

"Because I would."

She is looking at you as if you've suddenly said the most amazing, life-altering thing anyone could possibly say, and for a few seconds you believe you actually have.

Until she pulls away from your touch and she's crying again, and you wrap your arms around her and pull her into you.

She sobs into your shoulder and you just hold her - this perfect stranger - rubbing small circles on her back that you hope are somewhat comforting.

"He saved me from my mother. She had a darkness inside of her that no one could replace, not even me. She convinced me that everything she did, she did for me, because she only wanted me to be happy." She sniffled. "She was doing it for herself. I'm married to him because of her. She's a horrible lady and I hope I never have to see her again. But he saved me from her and I can't just leave him."

"Yes you can. I can help you."

She shakes her head. "He has a daughter. I can't leave the poor girl with him, she's only 12."

You sigh heavily and realize this is a much bigger problem than you had originally anticipated. To be honest, you didn't know what to expect. You certainly didn't expect the beautiful stranger to tell you everything and fall into your arms.

But you do expect her to pull away once again, which is what she does when you kiss the top of her head.

"No, stop. I don't deserve this kind of treatment."

Her words echo through your brain and you finally realize why she won't leave him.

"You don't love yourself." She looks up at you with a fire in her eyes and you continue, "You don't think you deserve any better than him. That's why you haven't left yet."

"You don't know what I think. You don't know what I feel," she spits out, and pulls away from you. You reach for her hand and she yanks it out of your reach, backing away.

"Stay away from me," she says. "Stay away from me and my husband."

"Why were you staring at me?" you blurt out.

"What?" she asks.

"In the ballroom. Why did you keep looking at me?"

"I wasn't," she defends. You take a step towards her, and she backs away, her back hitting the wall behind her with a soft thud.

"You were," you say. You take one last step towards her, and your lips are only inches from hers when you whisper, "I think it's because you want me as much as I want you."

Her breath is ghosting over your lips and you lean in, ever so slightly brushing your lips against hers. She gasps softly, and you press your body against hers fully, and she looks into your eyes as she lifts her hands up and places them on the wall beside her head.

You lean in and press your lips to hers, reveling in the softness of them. You raise your arms up and pin her wrists to the wall, careful to not be too rough so as to trigger her and cause her to pull away again.

She gasps softly when you pull your lips away from hers to kiss her jawline, her neck, stopping at her pulse point, nibbling and sucking gently. She moans and the sound is music to your ears. You want to hear it every day and be the cause of it.

And that scares you.

And now you're the one pulling away, and she's the one begging for you to touch her again.

"Please," she says, tears welling up in her eyes. "Don't stop." You want to run. You want to turn around and run as far as possible without ever looking back, and it saddens you when you realize that's something you've become quite good at.

But you don't.

You stay, and you kiss her again, more fiercely this time, and the unbridled passion you feel for this woman - this stranger - is so painfully arousing that you want to run.

But you don't, and you don't pull away either, because she is your anchor and she keeps you there.

You bite her bottom lip, eliciting a delicious moan out of her, and you lean your body fully against her as you press her wrists against the brick wall. She lets out a strangled cry and you think you've hurt her, so you pull away.

And the look in her eyes - her dark brown iris' nearly completely engulfed by the black of her pupils - tells you that you've hurt her by pulling away, not by continuing.

And you're about to kiss her again, but the sound of footsteps nearing stops you.

"Madame?" You pull away as if she had burned you, and both of your heads snap to the skinny man standing in the entrance to the ballroom. "Your husband is looking for you. He would like to go home."

"I'll be there shortly," she replies, then dismisses him, and as soon as she's gone she turns to you.

"You don't have to go," you say. "You can come with me."

"Sadly, I do have to go," she says, pulling away and smoothing out her flawless dress as she backs away towards the ballroom. "But we will meet again sometime soon, I promise."

She kisses you softly before turning around, and you grab her wrist before she can leave.

"Wait," you say. "What's your name?"

"Regina Mills."

Your jaw drops and your fingers loosen around her wrist enough for her to walk away.

And suddenly you're standing alone in the dark hallway of a castle you don't even know, thinking about a woman you just met.

And now everything starts to make sense to you.

The royalty, the elegant dress, the perfect hair, the expensive necklace, the older, gruff looking man.

She is an entire garden and you are just a little bug.

She is the entire beach and you are just a grain of sand.

She is a hurricane and you are just a drop of rain.

She is the queen and you are just a peasant.