Title: Broken Shards to Liquid Sands
Author: MinaRobins
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: SwanQueen, Emma Swan/Regina Mills.
Rating: T
Summary: The clouds have blended and merged together to pelt down round, crystalline globes that darken Regina's dress and slicked her tresses smoothly against her dimpled cheeks. They are both still deathly silent but with each rotation they make as they swirled around one another it caused the limits she had imposed on herself to unravel until a shriek of uproarious laughter summited past her grinning lips. AU: His Dark Materials. Daemons.
…
She was supposed to be using this time to complete her assignments but she had finished everything earlier this morning when her riding instructor had been too ill to meet up. He was coming to an age when his bones were too weary for even light riding but he was a kind soul that Cora had been magnanimous enough to allow Regina to meet. Her trainer was once a race and hunts winner but if there was a true victor in life it would be the steady flowing pace of time.
For a small moment in today's schedule Regina was allowed to sequester away from her mother's watching gaze and just be. Regina complaisantly let her mind wander and unwind from the tension of putting up a constant performance. She mellowed out on the lofty chair and chased the trails of liquid that rolled down the glass planes of her bedroom window.
"Regina, we could go outside."
"We most certainly cannot, Galen," she turned her attention to the petite fluttering Berylline hummingbird by her shoulder, "when mother finds out we would be in a never-ending amount of trouble."
"Only If she found out." Galen enticed with a sweet and excited twitter. She twirled towards the window, watched as the rain plittered and pattered, a spectator to nature rejuvenating the outside world.
"We are meant to be working." Regina countered but slid from the chair she was supposed to fit and made after her friend.
"I want to feel the chill." Galen answered, her chirp pitched higher than before as she made after every sliding droplet, an exciting a race as Regina would be able to take some part in. Horse riding was a show of nobility and not some bloody hunting sport and she was worth too much to risk on a silly game of speed.
"Galen…" Regina was hesitant but her friend was so excited and she was ashamed to find herself wanting this too. "Very well, but we'll have to be quiet."
"Of course!" The Daemon stridently trilled but then lowered herself closer to Regina's ear and amended in a controlled and hushed tone, "of course."
Regina could practically feel the vibrating joy in her companion's motions. She reached on her tip toes to turn the knob of her door, relieved that her mother had chosen to leave it unlocked. The open exit was probably a test of self-control and Regina was sure she had failed. She was upset at her lack of self-restraint but Galen's excited murmuring had her smiling soon again. The pair made as quiet mice down flights and flights of endless stairs. They utilized every tunnel they had seen others enter and escape from until they are freed into the courtyard.
The clouds have blended and merged together to pelt down round, crystalline globes that darken Regina's dress and slicked her tresses smoothly against her dimpled cheeks. They are both still deathly silent but with each rotation they make as they swirled around one another it caused the limits she had imposed on herself to unravel until a shriek of uproarious laughter summited past her grinning lips. Regina automatically covered her mouth with her hands, shamed once again by her unladylike antics. Galen was too animated to slow down though and she hovered and spun through the heavily precipitation, danced around the drops of rain and made the sprinkle of water for the falling arrows of enemy soldiers.
"Lady Regina!" Aida rushed down into the courtyard, her thin shoes immediately wet from the gathering puddles and the linen for the royal bed dragged behind her. The sheet was opened up and used to shield her young mistress from nature's dripping icy touch. Aida's Daemon poked out its whiskered head with equal concern, the mongoose was beyond itself in its anxiety. "What in the world do you think you're doing, think of what would happen if your mother found out!"
The lightness of the moment evaporated, both Regina and Galen slowing to an absolute halt. Everything ended with the approach of Cora and it was not so much a threat but a statement of reality. Regina bit her lip and watched Aida with touched and cautious affection, the young woman was once again breaking a rule for her and she knew it. Any misdemeanor was to be reported to Cora, a mother was meant to deal with her child, and the help had no right.
Tears mixed into the solution of wetness that gleamed on Regina's face and it was Aida's warm hands that wiped them away, "we don't have time for that now, come we have to go inside."
Even if Aida would not speak a single word of this incident to the Cora, it did not exclude the possibility of others who would flock to spread the news to the Queen. It was fickle favour at the best but something was better than nothing and if a small mercy could be given with the remembrance of this shared occurrence then people would collect for themselves instead of protecting the offspring form the Queen's wrath.
Galen has her head hung down while Regina refused to look away, she owed so much to Aida and she had once again endangered her friend with another careless impulse, "I'm sorry!"
"Shhhh, it's alright, come along." Aida motioned for the still opened doors and the group swiftly headed back towards the palace.
"Wait!" Galen fluttered a half circle around Aida and Regina. She shook with happiness as the clouds were heaved away by gusts of strong pushing winds. The powered blue skies were opened up to reveal the iridescent shimmer of a forming rainbow.
"Wow," Regina gripped Aida's dress in her tiny fists and beheld with opened mouth pleasure at the seemingly vast and endless world around her.
"Oh, Regina," Aida's heart pained to see her gentle charge be so enamored by a something as simple and freeing as a natural phenomenon. "Just a moment more, then."
"That, would still be a moment too many," Cora's voice was composed but there was the clear harsh sensation of steel in her words, "I'm very disappointed but I suppose that is the nature of motherhood."
Regina scrambled herself away from Aida; quick to hide her hand behind her back as if it would change the fact that her mother saw who she had approached with such easy intimacy. Galen became slopping wet as she plummeted in fright at the appearance of Cora.
Her little body skittishly morphed to that of a hare's which hopped into an inelegantly screeching feline before trembling into her Indian Peafowl form to match Cora's Daemon. Galen couldn't ever compare to the majestically vibrant Daemon that stalked at Cora's side. Augustus was male and had the proud characteristics that accentuated Cora's high status while Galen's dimorphism meant she was toned in muted shades. Galen's ruddy bronzed ashen feathers drooped heavily with rain.
Augustus twitched in agitation, his vivid tail feathers held high and away from the slippery cobbled walk way. If peacocks were physically able to mimic a human's facial sneer then Augustus would have hat skill in spades. "How dreadful." he intoned even though the clouds had passed to give a show of brilliant shades.
"Is there," Cora started as she tracked toward Aida, her lips pressed together in displeasure, "or is there not a rule that servants must follow regarding my only daughter?"
"There is, mistress!" Aida fell down onto her knees, careless of the rocks that sat jagged and cutting beneath her bony joints or of the cold that seeped through the layers of her uniform.
"Then will you tell me why you thought it was so prudent to cater to my daughter's whims," Cora held her hand over the soaking cloth, not quit touching the material, "to soil the linens that cost more than your wages in a year?"
Aida's mongoose dropped to a curl in the woman's lap while Augustus haughtily gazed down at the diminutive little creature; the stare was enough to stall the hiss that had begun to froth up in the younger Daemon's throat.
"Mother, please, it's my faul-" Cora wrapped her hand over Regina's mouth and something crazy and barely contained stirred in her eyes. The familiarity of the dangerous intent in her mother's eyes caused Regina to immediately still.
"It's certainly not the fault of royalty," Cora taught with vehemence in her words, "the blame falls on the ineptitude of peasant blood."
Regina shivered, preparing for the absolute worst and readying for either the physical or mental blow. She would rather have her mother strike her, she would choose a bruise over the stinging truths that lingered and leeched into the thoughts of her waking hours.
"Dismiss Aida, we have no need for useless things."
Regina snapped her gaze up to meet her mother's and wanted to once again succumb to the overbearing building pressure of tears in her eyes. "I… She's my…" She couldn't cry, she was already so weak-willed in her mother's eyes.
She just couldn't.
"She's only a servant and not worth your emotions or time, do as I ask." There's nothing in Cora's existence that suggested she would ever be 'asking' and with her gloved hand set on the back of Regina's neck she steered her daughter into position.
Queen and princess stood above the drenched and shivering help. There's something deeply wrong about all of this that sat wrong in her tiny body but the fear Cora instilled was all consuming. Regina was quivering with each second she delayed the demand since she knew her stalling action resulted in Cora's mounting anger. It wasn't the help's mistake but her hands were tied and so was Aida's fate.
Regina doesn't want to remember the times Aida had saved her from Cora's calloused remarks, had protected her and shown her precious moments of kindness. Aida took her off hours to teach Regina how to bake and cook. Simple little things that a family could partake in, tasks that a mother should do were taken up by the remarkable friend before her. She tried to tell herself that she won't miss it, won't yearn for the gentleness that her own mother was rare to offer her.
"You've been," Regina felt herself flinch as she delivered her pre chosen verdict but Cora's tightening clasped refocused her intended words, "relieved of your position."
The moment the words left her mouth it felt as if a vacuumed ripped through the space in her chest, the air evaporated and left her tongue too dried to protest. There was no going back from this and it was her lacking control that caused this lost.
There was no turning back, there was no turning back, there was no turning back.
The scene felt unreal, unfair and plotted as if for a particularly tragic stage performance. There was something unrealistic of what was happening and she slotted her wrists into the strings that tighten and cut into her skin and became the puppet she was meant to play. She convinced herself that she hated the dried texture of Aida's overworked hands and reminded herself how the comforting hugs always stank of dew and sweat from cheap detergents and hard labour. Those were the things she should abhor and she felt the suffocating isolation abate and loose reach of her when she accepted her role.
She realized too late that she must have been displaying quite a frightening expression since Aida appeared horror stricken at her transformation… or was that heart break on the woman's face? It's hard to tell what was real.
"Good girl," Cora cupped Regina under her chin and tilted her daughter to face up, "my good girl, go in and tend to your clothes, I'll have no patience for sickness."
Regina does not look back as Cora discussed Aida's terms of resignation. No one left their castle without scars of some form and Aida would be charred with magic to ensure secrecy of the things she had witness, of the powers that Cora held. All serving class were already seared with Cora's mark, the Queen needed only to activate the magic instilled in the endless, changing flow of her serving bodies.
When Regina was quarantined back into the solitude of her bedroom she glanced outside to the ghosting away rainbow, it's another beat of Galen's wings before the once startling colours faded into nothingness. Galen had reverted to her hummingbird shape but was unusually silent.
Neither commented on how it felt as if the rainbow had never even formed in the first place.
