A/N: Since I'm Actual Garbage™, here, have a new chapter in a new story instead of a new chapter in an old story. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I can't show the quote or lyrics that served as inspiration for this story because of this site's rules and guidelines, but this story is also available on AO3 under the same username, if you're interested in that.
All Spanish used is Peruvian Spanish because that's what I grew up with. Translations for the lazy at the end.
The first time Regina runs away from home, she is seven years old, and the weather edges on winter. She does not have a plan other than to get away, far away from her mother's seemingly endless reach. The night she sneaks out, it rains like she has never seen before, great sheets of icy water turning the grounds of her family's estate into a miring swamp.
It takes her five minutes to get lost.
It takes her five hours to admit it.
She had been hoping for the light of the moon to illuminate her path, a wishing star to guide her way, but even the fates, it seems, are against her. The rain pounds down on her, soaking her clothes and chilling her to the bone, and the mud grasps at her feet and legs with every step, holding her back from escape.
She is seven years old and hopelessly lost, and she is fairly certain that if she does not find shelter soon, she will freeze to death out here, but she is still less afraid of her current situation than the idea of what awaits her come morning when her mother discovers she is missing.
After another hour of slogging through the torrential downpour, moments before she is ready to give in to the numbness crawling up her limbs and inching its way into the edges of her thoughts, Regina stumbles into the stable wall. It is the first time throughout the entire ordeal that she allows herself to cry (It would seem that Mother's lessons stick.).
She takes shelter among the horses and hay. One of the mares has just given birth to a foal, and Regina watches them curled up together in their stall, the mother's neck curved protectively around her child, holding it close even in sleep. A shiver interrupts Regina from wondering if all mothers are meant to love their children or if the problem lies with her. She pulls the horse blanket she found more tightly around her shoulders and eyes the pair warily before cautiously breaching the distance, carefully insinuating herself into their warmth. When she closes her eyes, the quiet chuffing of the sleeping animals and the insistent tapping of rain lull her to a dreamless sleep.
She awakes some time before dawn to her father's face peering worriedly down at her. She immediately bursts into tears, sobbing wordlessly into his jacket.
He looks at her like he understands.
He tries to distract her from her sorrow by pointing out the foal. "Reginita, ¿viste al caballito? Todavía necesita un nombre. ¿Qué tal?" When he gathers her trembling form in his arms, he whispers words of comfort into her hair.
Her tears die down to sniffles at the sound of his native tongue. Mother forbids him from speaking it to her, and every clandestine conversation feels like a stolen secret, weighted down with the gravity that comes from knowingly doing something against the rules. Privately, Regina finds it exhilarating, a small act of rebellion against her mother's iron grip. She thinks maybe her papá knows. She thinks maybe this is why he does it anyway.
She examines the small colt lying before her, carefully turning over names in her head, silently sounding each of them out, but none of them feel right, and she finds herself discarding them again and again before one finally seizes ahold of her mind, something about it reminding her of the hidden language she shares with her papá. "Rocinante," she declares with that certainty that can come only from children. "Su nombre es Rocinante."
"Hay, ¡y qué buen nombre es! Rocinante y Reginita. Van a ser un buen par." Her father says it with that smile reserved only for her, the one where his eyes crinkle into crowfeet at the corners.
Regina turns to look at him with wide-eyed disbelief. "¿De verdad? ¿Para mí?"
Her father laughs at her incredulity before reassuring her. "De verdad. Todavía es muy pequeñito, pero un día, será más fuerte que lo que podemos imaginar."
He looks at Regina strangely, then, and she gets the distinct impression that he means more than what he is saying, but she is too distracted by the prospect of her own horse to give it very much thought.
After she has sufficiently satisfied her need to pet her newfound friend, her papá gently reminds her that although she can visit Rocinante again soon, her absence at the manor will soon be noted, and Regina sobers with a speed beyond her years. She nods solemnly and allows herself to be swiftly led back to the manor where her papá draws her a bath and disappears with her dirty clothes.
She is sitting submerged up to her neck in the rapidly cooling water when her mamá—no, she corrects herself, her mother; there is always a certain moue of distaste across Cora's face when Regina calls her mamá, a barely concealed derision for the sound of her papá's foreign tongue—enters the room, and Regina has to make a concerted effort not to allow her body to give in to its natural reaction to flinch. She can hear her heart beating in her head, loud and frantic, and when Mother gives her that thin-lipped smile of hers, the one that doesn't look much like a genuine smile at all, Regina has to remind herself that Cora doesn't know about her indiscretion (It takes some convincing until she believes it; her mother seemingly always knows and is quick to punish her. Regina has not yet grown cynical enough to consider that perhaps to Cora, knowing is irrelevant.).
Cora details her plans for Regina's day, and Regina manages to muster up enough fake enthusiasm to fulfill the image of doting daughter, enough so that her mother leaves her to her own devices after only a brief conversation.
When the door closes behind her mother with a resounding thud, Regina sinks down even lower in the tub. She has learned that when she submerges her head below the surface of the water, the outside world is momentarily rendered mute, and she is no longer Regina, Cora's daughter, trembling beneath the weight of extraordinary expectations. Instead, she is no one at all.
Regina does this then, dunks herself into the depths of the bath and gives herself a moment to pretend at freedom. She allows herself this luxury for another few seconds before her lungs demand that she reemerge.
She breaks the surface of the water gasping, her surroundings swimming back into focus, and for anyone else, it might almost feel like waking up from a particularly bad dream.
But Regina is not anyone else. Regina is Cora's daughter and afraid, not necessarily in that order, and even at seven-years-old, she already knows that there is no waking from this nightmare, not when her life is the very thing that she is trying to escape.
A/N: Translations for the lazy below.
"Reginita, ¿viste al caballito? Todavía necesita un nombre. ¿Qué tal?"- "Regina, have you seen the baby horse? It still needs a name. What do you think?"
"Su nombre es Rocinante."- "Its name is Rocinante."
"Hay, ¡y qué buen nombre es! Rocinante y Reginita. Van a ser un buen par."- "Oh, and what a good name that is! Rocinante and Regina. You two will be a fine pair."
"¿De verdad? ¿Para mí?"- "Really? For me?"
"De verdad. Todavía es muy pequeñito, pero un día, será más fuerte que lo que podemos imaginar."- "Really. It's still very small, but one day, it will be stronger than we can imagine."
Let me know what you liked and/or hated. Thanks for reading!