Villains Don't Get Happy Endings
She walks swiftly home, her jaw clenched, her eyes unblinking for she knows that tears are threatening to fall. She unlocks the door and tosses the keys on the floor as she closes the door and falls back against it with a soft thud.
Her eyes close, and a single tear runs down the side of her face. The lights are off, and she can't be bothered to move; so she slides down the back of the door like people seem to in movies.
She can't describe how she's feeling. Just an hour ago she and Robin and Roland were happily walking down the street hand in hand.
That all seems a life time ago.
She's angry. Angry at Marian, for returning, for calling her a monster, for even suggesting that she would ever hurt Roland, that wonderful little boy. She's angry at Emma for bringing Marian back, for refusing to apologise for saving Marian's life, angry that she didn't leave her to die. She's angry at Robin, for the way he readily took Marian into his arms and kissed her forehead; his wife. But most of all, she's angry at herself, for daring to think that she could ever be happy. For daring to believe in the possibility of a happy ending.
She stays there in the dark, ashamed of herself. She hears her mother's words ringing through her head 'Love is weakness, Regina.'
This isn't love. This is her happy ending. Shattered.
This is anger. This is hurt. This is broken trust.
This is the seduction of happiness and infatuation and hope.
But it is not love.
Finally she hauls herself up from the hard floor, and after kicking her shoes off, she trudges up the stairs.
Glancing in the mirror at her watery eyes and the makeup that has run down her cheeks following the stream lines of tears, she makes a mental note to buy some waterproof mascara; she's going to need it. Before she falls onto her bed, and lets her eyes heavily close.
At some point during the night, during her disturbed sleep, she removes her clothes and pulls the covers over her.
She grimaces, as her mind goes back to the last time she slept bare against the sheets. It had only been a few days ago; when Robin had last stayed over.
On the contrary to that night, however, she wasn't wrapped up in his arms, flesh against flesh as he kissed her hair and whispered sweet nothings to her until they both fell asleep, she was staining her pillow case with mascara.
She goes back to work, of course, but no work gets done; she just curls up in the black and white arm chair, her head resting on her lap, until she hears footsteps from outside and she gets herself up only to find Robin Hood himself standing at her door.
She sits down with him on the sofa with him, fully expecting him to tell her how he loves Marian, and that he's sorry to have brought her feelings into this.
She does not expect him to tell her that his feelings for her are true. She feels a smile on her face, but as soon as it's there, it's gone.
As soon as she thinks she has him, he's gone.
He tells her that Marian is his wife, and he must stay with her, he made vows to her, and he must uphold to them.
She understands, and that is what angers her most, she hears the mirror shatter behind her as he leaves. She picks up a shard of it only to see two tears falling freely down her face and another threatening to fall.
She should let Marian die. That monster is about to kill her, and Regina escapes.
She should let Marian die. If she's going to suffer then so should Robin. If she dies then he'll suffer. He'll come back to her, but she'll turn him away; she is the Queen and she is nobody's second choice. Especially not with Robin Hood.
He should suffer. And she tells herself that, but it's then and there that she realises, when the one person standing in the way of her happiness is about to meet her end, she loves him.
She loves him.
And so she saves her. Because no matter how much she wants him to suffer, needs him to suffer for how he's made her heart hurt. She can't, because the only thing that she wants more, needs more is for him to be happy.
She's learnt that now, from her son. Love is selfless, and so she saves Marian.
The shock on Marian's face is evident and she doesn't bother to hide it.
The shock on Robin's too.
That hurts. That hurts.
Is he really so shocked that she chose to do the right thing even when it destroyed the only chance of her own happiness?
Isn't he meant to see the good in her? Didn't he tell her that the Evil Queen is gone and that is the person that he used to be?
And then there's Emma, running up to her, so she does the only thing that she can think of and leaves in a cloud of purple smoke.
She decides that this will be her last day as Mayor, Snow cast the curse, so technically the job is hers now.
She is sitting on the floor, her back pressed against the door, much like she found herself sitting only the week before when Emma brought Marian back.
Emma.
Emma is standing outside of said door, giving Regina one of her mother's 'Hope' speeches, or something of the like about 'Happy Endings'.
Her head falls into her lap so she doesn't have to feel the tears falling, but she can feel her heart hurting.
She lifts her head up as she moves her hand to her chest and removes her heart with a wince of pain.
She stares at it, dumbfounded.
Its glowing red and black. Pulsing red and black. Red and black.
Not how it was before, black and red, but red and black.
A frown crosses her face as she wonders what this means, but she doesn't really care as this has numbed the pain.
But only slightly.
As Snow White had told her on the day that she first kissed Robin, the time she fell in love with him when she didn't even have her heart inside of her body; she feels things with her whole soul not just her heart.
And right now she resents it.
She resents how she loves him as much as ever even when her heart is sitting in her hand.
She hasn't been out in days, weeks maybe? She doesn't keep track of time very well, and she hasn't needed to. She's kept everyone away pretty well. She's even written to Henry, to tell him that its best if they stay apart for the time being while she deals with this.
Deals with the fact that she is in love, again.
Deals with the fact that she is a villain and villains don't get happy endings.
Deals with the fact that right now she can't focus on anything but Robin, and how Tinkerbelle said that they are destined to be together, that they are soulmates. Why would that stupid fairy lie?
Villains don't get happy endings.
Even though she isn't a villain, not any more; she tried so hard to get away from the person that she used to be, and she thought that she had succeeded, but now she thinks that maybe she can never make up for all the terrible things that she has done. Never.
She hears a knock at the door and shoots up from the hard arm chair that she is curled in, she cautiously walks to the door when she hears her sons voice.
Tears are in her eyes, she can't open the door. Not to Henry.
Not to her son, not like this.
He's standing outside, telling her how he won't give up on her, even if she has given up on herself, which she realises that she has.
He tells her how she can tell him to stay away, but he won't. How he will never give up on her.
And she knows that he is the only person that never will.
So for him she opens the door, and she opens her arms and he runs readily into them.
They hold each other, and they don't let go, because she can't, and he knows that.
And that's okay. He'll hold her for as long as she needs to be held, that's what sons are for, isn't it?
She says that she's silly, but he immediately shuts that idea down. He tells her how for his whole life she has looked after him when he has needed her, and now it is his turn to look after her now that she needs him.
He closes the door and sits her on the sofa – the warm, cosy one in the den, not the hard ones for display in the drawing room.
He gets a fluffy blanket and makes them both some hot cocoa, his with cinnamon, and hers with extra chocolate on the top, with marshmallows just the way she likes it, and then he wraps them both up together on the sofa in the blankets and turns the tv on.
She doesn't know what the channel is, it's some mindless cartoon rubbish that neither of them understand, but it's quite funny and that's what both of them need right now.
They sit and they cuddle which is something that they haven't done since Henry was very young, and it's nice. They talk and avoid any subjects of love.
They talk about school, and how Henry thinks that he should like to be a writer when he's older, how he thinks he should write new fairy tales. Ones where both villains and hero's alike are able to get their own happy endings.
Henry talks about his comics, and how he still reads the ones she gave him when he was eight, and how he misses his room sometimes, and would it be okay if he comes to stay with her sometimes?
Regina talks about how she's missed him, of how much older he's gotten, and she tells him stories of when he was very young. Of how he got the scar above his left knee when he was six and pretending to be some sort of ninja and fell out of a tree. Of how he almost drowned when he was four because he thought that he was a pirate and fell in the lake in the garden. Of how that didn't stop him, and the very next day he dug up the entire lawn because he was looking for buried treasure.
He laughs at the silly little boy he once was, but she tells him that she would never have changed him for the world.
They end up just sitting there, wrapped up in each other's arms, mother and son, the tv just blaring in the background and the rest of their hot cocoa cold, both their minds on anything but the world that lies just up those stairs that Henry has fallen down so many times.
Yesterday she vowed that that would be her last day locked away in her house, so today she stops by the store to pick up some comics and she makes her way to the café where she knows her son will be.
She places them down on the table, and sees the look of delight on his face, although she isn't sure whether it is because she got him the comics, or the fact that she's left the house and there's a smile on her face.
She thinks it's the latter.
How did she get such a perfect son? When only a few years ago he was telling her how he hated her and she was evil, how he wasn't his mother and Emma was.
But he has fully accepted the fact that he has two mothers, and he needs her just as much as she needs him.
This is when she puts her plan to him; find the author.
Make him.
Ask him, to write her a happy ending.
She thinks that she can maybe move on, maybe with 'Operation Mongoose' in action she can have something to focus on other than Robin Hood and finally move on, like he obviously has.
But that is when the door opens and he walks in. He brings her along to her old office, rambling on about something about his wife, she could care less though, despite trying to move on.
They arrive and she is suffering from some sort of ice magic, she tells him that true loves kiss can save her.
She can't bear to look as he presses his lips to his wife's; an act of true love.
But Marian does not awake.
She wracks her brains as to why it doesn't work, but she lets David explain the answer.
She is thinking of other ways to save her, because she thinks that if Marian dies then Robin will come back to her.
And she will not be anyone's second choice. Especially not the likes of Robin Hood.
But she knows that if that were to happen she wouldn't be able to resist, she would fall right back into his arms.
Maybe her mother was right. Maybe love is weakness.
For how can something that can cause so much joy cause so much more pain and suffering.
She knows that she is doing the right thing, especially when Robin tells her that the reason that the kiss didn't work is because he is still in love with her.
She smiles, he's never told her that he loves her before.
She's never told him that she loves him. She doesn't intend to.
Marian is his wife. Robin is a good man, and Regina must be good too if she ever wants her own happy ending so she must do anything that she possibly can to save the love of her life's back-from-the-dead wife.
She knows that all Robin has to do is say the word and she'll be back in his arms, just like that. She knows that she won't be able to help herself, her heart is hurting anew since the revelation that Robin is in love with her. Not his wife.
The only way to save Marian is with true love's kiss. And while Robin is still in love with Regina, he can't be saving his wife with an act of true love.
When Henry asks her why she isn't happy that Robin Hood is in love with her, isn't that a good thing after all?
She doesn't know how to answer. She ends up telling him that he's just too young to understand, however she knows that she can't be happy. She has to move on, as does he.
But Robin comes back to her, he tells her that he can't do this but she turns him away. It takes everything she has in her to turn him away, but she does it.
She has to rip Marian's heart out in order to stop the ice from getting to her heart. She should be revelling in it, ripping the heart out of her so called soul-mate's wife. She feels awful, though Robin himself instructed her to do it.
He comes back again, and he tells her that he is a good man, he recites his code, and she wonders what on earth he is doing. She realises that he is trying to tell himself that he is a good man, and he is trying to talk himself out of it. But when she asks him why he has come, he kisses her, and it is one hell of a kiss.
She is ready to fall back into his arms, and eventually she does. He stays with her in her vault for the night, and she should feel guilty, but she doesn't.
She doesn't feel guilty that Robin is hers while his wife is dying. She doesn't feel guilty at all.
In fact, a smile decorates her face as he backs her up against that cold wall, and a laugh escapes her lips at his interesting theories about whether they should leave this room at all.
She feels like a hero, all this time she's been trying to save his wife, but she can feel his skin against hers and she can feel his hot breath on her face and she realises; maybe she should leave being a hero to the hero's. She knows very well that the likes of Snow White wouldn't be doing such things with a married man while his wife is dying and frozen solid.
But she laughs, and she kisses him, because she loves him. And she doesn't care what happens to Marian, she only cares about Robin.
If villains don't get happy endings, then why should she give up having him here with her? Just to try and be a hero. That damned book will never see her as a hero, so she should stop trying to be one.
She will try and save Marian. But not today. Not when Robin is here, kissing her like that. Not when as long as they don't leave this room, it apparently is okay to do anything. Not when he's holding her in his arms and telling her that he loves her.
She is a villain, after all.
A/N: I think this was a little long winded and emotional for my liking... But I did like the part with Henry.
I'm a little new to the whole present tense thing so forgive me... Also I don't even know really but I wanted to write something OutlawQueen ever since I fell in love with them...
I've been brain damaging my sister about them, and I fell of my spinny chair, and I finished season 4 yesterday so I thought it was about time I wrote my own fanfiction! I think it was a little heavy, but it is 1am and I have been doing this for hours, especially as I had to go through 5 episodes at the start of season 4 to get all the little scenes... I hope I got the last part in the right order... Oh well...
Reviews are much appreciated as this is my first OutlawQueen fic and I am so in love with them...
Much love (and cookies if you review, or chocolate if you would prefer)