Authoress' Note: I would like to give a very appreciative THANK YOU to TheWormThatTurns for their assistance in creating and organizing this chapter as well as the next. You helped me find my direction with this story and I humbly admit I could never have done it without you!
Without Direction: Part 2
By Arianwen P.F. Everett
As Dr. Archibald Hopper stood at his office window, his concern mounted with each tick of the clock. Her appointment wasn't for another five minutes, but it wasn't like Regina Mills to wait in her car till the last moment. To add to her odd behavior, she'd arrived much earlier than usual, nearly an hour before her appointment instead of a mere fifteen minutes. Whatever was up, it wouldn't be good. A sinking feeling filled his abdomen; she must have used magic again. Two minutes before her appointment was to begin, Regina Mill's car door opened, and Archie dashed away from the window and moved to his door, ready to open it the minute the brunette buzzed to announce her arrival.
Once she was inside and seated, Archie had to wait another three minutes to begin, which only strengthened his previous hypothesis. "So, how has your week been?"
"Good. It's getting easier to not use magic. Martin Drake has returned home, albeit by ambulance, and he's seeing visitors so I'm harassed less while walking down the street. At least on that front, things are getting better," Regina answered, leaving an opening to get to what she needed to discuss out into the open. She knew Dr. Hopper had been watching her from the window and knew he was likely as eager to get to the reason for her current stressed out state as she was to express it and get some advice.
"I'm glad to hear it. I know Mr. Drake's accident has brought out a lot of the town's resentment towards you and I'm proud that you're holding your own without resorting to magic," Archie responded, not taking the opening she'd offered. He itched to figure out what was bothering his most complicated patient if she hadn't used magic, but resisted, knowing it was better for her to bring it up. His curse-given training informed him that chasing a patient was always a bad idea. If they wanted help, they had to ask for it.
Regina sighed, no more certain how to bring up her predicament than when she'd arrived an hour early to give her time to figure out a means of communicating a feeling she couldn't even place. Falling back on base conversation seemed best for right now. Hopefully Dr. Hopper would help her find a way to express what she was feeling later in their session. "Well, like I said, it's getting easier. I no longer feel the power underneath my skin every second of the day."
"But something is troubling you, something nonmagical?" Archie concluded, careful not to go any further. He could give her a nudge, but she had to bring it up.
"Yes, although I'm not sure exactly why I'm troubled; I'm even having difficulty finding the words to explain it all, but troubled sums the overall feeling up, I suppose," Regina explained as best she could.
"Okay. Well, maybe you should tell me what lead to this sense of trouble. When did you start feeling this way?" Archie asked, glad they could finally approach what was distressing his patient, even if she couldn't yet name it.
Regina's hackles rose again at the mere question, but she forced herself to move forward, carefully. "Oh, that I'm very clear on; it started Thursday around 4 PM when I took Henry to get our flu shots. Well, technically, it happened immediately afterwards as we were headed for the exit… Look before we go any further, I need to make clear; what happened, what caused this… trouble, didn't happen to me. It involves someone else who I'm sure doesn't want it getting around, and I need to be certain you're not going to go running to Sheriff Swan or her family and divulge everything I say here. Under the laws of this land, doctor/patient confidentiality would keep you from doing so, but none of us are truly from this land, are we?"
"No, we're not, but I still hold the privacy of the doctor/patient relationship in the highest regard. Unless someone will come to imminent harm, you can count on my discretion," Archie assured his patient, watching her relax a bit more at his words. She trusted him now and Archie was quite proud of that accomplishment.
"The harm has already been done, but not by me. Dr. Whale… Dr. Whale was raped by Nurse Gorlois. From what I've been told, she slipped a roofie into his evening coffee order, waited for the drug to kick in, and then proceeded to have sex with his semi-conscious body," Regina informed, wanting to get the unpleasant news out. While she had no love for the man, something about Whale's violation had hit home. It brought back painful memories that she thought she'd buried and the events of the past few days had taken her down a road she wasn't sure she should have traveled.
"Oh my god! Is he okay? Has he reported the incident? What does Sheriff Swan say?" Archie asked, shock fueling his questions.
"Sheriff Swan doesn't know yet, at least not about the rape. According to Whale, when he'd first woken up he'd immediately realized that he'd been drugged and sent out his own blood work to get proof. This was reported to the hospital and Sheriff Swan, but their collective assumption had been that the perpetrator had meant to rob him or was attempting to alter medical records through his account, as he'd been logged into the hospital servers at the time. An investigation was launched, but since nothing looked amiss and the servers didn't record any odd entries into the system, everyone had considered it a close call and Whale was monitored for 24 hours, lest he have any more side effects beyond the nausea and the splitting headache." Regina related the story, preferring to deal with the facts of the case and not the more emotional details that would follow.
Recognition suddenly hit Archie. He'd heard about the incident of a doctor being dosed at the hospital while he was logged into the record servers. "I'd heard whisperings about that, but nobody had mentioned it was Whale, or that he was raped."
"Whale didn't know himself. After she'd… finished, Nurse Gorlois cleaned him up and got him back at his desk. He had no reason to suspect he'd been sexually assaulted. She resigned five weeks after the incident and went to work as an online nurse consultant. When she went to pick up her final paycheck, she asked to speak with him in private and told him what she'd done. She said she wanted to have a baby, but the curse had left her with a massive load of student loan and credit card debt that hadn't just disappeared after it was broken. On her income alone, she couldn't afford to have a baby without a big fat child support check, and so she'd targeted Whale because he had a stable income and all the qualities she wanted in her baby's father," Regina continued, her nerves rising as she got closer and closer to her involvement in the story.
"She's pregnant," Archie surmised, rubbing his brow. He knew the score now. With no physical evidence and Whale's reputation as a cad, the odds of a rape conviction were slim. Even in proven cases of rape, the child was still legally entitled to its father's support, leaving Whale on the hook for a good percentage of his income.
"She was pregnant. She miscarried two days ago. That's where I come into the picture," Regina admitted. She felt no guilt about what she'd done, but her emotions were roiling just the same.
"You used magic to terminate the pregnancy?" Archie asked in confusion. She'd told him she'd not been using magic.
"No. Whale wanted me to use magic, but I wasn't going to break my promise to Henry. Instead, I mixed up a batch of an herbal abortificant that my final governess had taught me to make and invited Elaine over to inquire about why she'd left her job and where she saw her career headed. I served tea and some sugar cookies I'd baked for the occasion. I think she presumed I was going to offer her another job, so she dutifully ate and drank while we talked. That morning, around 2 AM, she was admitted to the hospital with cramps and bleeding," Regina explained calmly.
Archie sighed, drawing his conclusions. "The tea, I'm assuming."
Regina nodded before finishing up her story. "She wasn't even two months along, so she was released by noon once they'd made sure the miscarriage was complete and she hadn't suffered any complications. She's at home, resting, and Whale is relieved. He says he plans to file rape charges against her by Friday."
"Regina, I don't really know what to say. I understand your wanting to help Dr. Whale after what happened to him, but just ending that pregnancy doesn't give him what he needs. He's been violated. He's had his body used in a very base way against his will. The resulting pregnancy..."
"Would have bound him to that worm for the rest of his life!" Regina spat back, not letting Archie finish his statement.
The vehemence in Regina's voice nearly made Archie jump out of his skin and an upsetting flash of insight struck him. "Regina, have you ever been pregnant?"
"Once, nearly a year into my marriage, but thankfully the herbal tea I served Nurse Gorlois worked just as well in our realm. Shortly thereafter, I voluntarily drank a curse to prevent myself from ever going through that again," Regina replied resolutely. While her voice remained steady and her body language displayed a defensive posture, her facial muscles and her eyes spoke of betrayal and fear. She had survived the experience, but it had left a mark deep enough that she didn't want another to go through what she had, even somebody who had hurt her as Whale had.
"So you can't have biological children?" Archie questioned, making sure to add the word biological to prevent her from becoming defensive about her role as Henry's mother. Everyone in town knew she loved that boy as her own.
"Not anymore. When I made the curse, I put in a single strand of Daniel's hair so that if I'd found a way to bring him back, I would have been able to carry his children. Now that I had to… Now that that's no longer a possibility, I'm officially and completely barren. But I want you to understand, I chose that. By the time I drank that curse, my mother was already gone from my life and it was my choice to sterilize myself with my mother's curse," Regina insisted, needing Archie to understand that the idea of bearing the child of any man other than Daniel had always appalled her and that the potion had been one of the few things her mother had left behind in their world that Regina had been truly grateful for. The fact that Cora had been the one to invent the concoction had always filled Regina with an odd sort of pride. Her younger self, still desperate to cling to any portion of hope for her mother, had fancied it as evidence that Cora had finally protected her for once in her life.
"Your mother's curse? How does your mother fit into this?" Archie asked for clarification. From what little Regina had mentioned about her mother in their previous sessions, he'd have assumed that Cora would have welcomed a royal grandchild to cement their family's hold on power and provide her with yet another human vessel to live out her own dreams through.
Regina considered how much she should inform Archie about her family tree, but in the end decided that in this particular case there was little to tell that he didn't already know from other sources of reference. "While it was Rumplestiltskin who instructed me on how to go about brewing it, my mother was the original inventor. You see my grandfather, my father's father, was King Gerard..."
"King George's father?" Archie inquired, surprised that the two were related, although considering the former king's recent ruthlessness in framing Ruby for Billy's gruesome murder, not as much as he otherwise would have been.
"Yes, George was my father's, younger, half brother. His mother was a duchess from the Marchlands; my grandmother, Cecilia, was the daughter of the head cook in the palace kitchens. My grandparents were very much in love, but being as my grandmother was a commoner, they weren't permitted to marry. Instead, my grandmother was given a vast estate in the countryside, where my grandfather stayed ten months out of every year with her and my father, returning to his legal wife and son only when some ceremony demanded it. After my grandfather died and George was crowned king, my mother decided to ferment a rebellion against George, one she intended to end with my father as king and her on the throne beside him. Of course, in order to gain popular support, she needed a reason to depose George. When he announced his engagement, my mother developed a curse to sterilize his bride, and then waited several years for everyone to start worrying about the succession. Once the rumors started, she got pregnant with me in order to contrast my father's potency with George's inability to impregnate his wife," Regina explained, watching Archie lap up the tale. During the 28 years of her curse, she'd often seen the therapist devouring books on historical figures and political intrigue, hoping to gain insight into the human condition that the curse had left him feeling isolated from. Now she was giving him a behind the scenes view of life amongst the power hungry nobility of the Enchanted Forest and his cursed self couldn't help but enjoy it, even if the conscience in him objected to that fascination.
"And that's when they called on Rumplestiltskin to help them adopt Prince James' brother," Archie surmised, finally understanding a situation he'd never understood at the time.
Seeing an opportunity to keep the conversation casual, even if just for a few moments more, Regina continued her history lesson. "Actually, it was about five years later that Rumplestiltskin approached them about adopting a son. Rumple knew what my mother was trying to accomplish, so to blindside her he approached George and his wife with a deal. At the time George was still talking with fairies and the like trying to break his queen's curse. He didn't think it was possible to fake an entire royal pregnancy and just swap in a peasant's child. That side of my family was never very imaginative, so Rumple had to hand hold them the entire way through the deal."
Realizing what his patient was doing, Jiminy kicked Archie for allowing himself to be drawn into her fascinatingly irrelevant tale. Straightening his suit and clearing his throat, Archie sat up straighter and scanned his notepad. "We seem to have gotten off track a bit, but I'd like to come back to that sole pregnancy before you drank the curse; you said you used the same abortificant you gave Nurse Gorlois."
"Yes," Regina answered succinctly. She hated discussing the years she'd been a king's wife. She had but one good memory of that dark epoch in her life. Snow and Leopold had been on their yearly progression, and she'd successfully feigned illness to remain at the palace. She and her father had taken a couple sandwiches and sat outside under her apple tree in the late summer sunshine; they'd barely said a word the entire day, just sat there, each remembering better days, until the stars came out and the air chilled, forcing them indoors. Were it not for those few hours of calm, all eleven years of her marriage would have been a perpetual nightmare. Thereafter, when the stress of being the king's consort became too much, she'd returned to that day in her mind as a means of calming herself enough to deal with whatever problem had arisen and sent her into such a state.
Suddenly a hand shook her shoulder, and Regina was brought out of her reverie. "I'm sorry, what were we talking about?"
"I was asking about your governess, the one that taught you about the tea, but that doesn't matter right now. You zoned out there for a few minutes and your face just relaxed. Can you tell me what happened; what you were thinking about?" Archie requested, trying to hide his worry. He should have realized that being faced with a pregnancy born of an unwanted sexual relationship would involve some trauma, but he'd never expected Regina to disassociate right in front of him. He had to monitor her closely and tread carefully if he were to help her cope with these memories.
"I was just thinking about my marriage, trying to remember if there was any happiness at all. Then I remembered a day, just a few weeks after I drank the curse actually, when my father and I had a sort of make shift picnic in the shade of my apple tree. Leopold and his brat were away on progress and nobody bothered us, as we just sat there, enjoying the weather and the sunlight. It was so peaceful, for a few hours at least, there was contentment. But it was rude of me to daydream like that on your time. I won't let it happen again," Regina apologized, slightly embarrassed by her loss of focus.
"There's nothing to apologize for. I know the emotions surrounding your marriage are still quite painful and I know it can be difficult for you to express them, but I think it might be best if we focused on the present for the moment. Give the past a break, so to speak. Dr. Whale, where does that stand? I mean, you told me he plans to see Emma on Friday to report the rape. Was that his idea or yours?" Archie asked, hoping to create some distance between Regina and her pain for the moment. He would bring her back to it again, either before the end of this session or the next, but for now it was better to let her reorient herself.
Happy to move on and discuss Whale's situation, Regina cleared her throat before answering. "He refused to report the rape until Elaine had miscarried. After all, it would be far more difficult to force a miscarriage on a woman who's in police custody and for him preventing her from continuing the pregnancy was the most important part of the whole arrangement. I finally got him to agree to at least speak with Sheriff Swan once I'd taken care of it, lest Elaine try again with another unwilling would-be father. However, I believe Whale really does want justice; he simply doubts anyone will believe his accusation and even if they do, won't convict and lock up a relatively well liked pregnant woman for assaulting someone like him. So, admittedly, I did have to make his going to the sheriff a condition of my helping him. I can understand his being embarrassed, but he's not the only attractive, white collar male in Storybrooke. Somebody has to stop her before she decides on her next victim."
Archie began clapping happily and Regina thought he'd lost his mind for a moment before the therapist explained. "I'm so very proud of you, Regina. You're finally connecting with your conscience on your own. You saw what Nurse Gorlois did to Dr. Whale, you recognized the threat to other men in Storybrooke, and now you're working to protect them. Well done! Excellent, excellent work!"
"I wouldn't get too excited; I made it part of the whole deal, and Whale knows the consequences of breaking deals with users of dark magic," Regina responded, feeling ridiculous after Archie's gleeful outburst.
"Grant it, your methods still need a bit of work, but the point is you heard what your conscience was telling you and you acted on it. That's a big step. It may feel awkward right now, but in time you'll get used to it and figure out better ways to heed its call. Make no mistake, this is a major milestone," Archie gushed, truly proud of his patient. It was moments like this that made it all worth it.
"I thank you for your generous praise, but really, it just felt like another deal to me," Regina insisted, not feeling like she deserved what was being given.
"Okay, so tell me about the deal. What were the terms exactly?" Archie asked, hoping to dissect the deal in question to help his patient find where in the negotiations her conscience had sat down at the table unbeknownst to her.
Regina sighed, knowing this was likely where she would loose the therapist's good will. Yes, she had empathized with Whale, but she had gotten something out of the situation as well. It had been a deal in the full sense of the word. "Well, like I said, I was leaving the hospital with Henry last Thursday when Whale pulled me aside. I tried to protest, but before I could get away he quickly blurted out that he still had some tissue samples he'd taken from Daniel's body before his attempt to bring him back and that if I wanted them returned to me, I would help him with his problem. Otherwise he was going to quote 'hang onto them'. A part of me wanted to ignore him, to remind Whale that Daniel was dead and beyond the reach of suffering, but I just kept imagining parts of my Daniel being used in one of Whale's grotesque experiments, and I couldn't let that happen!"
"Of course you couldn't. Daniel was your true love, and from what you've told me about him, he deserved better than to have his remains made into some macabre bargaining chip by Whale," Archie insisted, wanting to let Regina know he understood her desire to preserve Daniel's legacy as a good man and not one of Whale's monsters.
"Yes, he did, but living or dead people rarely get what they deserve. I had to ensure Daniel's tissue samples were transferred to me so that I could return them to my family mausoleum. Daniel still holds a place of honor there. I suppose that's all I can give him now," Regina stated, the unrelenting sorrow of Daniel's pointless death flooding her veins as she spoke. She no longer cried, just felt ice flood her veins. Daniel had deserved so much and this was all she could give him in recompense for the joy he'd once given her.
"You're trying to honor his memory. That's what's important. That's what he wanted for you when he told you to love again, and you're doing that for him," Archie soothed, seeing the pain that he knew ran the deepest threaten to rip Regina apart once again. It might become more bearable, but he'd met enough people separated from their true loves to know it would never lessen or leave.
"Anyway, we made the deal and I'm collecting the samples tomorrow morning. I allowed Whale to take one final peek at them under the microscope, but he's delivering the vials to my home around 8 AM, before he heads to the hospital for his shift. I have a beautifully detailed silver box my father gave to me when I was a seven years old. I've always kept my most valuable possessions in it; that's where I'll place the vials in my mausoleum," Regina explained, glad to focus on the details.
"You haven't planned any kind of service?" Archie asked, having thought she'd want some sort of memorial for the man she'd loved.
"Snow is the only person in this town who'd ever even met Daniel while he was alive and I don't want her or any of her kin there. Maybe if Henry were a few years older, I might ask him to join me, but right now he's too young to put that on him. Besides, I let Daniel go back at the stables. All I'm doing this time is making sure his remains are treated with dignity," Regina answered in a weary tone, her emotional reserves depleted.
Archie accepted this answer and he understood. She had been through so much, she just wanted to close this chapter and get Daniel to his final rest. "Okay, fair enough. Regina, let me ask you something; if Whale hadn't taken those tissue samples and thus had nothing to offer you for your effort, would you have helped him?"
"I doubt he would have come to me under those circumstances, but if he had, probably not. After what Whale did to Daniel, I would have rooted for Elaine to take him to the cleaners on child support," Regina answered honestly. Whale meant nothing to her and she wanted to be rid of him. While Archie told her letting go of Daniel was the right thing to do, it hadn't really been her choice. Whale had forced her hand by stealing Daniel's body and placing that stolen heart into him.
"But you didn't; you helped him get out of ever having to pay child support, at least to Nurse Gorlois. Why do you think that is?" Archie questioned, his fist shifting to support his jaw as he leaned forward.
"I don't know. I mean, there was the return of the samples, yes, but it wasn't just Whale, exactly. I just… I don't know…" Regina replied, as she threw up her hands in frustration. But while she was indeed frustrated, it had little to do with her motivations.
She understood her motivations perfectly. Whale had made her an offer she couldn't refuse, and she hadn't, but she couldn't tell Archie all the details. He wouldn't understand and might even try to stop her from collecting on her side of the bargain. Then she'd really have no choice but to leave Storybrooke and her memories, her last shred of hope gone. Still, her duplicity in this matter did in fact sting in a way that surprised her, particularly when she thought of how she was deceiving this man who had trusted that there was still some good in her when nobody else would give her a chance, when even her own son had turned on her. It seemed her conscience was indeed returning, but she couldn't afford to listen to it at the moment, not when her best shot for happiness depended on her silence. She wouldn't lie to Archie, but she couldn't tell him everything, at least not for a few months. Then the truth would be unavoidable.
"That's okay. I understand that this is difficult, but let me throw out an idea and you tell me whether it hits anything. While I accept you had no interest in protecting Whale by insisting he report the rape, as mayor you've gotten to know many of the men in this town over the years, albeit through their cursed selves. Many of the men you've worked most closely with were the white collar professionals that you feared Nurse Gorlois might target after Whale, and you didn't want these people you've learned to get along with to be victimized the way you were nearly victimized when you were younger," Archie postulated before patiently waiting to hear Regina's reaction to his theory.
"Maybe. I don't know. I just… The mayor part sounds right. I mean, this was my town for decades. The curse literally created this place to my specifications of what a good place to live would be like. I don't want some rapist running around, disturbing the peace now that the curse is broken," Regina explained, finally grabbing onto why she'd felt so passionately about Whale's need to report his rape. Whale had gotten what he wanted with the miscarriage and she would be getting what she wanted starting tomorrow morning, but for some reason she hadn't been able to identify until now, she'd still insisted on this caveat. Whale had said he'd probably report once Elaine Gorlois was no longer pregnant and she'd responded by making his doing so a deal breaker. She likely would have folded had he dug in his heels on the matter, but it had felt good to take control and make life somewhat decent again. In her chasing Henry and doing whatever he willed, no matter what her own thoughts or feelings, she'd felt bound. This had made her feel free. Perhaps her conscience could one day help her make good choices in life.
"So, your personal history aside, this was about justice more than compassion," Archie concluded, nodding to himself.
Few people realized that Regina had a very keen sense of justice. They thought her actions arbitrarily cruel, but he'd come to understand over these past few months that in their land, Regina had been denied justice over and over again and so had lashed out at everyone and everything in the Enchanted Forest, trying desperately to cobble together what she'd had taken from her. In Storybrooke, she'd gotten a taste of a system where at least in theory there was equal protection under the law. Here, the murder of a stable boy would not have been ignored merely because he'd been a stable boy and his murderess a wealthy and powerful lady. Archie could understand how that concept had soothed her and how Whale's rape had threatened that promise of equanimity. Whale was disliked at best so his rape would be set aside, thus allowing his more popular rapist to victimize him again in family court with a paternity suit. Regina had terminated the pregnancy, but that just opened the door for another man to be twice violated if that man were disliked. The status-blind justice that had been lacking in the Enchanted Forest had been a key element in why Storybrooke had eased her pain over the years of the curse and she needed to ensure that even with the curse broken, that justice wasn't just wiped away as the new Storybrooke took shape.
"Yes. There was little justice in our world. I wanted to use the resources this realm had, its laws, its courts, its town council meetings, to fix that. Those that had harmed me would be made to suffer, along with those that had aided them. But many here had been mere peasants or nobles who shied away from fairytale drama. I wanted to make things better for them," Regina explained, feeling foolishly sentimental, but also good and free.
Smiling, joyful tears threatening to fall, Archie cleared his throat to allow himself to speak firmly and with purpose. "And that is where your conscience has found its voice."
