I promise this will be a more traditional story starting next chapter. This background stuff is all important for later. Have some Regina/Henry feels, and please take a second to review!

Prelude, Part 2

Leopold is cold with her, she with him, and they feel nothing. He is predictable; he comes to her bed infrequently, a duty, a desire for a boy. It grates her that he keeps the fireplace roaring.

She does not want the warmth.

She does not want to look into his face.

She does not want him to look into hers.

She cannot bear it.

And yet she must.

She has lost the love of her life, her freedom, her sunlight. She plays mother to a girl barely younger than herself. Blaming her parents, the last people alive who love her, is impossible; blaming others is easy. She will not admit until a hopeful afternoon in front of a roaring fire with her soul mate that the only person she truly blames is herself.

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The Evil Queen moves her chambers to the top of the castle, in the cold wind. There is no fire, no sunlight, no light, just her garish jewelry and black clothes and darkness. And she is empty. She has to be, has to protect herself from the horror of what she's doing, and she empties herself out until the jewelry and the black and the darkness and her hatred is everything. Where hope and love and sunlight had once filled her heart, she lets in rage and vengeance until the veins rot.

When the small fragments of her soul not consumed by grief and anger seep through, she goes to the forest to think. In some ways it smells of Daniel and the stables and freedom of her childhood, but the density of the trees holds in damp and keeps out light, and it is darker.

She sleeps with guards, the often equally empty men who serve her. It is quick, and frenzied, and always, always in the dark. She does not want to see their faces, and she does not want them to see hers when it is anything but collected and powerful and caked in makeup. She tells herself they satisfy, and perhaps they do in some ways, all of them strong and handsome, but she has emptied her soul, and little remains with which to feel.

When she awakes to her victory in Storybrooke, she expects it all to come rushing back. She expects to feel alive again, to feel as though a heart actually does beat in her chest.

But they do not know it. No one knows she has won. She has killed the last person who would care in her efforts to get here, and that empties the victory of all meaning, and nobody in this town feels anything for her. Not even hate.

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Her heart feels warmth, truly feels it again the first time her Little Prince calls her Mama. He's been babbling for weeks, but one morning she leans over his crib to pick him up and he puts his chubby little hands on her cheeks and says "Mama". A giggle bubbles from his throat when he sees his mama's smile, and he says it again, and her heart swells. Smiling through the tears, she presses a sloppy kiss to his forehead, then each of those little hands, and lifts him into her arms. "Yes, Henry. I'm your Mama," she croons, and he babbles and plays with her necklace. Someone in this town feels something for her, and what they feel is even better than hate. It's love.

She will never remember that she had an inkling of Henry's identity. She will never remember that she already loved him so much that she chose to forget rather than send him away, even though she knew he might lead to the end of her curse, her supposed happy ending.

He became her happy ending. She remembers that.

She holds on too tight, and he has to remind her that that isn't love, but she learns, and he lets her.

She aches, sometimes, especially when he is a baby, that she did not carry him. Rests her hands against her belly and wonders if it is the same, wonders how it would be different if he were hers. She avoids thoughts of Daniel in this, did not name her son after him for a reason, to avoid that constantly poisonous reminder in their lives, but she cannot stop herself from wondering if she would be a more natural mother if her child were naturally hers.

This worry more or less vanishes after a few months of motherhood, but it returns with a vengeance when Emma appears, when Henry gravitates to her and not to Mom.

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True love's kiss cures her. They have the pure love of mother and child, as natural as the love between Henry and Emma, though she carried him and Regina did not.

He believes in her, believes her to be a hero, encourages her to do the right thing. The truest believer. If the boy she raised can be that, there must've been just enough good left in her to pass on to him. To give him the sunlight and freedom without the weight and darkness, enough love in her dark heart for the unconditional love of a mother, and she loves him also for showing her that.