Note: I lied. There is something else I need to point out. In my version of the Wish World, Snow and David retook her family estate and refurbished it after Regina's banishment, as is somewhat explained here. Therefore, the scene where Regina shows up as the EQ at Henry's knighting takes place in that castle, not the Royal Castle as I think is depicted on the show. It just made no sense to me that Snow would fight so long to overthrow Regina only to abandon her ancestral lands once they were hers for the taking.
Also, if this chapter is sloppy, please forgive me. My brain is in a fog right now.
Chapter 2 – Red With Envy
The throne room of the Royal Castle presents a stark contrast to its counterpart in the Dark Palace Regina had once occupied. Whereas the latter was a structural and decorative representation of the evil corrupting the heart of its owner, characterized by sharp lines, cold steel, onyx stones, black velvet cloths, and ebonwood furniture, the former is a gleaming temple of heroic royalty. So majestic and extravagant is it that it outstrips even the Wish World Snow's intricate overhaul of the abode Regina had painstakingly infused with dark magic during the interim years between Snow's eighteenth birthday and the casting of the Dark Curse. Rich curtains of a violet satin are draped over grand stained glass windows of peerless beauty, and a matching carpet that spans the length of the room from massive double doors to a hemispherical dais is gilded with golden thread. Upon the dais sit two ornate thrones, carved of swirling marble with plush pillows attached that look soft as billowy clouds. The tapering arms are decorated with golden crests that appear at a glance to be an amalgamation of her father's coat-of-arms and some other unfamiliar design: a howling wolf set inside a low-hanging full moon.
"Beautiful isn't it?" the girl, as yet unnamed, comments upon seeing Regina and Emma's awestruck survey of the room. "It was renovated nearly five years ago to celebrate the twentieth year of my parents' reign. A surprise gift from a grateful nation to the couple who rescued them from poverty and tyranny, and who brought justice and prosperity to every corner of the realm. I've rarely ever seen Mother as touched as she was at the grand reveal."
This information comes as a welcome relief to Regina's strained nerves. Fretting over the confrontation with her counterpart seems foolish now. From all appearances, the woman who rules from this place is not the same as once terrorized the White Kingdom, but a ruler her father would be proud of – if what her alternate's daughter said is true at any rate. The thought warms her from crown to heel. Just as Daddy believed, right up til the end, she was capable, all on her own, of rising above her hatred to rediscover her goodness, and in so doing transform from a tyrannical maniac into a fair ruler whose subjects respected enough, if not outright loved, to bestow such lavish and beautiful decorations upon. Standing within the magnificent shrine to a success she wishes she could claim as her own, along with the mere presence of the energetic young lady speaking of her with such a reverent glow, has provided definitive, irrefutable proof that she didn't need three decades of stasis within the Curse or to earn Snow's forgiveness to become a better person. This version of herself had done it, was obviously adored by her daughter and revered by her people, and it shames Regina to think she'd so spectacularly failed in that regard.
But there is no time to bemoan her tragic if not well-earned lot when there are other, more important things to consider. Things that have her jumping to awful conclusions. Such as why she'd not immediately detected her supposed daughter's incredibly powerful magic.
"Your magic," she says, anxiously grasping a surprisingly muscular arm. Her concern is that her counterpart has done to her child what Rumple did to her. Learning to conceal dark magic from other practitioners is one of the first tricks the imp taught her to avoid alerting the court magicians, who would have reported her to the king, who likely would have swiftly put her to the torch. "I didn't sense it at all," she adds, dreading the possibility that this version of her had sunk so low as to corrupt her own child. "It's as if it was hidden from me. Why is that?"
"Probably because I'm also a Child of the Moon," the girl says, ducking her head to conceal a humble if not becoming blush. "Mother says that makes me hard to read even for the most powerful sorcerers."
"You're a sorceress and a werewolf?" Regina's mother had always insisted that repeating something immediately after it was spoken was a sign of low intelligence, but she's far too dumbstruck to care. The crests upon the dual thrones suddenly make perfect sense. "I'm assuming you take the latter after your father."
The girl's eyes dance with secretive humor. "You could say that. Mother was turned, but only after she gave birth to me. By the way, I'm Mireya. Just in case you were wondering."
Regina can't say she had been since she was struggling to wrap her brain around the idea of her voluntarily becoming a werewolf. And still having a hard time reconciling herself to the idea of birthing a child when she was barren – a magical daughter at that. Drinking the cursed potion that destroyed her reproductive capabilities had seemed a necessary evil at the time, and no great sacrifice since she'd buried her desire to reproduce along with Daniel. She has regretted that decision since, and more than she would ever care to admit. Knowing, then, that her other self had somehow overcome so great an impediment has her curious if her regrets weren't for naught, and that there was still a possibility for her to conceive.
"The girl's name means 'miracle' in the tongue of my father's people," she muses to herself, "so perhaps there is a cure for the curse I've yet to think of. And perhaps my other self might be persuaded to share it..." That she has no one with whom to conceive doesn't enter into the equation.
"It's nice to meet you, Mireya," Emma says as Regina stares, conflicted into paralysis. A surprisingly acute wish to hold her daughter for the first time is held in check by an equally dominant fear. Were she to indulge herself in such an embrace, she'd never want to let go, and that, along with a painstakingly programmed need to maintain decorum around royalty which is precisely what Mireya is, trumps the desires of her heart. "So you're Regina's kid, huh?" Emma goes on, ignorant to Regina's internal struggle. "What's she like here? You know, for reference."
Mireya's smile is toothy and blinding, and it tickles something in the back of Regina's mind that she feels she ought to recognize. Hints of the color red flash across her visual memory, but she is unable to make any meaningful connection. She doesn't know it yet, but she'll feel like a fool soon enough...
"I am," says Mireya, effusive with enthusiasm for the subject, "and she is everything you might imagine of the greatest Queen to ever live."
Regina hums warily, but is careful not to let her doubt bleed through her fragile composure. "Lofty praise considering I once was a Queen also, and was far from deserving such commendation."
"Mother wasn't always a good ruler, either. She was once sovereign of the White Kingdom before she was deposed and exiled," says Mireya, not at all ashamed of a past that has, for Regina, been all but confirmed as shared with her alternate self. Or at least up until her defeat at the hands of Snow White and Prince Charming.
Regina marvels at the difference between Mireya's eager acceptance of her mother's dark past and Henry's of his. As before with the girl's magic, she briefly considers whether her doppelganger may have raised her daughter to actually be proud of the darkness. But the way Mireya holds herself with such grace and innocence and kindness speaks against that unthinkable scenario. Somehow, she knows that in this world, rather than repeat the mistakes her mother made, she had taken the high road by owning her sins rather than attempting to suppress them, and in so doing, fostered a strength and determination within her child to choose a better path. She contemplates then, with no negligible heaping of cynicism, if she might have found that kind of courage had things worked out differently for her in the real world.
"We know," Emma says, taking up for Regina who is far too preoccupied studying Mireya to answer. "We're sort of from there in a roundabout sense. I was under the impression that someone else ruled this kingdom after my moth...I mean, after Snow White abdicated to return to her ancestral land."
"That would be correct," Mireya said. "One of Queen Snow's closest allies, a noble knight named Lancelot, governed in her stead until my mother took the throne. To avoid unnecessary conflict, Mother convinced Lancelot to enter her employ as ambassador to the White Kingdom, and then empowered him to represent her affairs there. It was an arrangement Queen Snow was more than happy to accept so long as she was left alone. Mother agreed, and thus began the long détente that exists to this day."
There was one phrase in that explanation Regina finds especially fascinating. She eyes Mireya shrewdly. "You say your mother took the throne. Knowing me, I assume she did so by force?" The girl nods confirmation that this is, indeed, the method her alternate employed to become a Queen once more. She has more questions. "How did she manage that all by herself? Banishment aside, I happen to know for a fact she wouldn't have many allies upon which to call."
"You're right," Mireya says matter-of-factly. "After her exile, my mother was alone, and wandered the lands for some time, struggling to find a place for herself. Her magic had been bound with a curse crafted by the Dark One, and she had no wealth with which to bargain for lodging or nourishment. No reasonable person would extend a hand to help her for fear of reprisal, and her many enemies hunted her so relentlessly that she was nearly always on the move. The only reason she lasted as long as she did was due to the rudimentary survival skills her father had taught her in her youth. But that wasn't enough to sustain her when winter descended upon the land. Within weeks after the first snow, she had nearly wasted away from hunger and exposure. It was quite by fortuitous accident that she stumbled upon the quaint lodgings of a kind werewolf who took her in and patiently nursed her back to health."
Now Regina was fully invested in the story. She burned to know what man she had met to so turn her life around for the better. With Robin ruled out, the possibilities were endless, and she couldn't even begin to imagine who it might be.
Curiosity abounding, she asks, "Is that where she met your father?"
"As a matter of fact it is," someone else says with a voice that, while a bit lower and rougher with age, is one she hears every single time she opens her own mouth.
Regina and Emma turn as one to watch a gracefully aging monarch striding up the aisle. Resplendent in a crimson gown more elegant and regale than any Regina had ever worn as the Evil Queen, her alternate self exudes an honest confidence and a deeply rooted contentment that she has yearned for all of her life. Once dark hair is littered with streaks of silver, and although her face carries her years, it does so with grace; her famous beauty is still largely intact. Somehow she has retained her complexion save a few laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes that accentuate an internal light than cannot be wholly smothered and which makes her even more beautiful, which is a strange thought in and of itself. After all, how often does one get to objectively complement one's own attractiveness without the stain of bias to poison the judgment.
Impressed as she is, jealousy flares up in her chest and sours her stomach. She wants to be this woman, this happier version of herself, so keenly that she imagines this is how Zelena felt the first time she turned green. On reflex, Regina risks a glance at her hands, and is relieved to find them unpainted by her visceral, roiling resentment.
"Mother!" Mireya immediately ducks her head in deference upon catching sight of the Queen, but rather than fear, the gesture is clearly made out of love and respect. Regina feels her envy for her alternate deepen to unbearably petty levels. "These travelers were lost in the forests on the eastern border with the White Kingdom. I brought them here to meet you."
"Is that so?" says the Queen, lips turned up amiably. Her eyes, though, are inscrutable. Softened by happiness as she is, the woman still has some jagged edges.
At least we have that in common, Regina thinks, still feeling bitter.
"Yes, mother," says Mireya, who is now beaming with an excitement she seems hardly able to contain within her tall, lithe frame. "Oh, and they are from another world! Can you believe it?"
Her other self smirks. "I actually can seeing as one of them is me."
Mireya deflates a little at the gentle correction. "Oh. That's right. How thoughtless of me. I'm sorry, mother."
By now the Queen is close enough to grasp her daughters cheeks between her bare hands. She raises up to place a reverent kiss upon Mireya's brow, then smooths her fingers through her daughter's lustrous strands of raven hair. Mireya leans into the touch in the manner of a puppy being scratched behind the ear, and Regina is pretty sure she is every bit as besotted at the utter adorableness of the expression as the Queen.
"That's quite alright, sweetheart," says the Queen, still smiling as she moves away a step. She then takes Mireya's hand. "I can forgive the oversight seeing as how unusual a circumstance this is. It's not every day you get to meet your mother's younger self."
The soft tone the Queen utilizes with Mireya sounds unlike anything Regina ever adopted when she occupied the same position. Even on the good days, she'd only barely kept a neutral tone with Snow. But it almost perfectly mirrors the one she'd used when Henry was a boy, and that tugs at her heartstrings because even though she was already convinced Mireya is her daughter, in a form, having it confirmed by her Wish World self makes it all the more real. This remarkably beautiful, exquisite young lady is hers and yet at the same time isn't, which confounds Regina's rational sense to the point she can hardly formulate any kind of coherent words or cogent thoughts.
"You aren't even a little suspicious about our identities?" Emma asks. Regina gives the blonde a look of gratitude because she is too overwhelmed right now to express her own wariness regarding the Queen's easy acceptance of their stories.
The Queen frowns at Emma's bald skepticism, injecting a graveness to the conversation that has been thus far lacking. "Of course not! I should know my own face and recognize the signature of my own magic. She," she points at Regina, "is undeniably me. What has me suspicious is her apparent youth in addition to what mysterious motives have brought her to my kingdom in the first place."
It is unwise and she knows it, but Regina's jealousy spills out of her before she can stop it. "And I'm curious about how you were able to conceive a child when we both know it should be impossible thanks to the curse I'm sure we both swallowed!"
The Queen tilts her head just so, the way Regina does when she's amused rather than enraged by a baseless accusation. "I find that hard to believe. As powerful and educated as we are in the arts, I would have thought you would be aware there is one thing that can break any curse."
Regina scoffs audibly at that. Since she is speaking to herself, there is no need to mince words or obfuscate feelings. "True Love? You're telling me that True Love broke the curse upon your womb? I don't see how. I just saw Robin Hood, and he had no idea who I was. How could he have broken your curse when you've never even met him?"
The older Regina laughs, deep and loud, clutching at her belly as if the mention of Robin was so hilarious she was fit to burst asunder at the seams. "That two-bit thief?" she says after recovering her composure. "You think that he is your True Love? Oh, that's rich!"
Regina huffs as she defensively crosses her arms over her chest. It offends her memory of Robin that her alternate self is so blithely dismissive of him. "Why wouldn't I? Tinker Bell's fairy dust lead me right to him long before I ever let myself believe I could ever find love again. But I did, with him, just like she said I would!"
The Queen laughs again, this time even harder. Vicious anger coils up in Regina at being mocked, and she almost loses her cool before Emma's hand on her forearm reminds her of their circumstances. However much she wants to throttle her elder self, they may very well require her assistance to get home.
Still, annoyed as she is, she cannot refrain from dishing out some sort of snide comment. "What's so damn funny about that?"
"What's not funny about that?" the Queen retorts rhetorically as she wipes tears away from where she's laughed so hard. "For one, that any version of me fell in love with a scruffy, pine-scented miscreant of such ill repute is difficult enough to fathom. But that you actually trust the spell cast by Tinker Bell is simply too much! How could you be so obscenely oblivious?"
"What on earth are you talking about? Why wouldn't I trust what Tinker Bell said? She was trying to help me!" Regina hadn't meant to sound like a petulant child, and that she did is fairly humiliating, especially since she has an audience.
But the question sobers up the Queen right quick, and the older woman, now markedly perturbed, reddens as she spits out thunderously, "Help you? Help you?! That nit-witted failure of a fairy couldn't help a camel locate a dune in the desert! And you actually believe she was competent enough to cast the most difficult location spell of all? Honestly, I'm surprised she didn't guide us to a moon-eyed, speckle-coated heifer the way she blundered it like the truly useless neophyte she was. By the gods! Until I enlightened her years later – years! – she didn't even realize she had cast it on herself instead of me!"
The assertion is a shot across the bow of Regina's very soul. Her entire perspective shifts and she finds her feet suddenly unsteady as if the ground is no longer solid beneath her. Everything she thought she knew starts to unravel before her eyes and she is helpless to stop the domino effect now that it's been started.
Unwilling to relinquish something she still holds so precious in her memory, Regina scrambles to find purchase for her denial. "What?! That's impossible!"
She half expects a tirade of epic proportions to be incoming forthwith, but is shocked to see that the Queen's visage has gone soft with sympathy. "Is it really?" the elegantly aged woman says. "Ask yourself this: if Robin Hood was indeed your True Love, why did you remain barren after finally consummating your relationship? Because I assure you, once free of my curse thanks to my beloved, I had no trouble conceiving when the opportunity to do so presented itself."
Regina splutters angrily, but can come up with no good response, which only serves to deepen the Queen's compassionate expression.
"Well, obviously you are still ignorant of reality, but if you're willing to indulge me, I'll you a story. I wager some of it will even sound familiar. And it will, perhaps, explain this...conundrum...to your satisfaction."
The Queen speaks as she maneuvers around Regina and Emma to ascends the dais, tugging Mireya along by the hand, to take her place upon the throne. Instead of sitting in the slightly smaller throne to the right as Regina expects, Mireya hovers on the left, still clutching her mother's hand with a sweet smile.
"Once upon a time, there was a bitter, angry, lonely woman," the Queen says, her request for an indulgence apparently rhetorical. With her focus now firmly back on Regina and Emma, she launches into her monologue, "The woman's sad state was due to her having just lost her betrothed and then being gifted like so much chattel to a king she hated before her love's body was even cold. One day while wallowing in her abject despair and misery, a hapless if not well-intentioned fairy rescued her from an accidental fall that would have resulted in her death. The fairy had seen this woman's pain and hoped to ameliorate it by helping her find True Love once again. But the woman still yearned for the stable boy so cruelly taken away from her, so she rejected the fairy's insistence that a man with a Lion Tattoo could have replaced him.
"Years passed. The woman's anger grew along with her discontent until she could stand it no longer. She had the king murdered, thus securing her a kingdom and power with which to extract her vengeance upon the insufferable brat she held responsible for her every torment. She waited until the girl was of age so that she would be fair game...for the sake of conscience, of course. Only when that day arrived, everything went horribly wrong. The princess she hated not only survived a life on the run but thrived, met her own True Love, and took this very kingdom I now occupy before turning her attention to reclaiming her beloved homeland. In a protracted war that cost many innocent lives, the wretchedly broken Queen was defeated, publicly humiliated, her power stripped away from her, and was then banished forever on pain of death.
"I believe this is where Mireya mentioned the haggard, half-dead exile was taken in by a certain werewolf. They spent months together at the ramshackle cabin the generous soul had personally constructed, mostly out of necessity as winter had arrived and it was too cold for the woman to seek shelter elsewhere. During that time, something truly astonishing happened. The ice that once blanketed the deposed Queen's heart began to melt under heartfelt smiles that stirred her emotions, almost infinite patience that taught her the true meaning and value of compassion, and tender touches that once would have enraged her but were now welcome tethers to an existence that was suddenly becoming tolerable. Before she even knew it had happened, she was in love, and lo and behold that love was miraculously reciprocated. Blanketed in the glory of that newfound love, the couple spent a whole year together in that cabin, learning everything there was to know about one another.
"Eventually, though, the woman's ambition returned, and though she was happy for the first time in her life since the death of her stable boy, she craved the extravagant life of a sovereign to which she had become accustomed. She was, as it turned out, not quite so cured of her aspirations for power as she had thought during those heady early days of romance. But to her infinite amazement, her lover already knew this, and instead of rejecting her for her nature, declared an unconditional love and support that has yet to waver. No one had ever understood the bone-deep need for power that had been instilled in the woman until that marvelous day. You see, for the first time her life, she had found someone to love and accept her for who she was rather than who she should or could be. And that gave her the courage to at long last accept herself.
"As this kingdom was notably absent of a longstanding ruler, and since the bandit girl who once conquered it had abdicated in favor of the throne of her native land, the people were clamoring for a monarch to take the reins and lead them. Their regent was doing an admirable job, but he lacked the pedigree to assuage the nobles and the audacious strength the masses required to guide them in a singular purpose. The constant tension and instability brewing beneath the surface presented an opportunity the woman could not pass up.
"And so, together with her beloved werewolf, she set out to rehabilitate her reputation by tackling problems that all others lacked the wisdom or gumption to solve. In the process, she amassed a small cadre of loyalists who pledged their lives and their honor to her. With time and careful cultivation, her supporters grew numerous enough to march upon the Palace. The battle waged at the gates was one for the ages, if only for the heroics of the woman's lover, who alone wrought a devastation upon the regent's forces that is still discussed around campfires to this day. Two weeks after the regent surrendered, the woman was coronated, a rightful Queen once more, and by her side, her ever faithful werewolf. They married not six months later.
"But the newly discovered happily ever after was soon to be tested, for her banishment and subsequent reformation had not delivered the Queen of the many enemies she made. Years before, during a fit of rage at failing to secure her revenge due to one man abetting the fugitive girl she was hunting, she publicly executed him and the rest of his village in front of his wife and child. That child would grow up to become a witch of some minor skill and a talented bladeswoman who managed to infiltrate the castle and slip past the guards with a cursed knife meant to kill the Queen, and failing that, to forever lock her in a fiery purgatory with only the slightest scratch. But the Queen's consort being a werewolf with inhuman reflexes stepped in to take the blow and fell instantly to the dastardly enchantment placed upon the blade. Mad with grief, the Queen strangled the assassin to death with her bare hands and then wept over her beloved, destitute, on the verge of succumbing to total insanity...until one of their most stalwart friends, a lovely young lady from the far east with gifted mind for military strategy, suggested the impossible: True Love's kiss."
The Queen breaks the narrative then, gazing up at her daughter with such deep affection that Regina's stomach hurts to witness it.
"I hadn't expected the kiss to work," she says, and Mireya is wearing a fond expression that says she's heard this story many times. "I was told my True Love was a man with a Lion Tattoo. But my werewolf was neither tattooed nor a man."
As Emma's eyes comically bulge, Regina flushes in astonishment. She's never told anyone this particular secret. Mostly out of long-ingrained terror that her mother might find out. How could she ever admit to not exactly being straight to an intractably traditional, judgmental, heartless witch of a mother who would've likely either disowned her outright or, more likely, punished her until such perversions were either forgotten or suitably beaten into submission? So, to avoid her mother's creative methods of correction, she stuffed those fledgling feelings down and refused to let herself revisit them.
In retrospect, she can see that it wasn't just angst over her mother dictating her cowardly flight from her attraction to fellow members of the fairer sex. She'd also been driven by her own preconceptions of what was acceptable. Being a blue blood royal meant certain rules were placed upon her that she disapproved of, but the stigma against homosexuality wasn't one of them. As she'd entered womanhood, she'd been a vociferous proponent of further legislating away from what she'd considered little more than filthy degeneracy. To learn she was might be part of the minority she'd been so callously persecuting, even if only in her thoughts, was too much for her to bear on top of the strain of her mother's impossible expectations. When she became Queen and had the power to change things as she saw fit, she hadn't indulged in her proclivities, nor did she during the Curse, even though she'd privately fancied a certain woman both times. She had no mother to blame, no excuse to offer for her continued hypocrisy, other than she was simply still afraid to answer one simple question. If she was wrong about that, what else might she have been wrong about?
Yet, while it's certainly a shock to hear her True Love is a woman, and whereas she would have railed against such an accusation in the past, she's grown enough now, has become comfortable enough in her own skin, to at least admit she's open to the possibility. They are baby steps. But that's progress, isn't it?
"Still," the Queen says, ignoring their reactions, "I was desperate to save her, so desperate that I was willing to make a fool of myself should the attempt fail."
"But it didn't," says Mireya, giving her mother a watery smile. "It worked. You woke Mama up."
"Yes, I did," says the Queen with unabashed pride. "But even though I was relieved beyond imagining, the success of that kiss prompted me to seek answers for questions it unearthed. Why had the kiss worked when I was told in no uncertain terms my True Love was a man with a lion tattoo? Certainly Tinker Bell had made no mention of a female werewolf with green eyes and the most alluring smile I've ever seen. It took nearly a year, but I was finally able to locate the fraudulent fairy to extract my answer. Fittingly, she had lost her wings over her unwise interference in my life, and what's more, she had no idea why my kiss was able to wake the woman to whom I had freely chosen to give my heart. I was thus constrained to two options. I could forget about why the kiss worked and move on, or I could seek satisfaction elsewhere." She fixes her eyes on Regina then. "You ought to know better than anyone the former was unpalatable."
Regina nods. If what happened to her Wish Realm self happened to her, she would have torn apart the whole world for answers. "No doubt I would have done the same. Who did you consult, then? Rumple?"
"By the gods, no." The disgust on the Queen's face is unmistakable. Another parallel between us, Regina thinks. "If I set eyes on that slimy bastard of an imp ever again, it'll be too soon. No, I sought the only person whose answer could be, without a doubt, taken as reliable simply considering she also is a fairy. The wisest of all fairies, to be exact: Rheul Ghorm."
Regina can hardly believe what she's just heard. Of all people, to consult Blue on such a delicate matter as her happily ever after seems absurd. "Blue? You consulted Blue about this? And took her answers at face value? She's no more trustworthy than Rumple in my estimation."
"I did just that," says the Queen, unperturbed by Regina's loathing of the Head Fairy, "and I do believe her help was given in good faith, if only because the information came with a price. In exchange for my agreement to leave Snow White alone for the remainder of her days, she recast the spell to locate my True Love, the one Tinker Bell so epically flubbed. Imagine my shock, relief, and irrepressible joy when it did not lead me to a man with a lion tattoo, but to my wife. This, of course, mystified Blue, who swore to investigate if only to quell both of our confusion. Come to find out, Tinker Bell had inadvertently been thinking of herself when she cast it that first time. The rest, as they say, is history."
Hardly able to fathom the repercussions of that information, Regina falters. Hand on her chest, she frantically searches for any sign of deception in her alternate self. When she finds only open honesty, she heaves a harsh breath and runs a shaky hand through her hair.
"I don't know what to say to that," she says, feeling weak in the knees all of the sudden. "Do you mean to tell me that Robin Hood's True Love is actually Tinker Bell instead of me?"
The Queen smiles with the forbearance of someone who has learned how to master their emotions. But there is a secret shining in her eyes that sets Regina's nerves ending to tingling and makes the hair on her neck stand up.
"That's exactly what I mean," says the Queen, and as she speaks, her eyes wander over Regina's shoulder. A tender smile spreads across her face at what she sees. "Our True Love is a Hood of a different name – a more...colorful one." She makes a gesture toward her dress, but her eyes are fixed above Regina's shoulder, spellbound and sparkling with some indiscernible emotion that sends chills up her spine. "In fact, I often wear this particularly vibrant shade in honor of her."
"Oh, stop it! You know I hate it when you refer to that old nickname."
The voice that speaks those words belongs to a woman Regina knows personally, a woman she had once harbored secret desires for during the curse that she so woefully lacked the courage to act on. In a rush of realization, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
Frozen in place, she stares dumbly at the Queen, who returns an insufferable smirk when Emma swirls around and gasps.
"Ruby?"
With speaking of that name, Emma forever obliterates a narrow-minded viewpoint about True Love Regina has carefully cultivated since the incident with Tinker Bell. Heart in her throat, Regina turns to face her destiny, for the woman she'd once secretly harbored an interest in but was too cowardly to act upon, is the very same one her thirsting eyes drink in.
And just like that, with one glimpse, her world spins off axis, then goes careening into the nether from whence she isn't sure she it can ever be recovered.
