Thanks to everyone who's reading.
Regina was already at the head of the stairs before the door behind her slammed shut. She jumped at the bang but continued on, head bowed as she clacked down the worn wooden stairs, her heels digging into the grains.
She hadn't used magic in two days. Two. Days. Two long and seemingly endless days. It had seemed so simple in the beginning. No magic. She just knew she would be able to do it. Yet, as the first day dwindled into night, she found her arms tingling with an insatiable urge. The blood seemed to pool in her hands, pressure building up until Regina was sure she would make the entire house explode, not t mention herself. When the buzzing reached her ears, she had hurried to bed and gone into a deep sleep.
One day down.
It was as if she had been drinking. She woke up in the morning with her head so groggy she had literally stumbled from her satin sheets and collided with the bathroom door. She splashed cold water against her face, over and over again, as if she could get it into the pores, into her blood and calm it. Already she could feel the buzzing returning. She distracted herself with a shower.
The entire day had been spent in distraction. She took an extremely long shower, reaching over forty minutes before the water turned too cold for her to stand under. She stayed for an extra three minutes. Regina cooked an overly large breakfast, as if she were inviting all seven of Snow White's dwarf friends over—though she never would. She tried not to think of Snow White. She cleaned the entire kitchen, top to bottom and even rifled through the cabinets, throwing out snacks Henry had never eaten and food she did not want to cook. She scrubbed the floor and polished the wood surfaces until her pale reflection gazed back at her. She finished with the kitchen too early.
Regina moved onto the house at large and forced herself to walk passed the pictures of Henry in the hall—Henry at age five, just starting kindergarten, a tooth missing in the side of his smile; Henry just before the start of third grade, his bangs curling into his eyes. Regina had not gotten to take him for a haircut before the picture was snapped. The long hair annoyed her the most, but as she passed it from the bathroom, mop in hand and gloves strapped around her fingers, she grinned. Her son really was beautiful.
And it was for her son that she had been doing all of this, but as the mansion sparkled under her scrutiny and precise brushing and the hands of the clock stilled, it became even harder to ignore the buzzing. The constant urging had her rubbing her arms again, as if that could quell the magic inside her.
It almost felt unnatural. Magic in the Enchanted Forest had felt like a missing piece, a piece that had been taken from her at birth, and when she finally retrieved it, she became whole. After Daniel's death—which she was also trying not to think about—magic had filled a small space in the hole of her heart. It had been her hope, her salvation, and finally her freedom. Yet, in Storybrooke, magic felt like an intruder.
Perhaps it was because magic was so unstable here. She knew that more than anyone else, maybe even Gold, who seemed too preoccupied with whatever he was planning next to really understand that magic did not belong to this place. Regina knew he brought it over; it was his fault, as was almost everything in the long run, but she doubted that he understood the ramifications.
Here, magic was unpredictable. Here a simple fire could spiral out of control until it had swallowed everything, killed people, and turned the sky black with its ash…
Regina shook her head and put the cleaning supplies away. She needed another distraction. Cleaning had been wonderful, monotonous to the point of boredom, but she had filled it with such purpose it had flown by. It had flown by too quickly. She took a glance at the clock and felt her stomach drop. It was only three in the afternoon.
She considered taking a nap, falling into a sleep long enough to dim the impulse, but decided not. If she slept too much in the afternoon, she would only be left with hours of pure darkness where she would have to battle herself and her memories. Better to suffer now. She tried for some reading. The office was filled with books she had never once touched. She had woken the first day of the curse to find a home stocked with the most impressive collections of novels and vases and jewelry and furniture. She had been both quite pleased with herself and her success and at the same time oblivious to the names of Hemingway and Shakespeare and Tiffany and Coach. In twenty-eight years she had learned much, but she had never found the time for leisurely reading. Sometimes running a small town was even more difficult than ruling over a nation.
Regina combed over her smooth, dark wood bookshelves, fingers running lightly over the stiff leather-bound spines of the books. She inhaled their musty aroma, imagining she could smell the trees the paper had come from. She had always been comforted by the trees, the forest. She soon found herself in front of a cabinet. She opened it and reached inside. It was not until the blood-red jewel glinted in the bright sunlight of the office that Regina realized she was holding the spell book.
She bounded from the office as if it were on fire and crashed through the front door until she was standing on the front stoop, panting. She needed to get out of the house, as far away from the book as possible. She started down the cobblestone path but stopped when she reached for the gate.
What was she thinking? This was not her Storybrooke. This was a cursed land recently awakened. She could not go for strolls down the sidewalks; she no longer had the pleasure of being able to clear her head. She gripped the cold metal gate and glanced over her shoulder.
A weight dropped onto her chest and she knew turning around was not an option. She would no longer be able to fight it. She had to release some of this energy. She had to keep her promise to Henry, to herself. She must not use magic. She needed a distraction.
And so Regina had finally done something drastic. She had gone to see Dr. Hopper. She stood at the door, nerves filling her and making her shake in her heels, though she could not understand why. She had marched into Dr. Hopper's office so many times before, to pick up Henry, to discuss treatment plans, to intimidate him into following her orders. But now it was as if he held the power over her. Regina was sure that a rejection would send her right back home, right back to the book. If Dr. Hopper did not let her in…
But he had. He insisted she talk about her use of magic. He reminded her again that magic was the reason she had lost everything in her life. She had bristled at that, but had no time to react before Whale barged in, demanding nonsense. She brushed him off and sat stunned when meek Dr. Hopper stood and threw the surgeon out. That had been a great distraction.
She was glad she had gone…until Dr. Hopper settled back down. He pushed. He pushed her to talk about Daniel, to admit that she had brought him over. He pushed her to remember those horrible memories. She remembered Rumplestiltskin and her first lessons. She remembered the feel of magical hearts in her hand, heavier than would be expected, as if the person's entire body rested in the palm of her hand—technically they did. She remembered the grittiness of the crushed heart, the way the grains flowed from her fist, their pulsing stopped. She remembered the choking noise her victims made.
"If you can't let go of the past, Regina. It's still going to haunt you," he had said. Regina snapped then.
"You know what," she glared at him through bloodshot eyes, "I think this has been quite enough."
He called her back, begged and swore that he could help but Regina slammed his own door in his face.
And now she out in the street, seeking another distraction. Regina climbed into her blue Mercedes and slammed the door, this time relishing its sharp crash, enclosing her off from the world. She thought of Granny's, but immediately knew it would only further her frustration. Besides, there she might run into Henry and as much as she desperately craved that, he was sure to be in the vicinity of Charming. Another meeting with him would be volatile indeed.
Regina pulled away from the curb and sped into town, driving with no sense of purpose, but still ending up where she usually did. She stepped out and swept into Town Hall, climbing the stairs—another distraction—to her office on the second floor.
Why she ever thought it would be easy is beyond her. What got into her head? It did not matter now, she told herself. She was at work and work always filled her head with numbers and emails and letters that had to be written. She wondered how long she would be able to keep the seat. How long would the citizens of Storybrooke allow her to reign over them? Clearly, they were more than willing to form a mob. She smirked at the memory of Whale pushing her against a wall. If she's had her magic then, he'd be nothing more than a bug at her feet. What had Gold said about turning people into snails? Whale would certainly be one she'd step on.
She stayed well past five. Somehow, in the days that she had not made it to the office—being locked in jail by the Charmings, threatened by a wraith, and hunted by rankled citizens—her paperwork had piled up. In one night she got most of it finished and only went back to the car when she felt her eyes drooping. She was bone tired, which meant she'd sleep numbly tonight.
So engrossed in her work was she that Regina had not noticed that it had started to rain, which felt fitting. Even this world was against her attempt to stop magic. She willed herself the strength to not plug a stopper in the sky and ran out into the rain, slipping in her leather heels, and dove into the car. Shaking her hair back, Regina started it, appreciating the little wake-up the water had given her, and headed for home.
She cursed as someone ran through a stop sign, her foot slamming against the brake. As she rolled her eyes, her heart stopped. It took a moment for her brain to register her body's reaction, but even less time for him to recognize him.
Daniel.
Standing at the corner of Main Street, the last outfit he ever wore drenched in the downpour, hair matted against his forehead, was Daniel. Her love. Regina only got a second before a fork of lightning shot through Storybrooke, blinding her. She blinked and he was gone.
Regina stuttered out a breath, gripping the steering wheel tightly to stop her shaking. Even her toes shook as the image burned her eyes. Daniel had been standing there, she was sure of it. He had looked right at her. He had been drowning in water. But the longer Regina sat there—and she sat for a good ten minutes—the more sure she was that he had not been there at all.
It was a side effect from her meeting with Dr. Hopper. The stupid cricket had brought up all of these memories for her, had delved into her haunting past, warned her that it would haunt her again and had forced this hallucination into her consciousness. Regina shook her head and eased off of the brake.
She took another shower once she arrived home and did not bother to dry her hair before she crawled into the sheets. It was Dr. Hopper's fault that she'd seen him. She had only wished he had been there, staring at her through the lightning. Then she would not have felt so alone. In this world, Regina had no one. She had Henry, at one point, but he was gone with the strictest exclamation of never wanting to see her again. He demanded change and it was something she was struggling to do. But as much as it hurt, Regina knew she had to keep trying, because she had never done it for Daniel. Daniel who begged her stand up to Cora. Daniel who died because Regina trusted the wrong person and finally grew a backbone too late. Regina shuddered.
That was why she had seen him. He had been a ghost telling her to do it right this time, warning her. He was not haunting her; Daniel would never do that. He was the only one who loved her. Even beyond the grave, he was trying to help her, in the way he had always done. He was telling Regina he was there for her.
Regina closed her eyes and squeezed the pillow into her face, begging for the distraction of sleep. The last thing she thought, before the numbness pulled her in for another couple of hours, was that she would check Daniel's tomb in the morning. Just to be sure, she would check.
Two days down.
Thanks for reading. Please review. I hope I'm capturing Regina appropriately. I find her a challenge to write for, though I still think the greatest challenge will be writing Rumple or even Belle.
