It's been a while since I first started this story and a lot of things changed, especially since I began writing this even before the end of Season 1. I hope I've managed to incorporate at least some of the new elements into this chapter and that it still makes sense alongside the whole series. As usual, it went into a direction I hadn't considered before but I think it works pretty well. I had fun writing this and I hope the same can be said about reading it.
III
"Snow White is the fairest of them all."
You never said it out loud but I saw it in your eyes that day. You were getting ready to come down to dinner and your stepdaughter came to fetch you. She walked up to you and asked you when you'd be ready. You told her you only needed a minute or two and turned back to your reflection in the mirror. One look at the girl's reflection drained the color from your face. She was busy arranging the folds of your dress in the most innocent, loving gesture and paid no attention to the mirror at all.
You let her finish, and you even caressed her hair with your hand, while your eyes flashed with lightning and your lips formed a thin, almost invisible line. You blinked, as if hit by some kind of momentary pain – and if I'd asked you then if you were hurt, you would've told me to go to hell – as if I wasn't in hell already – but I knew that look and didn't have to ask you.
I never knew why you let people think you hated Snow White because she was more beautiful than you. I tried to reason with you about that every time I had the chance; I must say that the only reason I even dared to imply that you were wrong to do so was because I knew that no matter how much you tried you couldn't make me suffer any worse than I already was.
"You don't know anything," you'd spat and turn your back at me. "You don't know anything, you don't understand."
But I did, just because you had decided that no one understood you didn't mean no one did. You didn't make it any easier, I had to give you that, but if only someone took their time, they could read you like an open book. And, having no other books to read, I'd become an expert in reading between the smudged and tightly scribbled lines that life had written on your soul.
"If you don't keep your annoying presence to the minimum, I promise you I will ban all the mirrors in the land," you threatened on the day you decided to let me see you again. "Do you understand?"
You were queen and being around you was a privilege, you said. You decided when it was permitted. You would not have some insolent fool look at you whenever he wanted.
I bowed my head apologizing for insulting you and making you angry. Of course, you never accepted my apology. Probably because I wasn't apologizing for the right thing but you would've never pointed that out.
My presence might have annoyed you at first but right now it was making you extremely nervous.
I used to think it was because all your life you had been under your mother's control and you couldn't stand the thought of someone constantly keeping an eye on you like that.
But the more I knew you, the more I realized what frightened you the most was the idea that someone might prove you wrong about yourself. You had worked so hard to make people fear your power that somewhere along the way you had forgotten why felt the way you did. You convinced yourself all you wanted was power, confusing it for a happy ending.
I think what pained you most in all this was that Snow White would never have to fight to be queen one day the way you did. She would never have to do anything to get her way.
Your mother had dedicated her life to making you someone you had no intention of becoming. No one had ever asked you what you wanted. All your life, you'd never had a choice.
"So why bother now?" You asked yourself on those rare occasions you forgot I was listening, although to tell you the truth I was always listening, especially when you were not speaking. I'd watched you walk down the same path, not ever stopping for even a moment to think if maybe you wanted to turn at the next crossroads. First it was your mother that led you on her chain, and later came Rumpelstiltskin, although he was commanding you like a marionette with his invisible strings.
You liked to think you were in charge of your own ship but, if you were, would you have let it sink like that?
We always have a choice – you renounced yours almost out of habit: having been taught someone else knew what was best for you, you willingly gave into yet another scheme, fulfilling someone else's ambition.
You say it was them who called you the Evil Queen. But did you ever do anything to stop them?
I was your prisoner. And in that my love for you was not very different from any other love. It was the promise of seeing you that kept the feeling alive, in spite of everything you'd done, in spite of knowing you laughed at my weakness.
I could never touch you so I worshipped your image. And love's just that – an image that we paint from dreams – that we pretend are memories - with the colors of our imagination
Despite everything I tried to make you see, the only image of yourself that you thought you could love was made up of nothing but your nightmares and regrets.
