Title: Toxic is the Unyielding Love (10/?)
Author: Maggiemerc
Rating: M
Characters: Swan Queen
Spoilers: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.
Summary: After the events of "Destiny is the Rabbit Hole" Regina returns to Storybrooke to find the world changed in ways she could not have fathomed. Now she's on a quest to discover the new Storybrooke's dark secrets and her journey will take her into the jaws of a fire-breathing serpent, the lair of a mad scientist and to a masquerade ball where too many of those dark secrets could be revealed.
Author's Note: Feedback, especially long involved feedback, is like crack for this particular writer and will be met with vigorous discussions too nerdy for most eyes.
WARNING: There is some Regina/Daniel stuff in this chapter. While it's totally my bag I can get why it wouldn't be other people's so I thought I'd give you a head's up. I mean, it can't really be avoided or ignored for story purposes, but yeah, warning. There it is.
Chapter Ten
They met in the stable. He was brushing down a horse that was not Rocinante and she was sneaking away from a music lesson for a ride. She was guiding Rocinante out of his stall when she realized she wasn't the only human in the stable. She'd frozen, as had he. They'd stared at one another. Then he'd cocked his head to the side.
"Would you like a saddle, miss?"
No recrimination for the lack of saddle or for the messy braid she'd pulled her hair into that was decidedly inappropriate for a girl her age. But there was a little sarcasm in his tone, just enough that his question lacked deference.
She'd bristled.
"I don't need one."
"I know," he'd said solemnly.
"You know?"
"I used to see you riding through the hills. You're quite talented. Though you always ride without escort." He'd leaned against the horse he'd been brushing. Resting his head on his arms like a dreamer. "Rare for a princess."
She'd laughed, "I'm the daughter of the fifth son of a king and a miller's girl. I'm no more a princess than you a prince."
He'd come around the horse, approaching carefully, his words soft, but sure. "You're more beautiful than a princess."
That had caused her to snort. "Princesses aren't all beautiful. My cousin is second in line for the throne and looks like a toad."
"In the stories the princesses are always the fairest in the land. But you're fairer still by far."
"You put too much stock in appearance."
He'd nodded, "You're right. Should I tell you how I like that you rarely use a saddle? That I find the way you fidget in church charming? Or that I love that you sometimes come to town with hay in your hair."
Her hand leapt to her braided hair. Her mother hated hay. Said it marked the peasants from their betters.
He took another step. "You know I sought this job to meet you."
"You're stalking me?"
"Is it romantic?"
"No. It's odd. Who are you?"
Instead of reaching for her hand to lay a kiss on it, as she expected, he held it out, offering it like she were her father and they were about to make a deal.
"My name's Daniel. I'm the new stable boy."
She looked from that hand, to that gentle smile to those gentler eyes to the single strand of hay in his hair. He was hardly threatening despite his admission.
And if she was honest. She'd seen him too. They'd shared a smile at church, and one time he caught her when her boot slipped in the mud.
Tentatively she offered her own hand and they shook heartily like old companion.
"And I'm Regina."
####
"You know me."
Her voice wavered. Cracking. Her voice never cracked. She never shed tears. She was a monolith. A rock.
But the mere presence of Daniel turned her to gravel.
He lurched forward, his movements sluggish and disjointed. His face, once beautiful and knowing, was torn into a grimace as if the whole of him was fighting himself. The man who'd given her a ring and the monster created in her absence.
"Daniel," she said his name like a plea.
The war waged inside of him was lost and he crossed the last few feet between them smoothly. His hand wrapped around Regina's throat and he picked her up. There was now only a furious snarl on his lips.
She tried to kick out but it was impossible.
This was Daniel.
She'd cared for others. She thought…she had feelings she'd never faced for another. But this was the man she'd loved. This was her True Love. Love eternal. Snuffed out by a simpering child and her own mother's sure hand.
"Please," she gasped.
"Drop her," Frankenstein commanded.
Like an automaton Daniel did as commanded. His grip loosened and Regina collapsed to her knees.
"Stay," Frankenstein as though speaking to a dog.
Daniel stood perfectly still.
Frankenstein studied him, the light from the medical lamps glinting off his glasses. Hiding his eyes and making him as inhuman as the creatures he'd forced life into.
"He's gorgeous isn't he?"
Regina pushed herself up so at least her back was straight. She couldn't yet try to stand. She flipped her hair to better look at him. "Somehow I don't think you're talking about his cheekbones."
Frankenstein nodded, a small smile on his lips. "Of course. Humor. I've noted that before. It's how the weak try to survive impossible circumstances."
"I'm not weak."
"Aren't you? The very sight of your dead lover has you on your knees," he observed.
A spell boiled on her fingertips. "I'm not. Weak." Her hand lashed out, the spell started to fly from it, but Daniel grabbed her wrist and it evaporated in an instant.
"Wha—"
A jolt of painful electricity tore through her system.
"I built him for you Regina. As long as he touches you your magic is useless."
"How," she asked through gritted teeth.
Frankenstein knelt down next to her. "Science," he whispered in her ear.
Daniel gritted his teeth and another wave of electricity coursed through Regina.
It was excruciating.
####
The scream rang through the entire castle. It echoed off the walls and vibrated through Henry's bones and was a cacophony in his ears.
Even the monsters they were dispatching paused to listen.
"What was that," Dorothy asked.
Emma had paled. "Regina," she said softly.
The cries were incongruous with the woman he knew. His mother was put together. Impervious. She was a titan. That scream. Followed by another. And another. Those were the screams of a mortal. A mere human.
He shoved a knife through the eye socket of a wailing monster and let gravity pull the creature off his knife. Dorothy flipped another then, carrying the motion forward, wrenching its arm out of its socket and slamming her ruby heel into it's exposed neck.
Emma sent her whole fist through one's chest and shoved it off casually. She was now less focused on the fight and more on the tower above, where Regina's screams sounded ominously.
She was so focused she dispatched the next one rushing her in the same fashion. Her fist went straight through, ichor, black and pungent coated her hand.
"He's torturing her," she said distantly, her mind so far from the battle at hand she might as well not have been there at all.
Dorothy brought one to its knees, caught the knife Henry threw, and plunged it into its neck. "We've got this," she said. "Help Regina."
Emma flashed away in a puff of pink smoke entirely different from her normal thunder crack.
Henry turned back to help Dorothy, and only after they'd nearly completed their job did he realize he'd never even offered to help save his own mother.
####
"I think my favorite love story is… your parents!"
She groaned. "Oh. Don't say that! My mother bought my father."
"Your mother learned magic in a single night so she could save her life and win your father's hand."
"It's not as romantic as you make it sound Daniel."
He sat up on his knees and pulled her up too. His hand went around her waist and held her steady. "It is though!" He looked into her eyes. "Your mother fought nature to be with your father."
"So did that princess."
He raised an eyebrow.
She shoved his shoulder but he held on tight. "You know the one," she laughed playfully. "She fell in love with a fairy and fought to free her. They defeated the laws of magic. That trumps nature."
"Magic is nature Regina." He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her neck. "Magic is what binds us. It powers us. It's love. It's our love."
There was a fervency in his words that matched her mother's own passion for magic, but the fervency was for love too, and she'd never heard the word uttered with such ardor.
"You believe magic—love—is so powerful?"
"Magic is power, and love, true love, is the most powerful magic of all."
####
Please.
She couldn't form the words.
Please.
They were stuck on a tongue swollen and dry.
Please I love you.
Words when shared meant to cure all, but even thinking them did nothing. Daniel held her and silenced her and pained her in every way and Frankenstein watched with dry malevolence. He motioned and Daniel dropped her wrist. She collapsed onto her hands and knees and gasped.
"I…" she promised, "will kill you."
"You can still speak?" He was so confident in his defeat of Regina he actually turned his back on her. Walked away to sort through instruments on a tray. "I knew you'd be more resistant. Magic users tend to be."
"Thought I was your first."
"First human magic user. Cora's given me access to a near endless supply of fairies. And yes, I suppose technically they are human in this world, but they're also not like you. You have the magic inside." He turned and held up a long scalpel, "and I'd like to see it in action."
He waved his scalpel like a conductor directing his orchestra. "Daniel, place her on the table."
There was no indication that Daniel had heard him, or that he could even register words. He continued to loom over Regina, his blank eyes staring through her.
For half an instant Regina allowed herself to see something besides a monster. To see that stable boy with rough and gentle hands and kisses she'd never dare compare to any others. She thought she saw him and she thought she saw…saw her own pain mirrored there.
As much as it hurt her she could not even imagine what Daniel, sweet and innocent Daniel, would think if he'd hurt her.
It would kill him.
"I can stand on my own," she said.
She had to hold her side and breathe deep, but she stood and didn't even reach for support for the golem man in front of her. She shuffled slowly towards the table. Drawing each step out and biding herself more and more time.
They had to have heard her screams earlier. Her throat was raw from them. Henry. Emma. They'd come for her. She just had to give them enough time.
Frankenstein frowned, "I've had test subjects with no cartil—"
BAM.
It was a loud crash of something hard against the gate that barred off the room. So loud that even Daniel turned to watch the gate flex against its hinges.
"Regina," Emma shouted.
And Regina had never found such comfort in someone screaming her name. Her own misery, shock, even the sensation of her still twitching muscles evaporated at the sound. She smiled.
"She can't make it through," Frankenstein said confidently. "This castle is built to keep your kind in or out. The walls are impenetrable."
She stood tall. The sound of Emma attempting to come to her rescue bolstering her own resolve. "The walls may be, but what of the windows?"
Lightening flashed against one such window. It was, curiously enough, stained glass. Bright and chaotic. The light from beyond the tower cast shadows of blue and purple and red and green with each flash of lightening. The piece was abstract in nature, there was no one figure held together by the lead cames.
In the absence of light the window was a wall of black glass, barely discernible from the stone walls surrounding it.
"The glass protects this room as well as the walls," he said pridefully.
Regina limped towards it, never letting her eyes leave the two men in the room with her. "Maybe," she said. "But I suspect the glass only works when intact."
She threw her hand out towards the window and fire, hotter than any she could remember conjuring, boiled in her hand. It arced away from her, tracing the lead cames that framed each piece of glass and turning it red hot.
"I'll be curious," Regina growled, "to see what happens when there is no glass."
The window began to sag. The storm outside began to rage. The lightening became more frequent. The wind beat against the tower. The rain beat against the searing hot glass. Regina's heart beat against her chest.
And Daniel reached for her again.
####
They were making their way up the narrow staircase leading to the top of the tower when his mom screamed again. Henry picked up his feet, dashing up the last thirty some odd stairs. Emma stood at the top, throwing her shoulder against an inflexible metal gate.
"They're locked in," she shouted.
Henry pushed her aside and threw his own shoulder against the gate. The collision of metal against his shoulder painfully twisting the joint.
"Can't you magic through," Dorothy asked.
"I tried." Her shoulder glowed with enough energy to take out a herd of centaurs and she threw herself against the door again. The magic evaporated at the touch. "It sucks up whatever I throw at it."
"Here," Henry said. He pulled his wand out of his bag. "Maybe fairy dust will work."
On the other side of the door Regina's pained cries continued.
"Hurry," Emma urged.
Henry didn't need to be told twice. As upset as Emma was it was his mother apparently being tortured, and he was damned if he was going to sit and listen to that.
He did a flourish just like the fairies used to and struck the tip of the wand against the gate.
Nothing happened.
"Shit," he said aloud.
Emma charged up another wave of magic and slammed her shoulder against the immovable gate again. "Damn it."
"Wait," Dorothy said, "I got an id—" She flashed out and then back again "—ea."
Henry blinked. "Where the hell did you find a hammer?"
It wasn't even a hammer. It was the giant cousin of a hammer. The thing's handle was a good four feet long and the head was nearly a foot wide. Dorothy couldn't even pick it up. She tried and ended up moving it about a half an inch.
"Found it downstairs. I figure Emma can use her magic strength and—"
Emma didn't wait for the rest of the plan. She wrapped her hands around the end of the handle and pick the entire thing up like it weighed a pound. "Stand back," she said, and without waiting for them to listen she swung the hammer back and smashed it into the gate.
####
The sound was deafening.
Daniel let go and stumbled backwards. His hands went to cover his ears and he groaned loudly in both pain and irritation.
Regina had bitten her tongue when Daniel had grabbed her and sent a few thousand volts through her and she had to wipe the blood off her lips. She was hunched forward again but with her free hand she reached back to touch the stained glass behind her. Its surface scorched her fingertips but the pain was nothing compared to that pain written so clearly on Daniel's face.
Outside Emma struck the gate again and again and within the tower it sounded like being on the inside of a bell.
Daniel's discombobulation, and the sound of impending heroes was enough to make Frankenstein falter.
"Nothing can break through that door."
"No fairy maybe. No centaur. But on the other side of that door may be the most powerful magic creature ever born."
He paled.
"And on this side you have a monster meant to stop magic, but you have a monster steeped in it too." Once more fire flowed out of her hand and raced across the cames. "You didn't plan for me well enough."
"You're all I planned for! You shouldn't be able to stand, let alone use magic." The final word was spat like a curse.
Another clang and light from the stairwell peeked through torn hinges on the gate.
"Hubris Doctor. Always the downfall of us villains."
The lead turned to liquid. The wind was a gust against the glass. And everything shattered.
####
The way the moonlight reflected off the water, and the fires flickered in the windows and the fireflies glowed at odds with the stars. It was like shattered glass. But they called it Firefly Hill.
"They should call it Glass Hill," she'd said with confidence.
Daniel had laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe," he'd leaned back on his hands to stare up at the stars, and then coyly dropped his head onto her shoulder. "Lover's Hill."
She'd playfully bumped him. "That's disgusting."
"Why?"
"It makes it sound like every set of lovers come here. I want this to be our hill. No one else's."
"And to the people that disagree?"
"I'll learn how to turn them into toads," she'd promised.
He'd laughed again. "A feat I'd like to see."
"I'll turn you into a toad." She'd nuzzled her nose against his.
He'd kissed the corner of her lips. "And then each night you'd return me to myself with True Love's kiss."
She'd pulled away with a frown. "Do you really think True Love's kiss is so powerful?"
"It conquers kingdoms Regina. It unites the disparate." He'd reached out to cup her cheek with his hand. "It brings comfort to the lonely."
She'd closed her eyes. Her own loneliness aching hollowly within. It was only with Daniel it seemed to temper.
She'd darted forward and kissed him again, ending any departure into the maudlin that their conversation might take. "But I wonder," she had to climb onto her knees so she could tower over him for once and he looked up as if worshipping a goddess. "Is it powerful enough to get me out of this awful corset?"
He'd grinned and placed a kiss against her breast. "Maybe not, but I am."
An hour later, sated, and naked and wrapped up in a collection of blankets stolen from the stable and smelling of horse sweat and hay they rested entwined, their fingers laced together and their legs a happy knot.
Regina lay her head on Daniel's shoulder and stared up at the myriad of lights from organisms as close as her hand and from worlds forever beyond her reach.
Given long enough even the heat of her lover couldn't keep the dark thoughts at bay. "Daniel, what happens if True Love wanes?"
His chest had jerked with a sudden laugh. "It doesn't."
"Even if I get old and fat?"
"True Love endures."
She turned to face him, her chin on his chest, "And if I die?"
He ran his fingers through her hair. "It's True Love Regina. If you die, I die with you."
####
Emma forced the door open with one last blow at the exact moment a giant window across the room shattered. Thousands of shards of colored glass rained down on Regina and a strange man. The cuts created were bloody, but superficial, and his mother didn't even notice. Her eyes were fastened to the man before her.
Apart from them stood Whale in mute shock, a scalpel clenched in his fist.
One almost certainly meant to cut through his mother's skin.
Henry stalked across the room towards the bastard, but Emma flashed there first and before the pink smoke had even left her clothes her fist was lashing out and Whale was slumping unconscious to the floor, his jaw loose and a trickle of bright blood on his lips.
"God," she moaned, shaking her bruised hand, "this son of a bitch made it way harder than he needed to." She turned back to Regina, "now let's take care of Frankenstein number two here and be do—"
"No," his mother shouted, her eyes never leaving the monster's face. "Stay back."
"Regina—"
"Mom—"
"Both of you! Back. Now."
"Regina," Dorothy asked softly from the door, "who is he?"
"Daniel," she whispered so softly, like the name itself would break the monster, or her, or even maybe the tower in which they stood. His mother's face, always either serene or brimming with anger, was instead fractured. A soft, foreign look in her eyes and lips he knew to be so still instead quivering. There was a strange ache in Henry himself at the sight of his mother so struck by emotion.
All he could remember was waking up from a cursed sleep and seeing Emma, and then his mother's cool hand clasping his and her assurances of love. An assurance she'd never made, and certainly never meant, before the curse broke.
That. That was what he saw on his mother's face as she looked at the dead man Whale had made living.
Love.
####
There were the three of them in silhouette, only illuminated when the lightening screamed through the sky. Their chests rose and fell and they breathed and even spoke. Not that she could hear them. She could hear the wind at her back. She could hear her own heartbeat.
She could hear Daniel's heart beat.
It was so loud. Loud enough to make her wonder why she hadn't heard it before. It was like the thump of a mallet against a bass drum. The beat of his heart vibrated through her bones.
But he didn't breathe. There was no movement in his chest. Or in any other part of him. Not even a twitch. He was perfectly still, his mouth turned down into a pitiable frown and his brow glowering over eyes that had only ever looked at her with fondness.
There was no evidence of life but for that impossible heart in his chest.
He didn't even sway with each gust of wind off the sea.
"Daniel," she said his name softly. As if to coax the man into the shell Frankenstein had given life to.
Lightening arced through the sky and his sallow eyes gained focus. His head tilted perversely as he seemed to see her.
He reached out.
No.
Lashed.
His hand wrapped around her neck and he slammed her back against the broken window. More glass rained down on them and she heard someone behind him cry out and the awful power Frankenstein had given him lanced through her ever nerve but she still—she still found the strength to shout, "No."
"Mom—"
"Regina he's killing y—"
"He's my fiancé!"
The electricity he could conjure with a touch didn't hurt as much as it had before. Was some internal battery waning? Or had her own strength risen up to finally protect her?
It was Emma, naturally, who dared come closer. Her voice delicate as she said, "Regina." She chanced a single look a the other woman and was met with wide and imploring green eyes, "I have to believe your fiancé wouldn't hurt you."
Of course he wouldn't. But he'd been killed by her mother and resurrected by Frankenstein and he couldn't help himself. He was lost. A ship lost out in the storm beating against them all.
"He doesn't know—"
"Because this isn't him—"
Daniel dropped Regina and fast as the lightening flashing in the sky had his hand around Emma's neck. His frown had turned into an all out snarl and his knuckles were white as he dug into her throat with his fingers.
She couldn't even scream. A gurgle of alarm as she clawed at his hands and kicked at legs impervious to pain—or perhaps even sensation.
"Mom," Henry shouted. He unholstered his wand and fired bolts of light that fizzled like fire in the rain against Daniel's skin.
"He isn't himself," Regina promised Emma. "He's confused. But I can fix him. I can fix this."
Emma wide eyes only spoke of her alarm. No understanding. But no recrimination either.
"I will fix this," Regina said.
####
They were halfway across the room when Regina and the man, Daniel, disappeared in a puff of purple smoke. Emma dropped to her knees and rubbed at her neck coughing violently.
"What the hell happened," Dorothy asked. She'd arrived at Emma's side first and helped her to stand.
His mom's voice was a rasp, "He had some magic going on. It was like I was being tasered and choked."
Whale sat up suddenly and from across the room crowed, "Science."
"No, science is my foot up your ass Whale. What the hell'd you do to that guy?"
"I gave him life."
"He was dead," Henry asked, already knowing the answer.
"And now he lives."
Emma pushed past Henry, "You call that living? The guy's a step away from a zombie!"
Whale straightened his coat. "I'm sorry your definition of alive is so far from the biological truth."
"Can he be fixed?"
"Fixed is a crude term."
She stalked closer to him, and the word stalk was never more appropriate. Her power, and the anger that drove much of it, radiated off of her, vibrating against the walls and causing the bulbs in the lamps overhead to dim and brighten rhythmically.
"Can it be done," she growled. The words coming up from low in her throat.
"He is all he can ever be."
Henry was, himself concerned, but not like his mother. Emma's face searched Whale's. "Can't he be fixed…with magic?"
"Magic couldn't even bring him back to life."
"But you could. Why?"
"She ripped me from my brother. So now, something has to be ripped from her."
Emma let loose a quick right jab that caught Whale in the nose and sent his head smacking back against the wall. He slid bonelessly to the ground unconscious.
"You two take him back home. Keep him locked up, and keep Ruby away from him." Her knuckled cracked noisily and she flexed her fist.
"What the hell are you going to do," Henry asked.
"Get Regina back."
She vanished.
"Jesus," Henry said. "Is there a single woman in my life not," he waved his hands, "popping in and out of existence?!"
"Say woman like that again," Dorothy said, "and you can carry Whale's hefty ass back home by yourself."
####
She took them as far down the shore as possible without going through the barrier. Magic didn't exist in the world outside and though Frankenstein was quick to say "science" had given Daniel back to her she wasn't going to test the claim by pulling him through.
The point she'd found for them was on an outcropping of jagged rocks that bit into the soles of her boots and caused the ever stalwart Daniel to stumble.
He didn't attack again. The rain, driven by a blustery wind, bit into their skin like needles, Daniel leaned into the sensation. Closing his eyes and letting the rain lash at his face and sting in the bloodless cuts from the shattered window.
She'd noticed that in the tower. The way her cuts bled and his did not. She'd noticed other things. Things that away from the fury and insanity of Frankenstein's tower she could consider. Understand. And the most critical thing was…
Daniel was cold to the touch.
Dead flesh animated.
"Daniel."
His head tipped forward and she thought the monster might reach for her again, but the hand that reached out was held low and begged only for a shared connection. He didn't—couldn't face her.
She took it tentatively, grimacing against the pain of it.
"It hurts you doesn't?"
Whatever pain there was that seemed to tear apart her very nerves it could not compare to the balm of that sentence. Not the sentence itself, which only added to the ache.
But the words coming from his lips. Formed by his mind. Expressed with his love.
She said his name again, her voice cracking at the syllable.
He dropped her hand.
"Touching you hurts you."
"I know. But we can find a way to fix it. We have Frankenstein now, and I have magic, and Henry, Henry has friends. He's my son and he's clever. I don't know if you saw him, but you'd love him Daniel. And he'd love you. He never had a father, or even a father figure, and I think you'd be a good one—"
"Stop."
How could she? When inevitability floated towards them on the tide. A promise of an end for a romance only just renewed.
"I can't." The words were all inside and needed to be outside.
His teeth gritted noisily. "Regina. It…hurts."
"I know but we can—"
"I spent ten years f—fighting this—this urge to kill." He turned suddenly and the hand that had bruised her neck was gentle on her throat. "I want to kill you."
She covered his wrist with her hand. "He programed you," she said earnestly, "we can deprogram you."
"I can't."
"Daniel—"
"A—all I wanted was to see you again. And the moment I did I nearly killed you."
"I'm stronger now. I'm alive."
"Because you fight."
"And I want to fight for you. I want to fight for us!"
His other hand rose to her neck. The nail of his thumb grazed the skin, the thinnest of barriers between her life and oblivion. "I fought for ten years. Finding a way to bear this…existence." He leaned forward. His cool and damp brow pressed against hers and his voice was hushed, "It hurts to fight."
God. To even breathe hurt. Agony. Every day. "It's hurt every day without you." She seized his hair by the roots to keep him from moving. Hoping that maybe he could feel the loss he'd engendered. "I'm lost without you Daniel."
"If you love—if you love me you'll let me go."
There it was.
Inevitability. As sure as the tide would rise with the moon.
Death. It came only once for most, but twice for them.
To have him back. To have him in her arms. It was a dream she'd never dared to dream. She'd given up the ghost. Memorialized him. Fought. Struggled to move on. And now he smelled like hay and sweat and salt water and he was here and he wanted to go.
"I can't."
"Please." His nails bit into her skin. The promise of the monster he held back. The monster Frankenstein had birthed from the man she loved. "Let me go."
"How—how can I go on without you?"
"You have a son?" He nodded his voice breaking with the word. A son they should have had. Dark hair and a quick smile. A boy born in the saddle. A warrior. Or a poet. Maybe just a miller. A future crushed in her mother's hand and again on Frankenstein's table.
"You have a life," he insisted.
But she shook her head. "Not without you. I'm alone Daniel. No one else. Never anyone else." They warmed her bed and chilled her heart because they weren't him. No one had stirred inside of her and taken root like him. No one ever could.
"You'll love again," he gasped. "True Love. The kind to die for."
She'd shattered glass that day. Shattered walls. She'd broken monsters. And she herself had been brought to her knees physically and emotionally.
But those words were her undoing.
His bittersweet smile at the truth she'd never realized.
She loved Daniel.
But she hadn't died for him.
She wouldn't.
Forced to answer a question no lover should she saw the truth and words escaped her.
His hands cupped her cheeks. His thumps brushed her lips. "You will love again." Before she could protest. Before lies she needed so urgently to speak could fall from her lips he kissed her.
As the truths undid her the kiss built her up. His lips, familiar. Sure. The first lover she'd ever had. Not awkward. But the same as her. The same press and pull and little gasps. They'd learned to kiss together and when she brought her hand to his chest and stopped his heart and turned him into dust it was herself she said goodbye to too.
The girl who thought she'd had True Love.
And the Stable Boy who died to prove her wrong.
####
Rain.
The chill.
Cool lips.
Tears like tracks of fire.
A voice. Soft.
"Regina?"
She turns and Emma Swan stands before her. And in two quick strides Emma has closed the distance and wrapped lanky arms around her.
And she cries.
Because it is all she can ever do.
She mourns the life she had.
The life that never was.
And the forty years spent in revenge for a man she could not die for.
And Emma holds her close and she's warm.
Right.
And True Love is a fucking asshole.