Chapter Ten: Lamentation
How's your world now? Not quite so diminished now, is it? – David Ives, 'Venus in Fur'
Regina climbed the steps of her porch, rubbing the tenderness from her neck. It took some fumbling but when she managed to get the front door unlocked she breathed a sigh of relief.
Home.
Every stride was taken with a wince. She used the wall to prop herself upright until the dizziness passed. A labored breath in, a long one out. Her eyes were shut and she licked at her bottom lip, collecting the bitter taste of dried blood.
A storming of feet descended the stairwell and came in the presence of her son. He stopped at the last step, examining his mother and the blank expression she sported for him. Unblinking, Henry heaved up his backpack and marched past her without a word.
Regina touched his shoulder strap. "Henry, where are you going?"
He roughly slapped her hand away. Despite the obvious pain she was in Henry didn't dial back on his boiling tone. "Away! With Emma gone there's nothing here for me!"
Hand shying back, Regina recoiled. "That is not my fault."
"Yes, it is! You ruin everything I love. You keep me from everyone I love. I'm leaving before you destroy me, too."
"Henry," she frowned, hands twitching to reach for him, "I would never hurt you. You're my child. You're everything to me."
"Emma was everything to me."
"I know how you must feel. But I am still here for you. I would never leave." She took one trembling hand and tucked it under his chin. "You will always have me."
"I don't want you!" He screamed loud enough for it to shake every wall in the house. "I never asked to be your son! I'm Emma's! If you loved me at all you would have made her stay."
"She made her decision, Henry. I cannot compete with that." Despite her heartfelt guilt it wasn't enough to please her son. Nothing would be enough for either of them if Emma wasn't there in the flesh. Clenching her jaw, Regina asked, "What do you want me to do? I cannot force her to stay."
"You've done worse to her," spat, taking a tentative step back.
Regina's eyes flew from his threatening mouth to his retreating sneakers. Both hurt on a nuclear scale. "What did she tell you?" Her eyes narrowed.
"It's in the book, remember? You're the Evil Queen and you des –"
"Yes," she snapped lightly, "I destroy everyone's happiness. But this is real life, not the pages of a book. If people get hurt here they actually suffer. While it is unavoidable for anyone to cause pain, it is never my intention to make you feel it. I have even come to regret my dishonest aims against Miss Swan, though not at the expense of your safety. Your happiness means more to me than my own. I love you," Regina intoned with round eyes. She searched the floor just as the words stumbled past her lips. "And I love –"
"Love is dark! If you are capable of it then I don't want it."
Regina's knees met the floor instantly. "Don't say that, sweetheart," she pleaded. "You don't know what you're saying." If it weren't for her son's adamant confession she would have crumpled from the ache in her spine. She had taken a beating, and every pang reminded her that she had asked for it. She had found herself kneeling more often than usual, but this time there was an enormous wretchedness about the things she wanted and the ways in which she desired them. "Love doesn't have to be a competition. If you love her more than me –"
"I do!" Henry insisted, his screech making him flinch just as visibly as his mother.
Regina looked away, lashes fluttering. She rubbed the sweat of her palms against her thighs and murmured, "If that is how you feel then I cannot force your opinion any differently. You are free to love whom you wish and with however much of your heart."
Henry nibbled at his lip. Just like Regina he was losing the confidence to make eye contact.
She returned to match his frightened stare. Her throat bobbed unexpectedly and her eyes shinned with unshed tears. "But I am still your legal guardian," she said. Not 'mother,' because that detail seemed moot at present. "And you are a minor. Until you turn 18 you will live in this house and abide by my rules."
She wondered where he would go when he became an adult. Would he race off to find his biological mother? The one who left him not once but twice? It didn't matter to him. He was still a child who could overlook such monumental grievances. She wondered where Emma would be in seven years and how old she would be. Would she wait for Henry? For Regina? Would Henry really leave his own mother behind and the home she loved and raised him in?
These were question Regina would torture herself over for years to come.
"I don't have to listen to you," Henry said. "I can leave whenever I want and you can't stop me. You couldn't even stop me the first time."
He launched himself past her and grabbed for the doorknob. Before the brass handle even squeaked he felt the shoulder straps of his backpack bite into his arms. He was hauled back.
"You are not going anywhere."
She snatched him back from the door and let him go.
He uttered a sob and the first tears unleashed. His sneakers squealed across the finished hard wood floor as he scrambled away. "I won't forgive you for this! I promise. I won't forgive you for letting her go and from keeping me from her! And I won't forgive you for treating me like a prisoner!"
He whirled and rushed back up the stairs. The sobs were just a miniscule thing over the stomping of his feet on the stairs. He would let it all out, no holds barred when he was in his room.
Regina heard the slam and the subsequent wail. These walls are so thin, she thought. Why do they have to be so god damned thin?
She made a mess of her study. Objects flew in midair, glass and mirrors shattered, things were destroyed. Many, many things were left to pieces on the floor and she stood in the middle of it all like a lone survivor after an apocalypse.
Hands hanging slack at her sides, Regina begged herself not to lose it any further than she had already. Her mouth pressed trembling lips tightly closed, so tight against the bubbling sobs. She stared at some vague spot on her wall and dared not join the broken pieces at her feet. Her body was already damaged and bleeding. She could not surrender the last of what she protected so dearly. She couldn't because it was no longer hers to surrender. Now, it remained probably a hundred miles away and growing.
Regina Mills wanted so many things. She went as far as a curse to get them, but it only sated a fraction of that lust. For a time, Emma had succeeded where a spell failed. The lack of control with her was orgasmic. The danger was thrilling. What would she do next? What foul praise would be slung upon her mistress? Emma had been so unexpected and so unpredictable it was exactly as Regina wished for.
She had lived in a world of perfection and appeasement for 28 years and it made her sick. She was curious to feel something different, something beyond the normal range of emotion. Emma hadn't satisfied that curiosity, but given her a taste of it. And Regina came back for more. She would have crawled naked through the desert to get it. She needed to feel the lashes against her skin; feel the sting, the burn, and the bit shred like razors. She wanted punishment, degradation, and rapture. She was in love with them as she was in love with Emma. They were the only things that made her feel alive and wanted in a world of perfection and appeasement. Emma made her feel desired much as she had been as queen.
There remained little softness about this world spawned from a spell. Suffering and pleasure were an enjoyment to be prescribed as one entity. It was her way. It was the only way. Her hatred and fear of Emma turned into a masochistic infatuation where the sting of a slap turned into tingling delight, where a blow turned to tender awakening. She had pursued it with punch-drunk enthusiasm and, therefore, could not know the moral dilemma in assigning these acts to Emma.
Regina's head dropped to view the crumpled slip of paper in her fist. Her fingers unclenched around the false second chance. Her eyes read the words again. She breathed shakily, her chest rattling, and rubbed her thumb over the scrawled ink of Emma's name.
In a way, their parting arrived promptly – before things became too messy. Except that wasn't entirely true. Emma's departure came too late for propriety to matter. They were doomed the second Regina's lips connected with Emma's that day in the forest all those months ago. Destined to strip their defenses layer by layer and torment what lied inside. To bite and claw each other to shreds, scream their throats raw, and start the vicious process all over again.
She folded the note back into her palm and closed her fingers around it like a heart-shaped box would.
As fate would have it, the pages of her favorite book lay open and prostrate as a victim of circumstance. Regina stared at it from across the study with the knowledge of her actions. She had pursued beauty through incomprehensible torture as Severin did for his fur-draped Venus.
And she dropped to her knees for the last time. She raised her chin up, eyes searching the spot where Emma should have been – with her. Regina's hand blindly patted the floor until it hit a cold, hard object. She gripped it and allowed the cool metal to seep into her skin, all the way to the bone until she felt it.
Empty and alone, Regina rubbed the pad of her thumb along the edge of the letter opener while staring at the ghost of her desire. A bead of red spilt with every graze. She did not wince or cry out, but a thrill seized her as transparent evergreen eyes danced on her. She felt hot and aroused. Elation flowed from her eyes, amassing with blood into a puddle on the floor.
It only lasted a moment. The euphoria was short-lived in the presence of empty space. Her thumb pressed harder, and harder, and harder… She didn't know how else to feel it. Emma was gone now and with her Regina's will to capture it.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Regina shook. With no one to record her words and no one to respond to her she asked something of herself, something that dismantled the heart of her.
"Are you satisfied now?"