Standard Disclaimer: These lovely characters ain't mine, I just play with them gently. Please don't sue me. The mistakes are mine, though.
Chapter 7 – Despair
When Regina regains consciousness, it is the dead of night. The fire stoked in the hearth does nothing to dispel the chill that has settled into her muscles and bones. Other than the crackling of wood surrendering to the insatiable appetite of the flame, eerie silence reigns within her chambers. The curtains lining her extravagant and enormous windows are not drawn, and outside she can make out half of a pale crescent moon hanging high in the sky.
She groans when she tries to move, feeling achy and lethargic from having expended so much of her energy during the fight with Zelena. The discomfort is worth it, though, if only for the sweet memory of the witch's tangible disbelief and dismay. The broccoli colored bitch had not anticipated being defeated by the little sister she had dismissed as an inept non-threat.
"Don't get up too quickly," a familiar male voice instructs from her left.
Directing her attention to the source, Regina finds her father slumped in a chair against the far wall, partially shrouded by shadows. The creases around his mouth and his haggard complexion make him appear more old and weary than he has since the end of the Dark Days. He had not fared well while his only child was busy building a reputation for herself as a bloodthirsty tyrant. Dark circles are also prominent around his eyes and his lips are pressed into a tight line that is uncharacteristic of late. He presently resembles the days after Cora's coup and subsequent reign of terror temporarily wrested control of the throne from their daughter. Unforgivable atrocities were committed against the kingdom's subjects and his beloved daughter-in-law, both of which weighed heavily upon his tender heart.
Prince Henry, seventh son of Xavier, never forgave himself for his youthful inability to recognize Cora's manipulations for what they were. Given free reign to practice her dark magicks, she slowly succumbed to an insidious influence that gradually transformed her into a hideous monstrosity who repeatedly abused their only child. His guilt only deepened after Cora returned from exile in Wonderland and thereafter put his daughter and daughter-in-law through the proverbial wringer. Even so, until the very end he harbored a soft spot for the miller's daughter whose audaciousness won her the hand of a prince and a title to go along with him.
Some infinitesimally small part of Regina sympathizes with her father's plight. No matter how much hurt she endured, she still cared about the heartless witch she called mother and always would. Unlike her father, however, that did not stop her from doing what was necessary. Executing her mother was the hardest thing she ever did. It was also the most righteous. The unerringly selfish woman more than deserved to die. For far too long Cora had escaped her just dues, the universe itself had demanded satisfaction for her many atrocities. Furthermore, Regina wasn't about to let her get away with all she had done to Red. Hell, even Cora's ludicrously merciful husband grudgingly recognized the justice in crushing that coal black heart into so much dust.
Perhaps the strangest part about the whole sordid episode was that rather than cause strife between herself and her father, it drew them closer together. Once, the sight of him was a nuisance she often wished she could rid herself of. In many ways, he was her second shadow, only with a voice and a conscience and an annoying penchant for exercising both at the least convenient moments. Back then, she simply could not tolerate unwelcome reminders of a time when she was full of optimism and kindness. Yet even at her worst, she never forgot that he was the only person who ever openly showed her any form of affection in her youth, which is why she could never scrounge up the strength to banish him from her presence once she was crowned. It is only now that the soulless winter season of her life has so dramatically shifted into vibrant spring that she has developed an appreciation for his immutable devotion. He has always been a man of insufficient will who let his imperious wife run roughshod over him, but he was – is – a good father.
It is because of that affection that Regina permitted his constant interference and insufferable moralizing once she became Queen and, later on, the Evil Queen. For all of his sanctimonious preaching, he lacked the constitution to openly oppose her, so she never heeded his warnings about how her violent behavior would forever stain her soul. She was aware of how it pained him to watch her commit crime after crime, to hear about her most recent lapse of self-control that almost always resulted in mass casualties and exorbitant destruction of property. He held his peace for the most part because she was his little girl, having loved her in spite of her wickedness just as she loved him in spite of his weakness.
Regina could not – or would not – acknowledge the parallels between herself and her mother, however many times her father tried to get her to. It was only after Red reawakened her slumbering heart that she began to question the way she was conducting her life. With each tale related concerning her many vile acts, Red deftly and respectfully helped her to see how frightfully similar she became to the heartless monster she called mother. It was no wonder that her father quickly became Red's biggest fan when he had been trying to tell Regina the exact same thing for years without success.
Having fallen under the sway of Red's easy-going manner and simplistic charm like every one else, Henry quickly grew attached to his daughter's new paramour. Mostly Regina chalked that fondness up to how happy Red made his only child. Via Red's influence, the Evil Queen was slowly receding in favor of the daughter he had lovingly raised and doted upon at every available opportunity. The reemergence of her softer side pretty much sealed the deal on Red's sainthood insofar as her father was concerned.
Beyond that reference to their mutual love for Regina, there was also genuine affection between the two borne of interests she probably should have guessed they would have in common. Many times while she was taking care of urgent state business, they would sneak off to go hunting or fishing. Both of those were activities the former prince had always cherished but never got to indulge in while married to Cora, nor had he been permitted to teach Regina such undignified skills. Because he was so distant from the throne, his father extended him plenty of latitude to pursue his interests, and he took advantage of it as often as he could. When she was a girl, he used regale her with stories of how he used to go on month long hunting trips, living off the land and what he caught, learning how to respect nature and to fear it. He was a talented archer and fisherman in his day, preeminent among his peers in his ability to track game with only the most minuscule clues. He had lived his entire youth on up into his adulthood out of doors, and Regina could distinctly remember how sad he seemed to reminisce knowing that the days of his wilderness adventures were long behind him.
Red, on the other hand, was born without a silver spoon in her mouth. As a child, she had to scrounge and fight along with her grandmother for every scrap and morsel she could wrench from the stingy grip of the earth. She had learned her skills out of necessity, but along the way she also learned to appreciate the freedom that can only found beneath a sprawling blue sky, and to genuinely enjoy such activities inextricably associated with surviving natures constant quest to kill the living. She is a forager able to outpace the most veteran apothecary assistant or herbalist and a hunter without peer who utilizes her vastly superior senses to track prey far beyond the range of a normal person. Her expertise with a bow is also becoming legendary, especially since she beat Robin in a fair and square archery contest. Once zeroed in on her quarry, whether it be deer or pheasant or turkey or boar, Red can strike a fatal blow with a single arrow from two hundred yards away, even if the animal is on the move at a full sprint. Regina had witnessed this ability personally, else she would have scoffed at the notion of such a feat. And not only was Red an incredible huntress, she would also lug her score back to the castle without aid, where she would then gut it, skin it, clean it, and then quarter it with the precision of butcher. Her grandmother had taught her that wastefulness was disrespectful of the life that had been sacrificed so that they could live another day or week or month. It was a lesson that Red took to heart, which is why she utilizes every scrap of the slain animal that she can.
There was one particularly harsh winter that Red and Regina's father had teamed up to pick up the slack when food stores began running low. Being that her father was old, he could not do as much as he wished, so he helped where he could by hunting or fishing while Red foraged deep within the foreboding recesses of the surrounding forests. Once Red came back from her gathering excursion, Henry would retire for the day, and upon sorting out their gains to their proper places, Red would venture back out again not return until the sunrise. After an hour or two of sleep in the wee hours of the morning, she would be back at it, and it was in large part thanks to their diligent efforts that half the staff of the castle did not starve.
This mutual affinity for nature created a bond between Henry and Red that was unique and endearing, and which Regina sometimes envied. It was almost like Red was the daughter he wished he could have raised her to be, and she had to admit that her life would have been much easier had he been allowed his druthers in her rearing. She would have preferred hunting and fishing to the boredom and drudgery of court life. But even though her upbringing was not easy, things worked out for the best, so she tamped down on her envy. How could she be anything less than thrilled that the two most important people in the world to her were so deeply fond of one another.
Her father's clear concern at Red's state, then, is understandable. He has to be feeling as if he is on the verge of losing an adopted daughter. It couldn't have helped that his biological one passed out from over-exertion in a magical fight with the perpetrator of this unreal fiasco. All of the stress has to be taking a terrible toll at his advancing age.
Regina would offer whatever consolation she could were she not too wrapped up in her own anguish. Any sympathy from her right now would sound empty and meaningless when her wife has been cursed by the sister she didn't even know she had until this afternoon.
At the thought of Red and that damnable apple, Regina springs up, eyes widening as panic sets in. "Where is she, Daddy? Where is Red?"
"Calm down, Regina," her father says, standing to make his way over to the bedside. Once there, he clasps one of her hands tightly. "I had her moved into the guest chambers opposite yours. She is safe."
Regina's eyes began to swim with unshed tears as all that had happened with Zelena storms back into the forefront of her mind. "But she's not safe, Daddy. Not at all. The witch that killed Robin did something to her, cursed her so that even True Love's kiss did not wake her as it should have."
Her father's gapes at her for a moment. "True Love's kiss?"
Regina nods as she grips her sheets with her free hand, straining her fingers against the luxurious fabric as she struggles with her overwrought emotions. "When Zelena confirmed that she had cursed Red, I knew I had to try. And it worked, Daddy, much to my shock. I saw the magic burst from our bodies when I kissed her." As she looks up at her father, a tear escapes her lids and slides forlornly down her cheek. "Red is my True Love, yet she did not wake up."
"Regina, that's wonderful!" he exclaims, latching on to the positive just as he is so prone to do. He had missed the most important part.
"Yes, the first part of it is," she agrees, but her tone is anything but happy, and her father finally notices that.
He gives her hand a squeeze. "That's what I meant, of course. But I am confused as well. If True Loves kiss worked, why does Red still sleep?"
"Zelena did something to the curse," she explains. "It's not like the one I put Snow under. She somehow altered it so that no magic can break it, and she has also designed it to slowly drain its victim. If I don't find a cure, Red will wither away and die."
Dropping her father's hand, Regina slides out of bed, careful not to tilt over when she puts her weight onto her legs. Her father is there to steady her, but she brushes off his attempt to help. After running a hand through her errant hair to smooth it down, she shuffles over to the door only to be stopped short by her father's voice.
"Can you do it?" When she turns, he is staring at her with tears of his own gathering at his lids. "Can you find a cure?"
The gravity of the situation has finally hit him in earnest, it seems. A pang of sympathy tugs at Regina's heart for her elderly father. He looks so very frail. Losing Red would likely strain him precariously near to a tumble over the crested edge of a deep depression from which there might be no escape. But however much she hurts for him, she cannot afford to let concern for anyone else distract her. Selfishly, her main priority is Red – and herself by proxy, as her own survival hinges upon Red's.
A sharp stab of pain lances through her chest. Red cannot die. Not now. The seven years they have spent building a happy life together have accumulated a net value exceeding any computation. In that span they have won the admiration of a kingdom through concerted efforts to improve the lives of all citizens. And they have made so many memories of love and laughter, of nasty quarrels and unforgettable apologies, of lazy morning cuddles and nighttime passion, more memories worth treasuring than the rest of Regina's thirty-seven years combined. To be sundered from her True Love now, having accomplished the previously unthinkable, would break Regina beyond repair. The delicate shards that Red so patiently and lovingly reconstructed will simply shatter all over again, this time into a million jagged shards that can never be put back together. Whatever distorted form emerges from the wreckage, whatever sad reflection of humanity she can salvage from the destruction, it is guaranteed to be grotesque. If the Evil Queen was born out of Daniel's death, what monstrosity will arise from the molten ashes of Red's? Regina does not want to find out. Frankly, the thought petrifies her. She does not ever want to be that woman again.
At the same time, she also knows she has to be honest, if not with her father, than with herself. Managing expectations is the only way she will survive the coming crisis without driving herself straight through the amorphous threshold of insanity.
"I don't know," she tells him frankly. "I wish I could say otherwise, but I simply have no answers right now. All I do know is that I will do whatever I have to do to save her. That much I can promise you. Beg, plead, steal, kill, break hearts or minds or bodies, or burn the world to cinders...I will do what is necessary to save her. And if that means I die in the trying, so be it."
"Please don't talk that way," her father says, his legs momentarily faltering. If possible, his already thin, waxy skin looses even more color. "Losing Red is bad enough. I can't lose you, too."
"She's not dead yet, Daddy. Neither am I. And I don't intend for either of those facts to change." Drawing in a shaky breath, she shakes her head. She has wasted too much time already. Her heart is crying out for Red and she must obey. "Stay here or go elsewhere as you please, but I need to see my wife now. Alone." Her father nods sadly at the dismissal, and with that, Regina throws open the door, heedless of her disheveled state of undress, and strides out into the hallway.
Garbed in only her favorite black and royal blue lace nightgown, she ignores the gawking eyes of the servants as she makes her way across the hall to stand before the door of the royal guest chambers. She doesn't bother knocking. Upon barging into the room, her eyes immediately fall upon the bed. And there lies Red, looking for all the world like she is merely sleeping. If her own memory of what befell her wife were not enough to break that idyllic – and infinitely preferable – illusion, the rumpled form of Victor Frankenstein scrunched up in a chair next to the bed does. All but comatose from exhaustion, Regina has never seen the man more bedraggled.
She does not say a word to the Head Physician as she crosses over to the far side of the bed. As carefully as she can, she nestles upon the edge next to Red's hip. Her heart ramps up pace until it is pounding erratically against her breastbone, and as she leans over Red's inert form, she brushes a lock of dark brown hair away from a fevered forehead. Her fight against the sob bubbling up within her chest is increasingly a losing prospect when all she wants to do is claw at her eyes and tear at her hair as she rages and weeps uncontrollably at the cruelty of fate. How perverse is it that Red is paying the price for Cora's chronic inability to be a decent human being? The callous abandonment of Regina's half-sister was the first domino to fall, sparking a chain reaction of ruined lives that culminated in this detestable catastrophe.
Emotionally reeling, Regina ignores Victor's abnormally unassuming presence as she leans in to press a loving kiss to her wife's sweat-dampened forehead. Red's skin, normally warm to the touch, is on fire, burning within from the unnatural malady coursing through her veins. Perhaps this symptom, Regina laments to herself, might even be a physical manifestation of the inescapable torture of the Burning Room to which Red is currently being subjected. The idea of her wife suffering in that horrible place wrenches a choked sob from Regina's throat, and she dully notes that the bitter tears she'd tried so valiantly to suppress are now steadily dripping from her chin onto Red's face.
Despair, thick and palpable descends upon her, and for a lung-crushing moment, she suffocates on it. Red is cursed, dying, and she no fucking idea what to do. How is supposed to fix this? Or how can she ever live with herself if she fails to deliver a cure? How is she supposed to ever sleep again without Red's familiar weight next to her or slung half atop her or rest for a single second without that preternatural warmth engulfing her and providing her with an essential sense of satisfaction that seeps down into her very marrow? How is she supposed face another moment without Red's smile to illuminate the darkness of night and put the sun to shame during the day? And how is she meant to survive without the half of her heart, of her essential being, that makes life worth living? She honestly does not think she can, which is why she said what she did to her father.
Her wedding vows ring in her mind, an echo of the past unexpectedly shedding light upon her future. She can see now that they were so much more than perfunctory words merely part of an elaborate ceremony. She had meant every word as she spoke them, of course, but it is only just now she realizes how profound and prescient they were. Her life is now tied to Red's, for better or worse, and that is not a metaphor or some flowery declaration of devotion. It is the literal truth. If Red dies, so will she. Maybe it won't be by natural causes or the severing of some supernatural cord that has tied their life forces together. If not of a grief Niobe could not fathom then it will surely come purposefully by her own hand. Either way the result will be the same. Red will be dead and so will she. There is only one other possible outcome and it is totally unacceptable. Death would be far preferable than descending one again into madness.
Overwhelmed by an agonizing misery she cannot contain, a strangled sob pries free of past her lips. They are audible expressions of her untenable emotional distress, harbingers of a collapse that seems so horrifyingly imminent. Her earlier resolve to resist the despondence clamped around her entire body dissolves into so much vapor. In the background ambiance of her mind, she hears the darkness calling out to her and can feel it wrapping its seductive tendrils around her heart.
It would be so easy to give in, to surrender to the path of least resistance like she'd done once before. The road has already been paved long ago, and it lies before her an unending avenue of onyx bricks rolling ominously toward a horizon alight with raging hellfire. It is a manifestation of the apocalyptic path terminating within her innermost malignant depravity and it's familiarity brings a comfort she now knows to be hollow. Capitulating to evil the first time gained her only a cold throne and won her an ultimately unfulfilling power. The pervasive loneliness and a constant misery that followed was interspersed with brief flashes of ecstatic debauchery that nearly extinguished the faltering flame of her humanity forever.
With great effort she pushes back temptation, for Red's sake more than her own. It had been Red who rescued her from the ignoble fate she is now sure awaited her should she have remained steadfast in her single-minded obsession for revenge on Snow White. Red had shown her a route to escape the clamoring horde of her personal demons and then encouraged her to rejoin the wider world in a constructive capacity, all without losing in the process who she fundamentally is as a person. With Red, she can be loving and decent without the shameful naivete and spinelessness that characterized her youth. She can be soft and hard at the same time without sinking into the oxymoronic. And maybe the gray existence she has settled so fluidly into isn't what heroes like Snow would define as acceptable, but it's one that suits her just fine.
Temporarily de-fanged, the slavering beast within subsides into the fringes of Regina's psyche. It will leave her alone for a while, at least, though the stalemate won't last should she fail to save Red and somehow persist after burying her better angel. Should the unthinkable come to pass, there will be no halting her meteoric descent into a new level of malevolence that will eclipse anything that ever came before. She'll become a true monster then, one that even the Evil Queen would cower before.
Heedless of the audience, with hope warring with pessimism over the future, forlorn and angst-ridden over her wife's fate, she slumps onto Red's barely moving chest and finally surrenders to her sorrow.