A/N: Originally I was going to find a really awesome Grimm fairy tale involving poison to write about. Guess what? There aren't any.

Did you know that any variation of the name Abigail means 'God Is Joy' and any variation of the name Kathryn means 'holy', 'blessed' or 'pure'? Just trying to decipher how the Curse picked their names ;)

I didn't actually check these quotes, just to warn you. So if they're wrongish...sorry.

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"Because I don't love you."

Is saying that really a regret? She did it to save his life, after all. The same is true for biting that poisoned apple.

"I'll think of something else."

But that dust had saved his life too. Just because she had not actually used it on the Queen didn't mean it wasn't worth something.

"You've got a lot of anger there, Snow."

And not enough love. Just enough room for it. Sometimes she thinks her rage is even greater than the Queen's. Sometimes she wishes she didn't hold a grudge so well.

The time for wishing is long over.

"Drink it in good health...Snow White."

The potion that made her forget Charming. That one had not been to protect him in any way. That one was a true regret.

After all, she should know better than to make deals with Rumplestiltskin.

She should know better than to make deals with anyone.

"I'll kill him." That was a deal. A deal with an evil King who made a throne out of lies. She'd lost Charming then, and she'd almost died, and she'd been captured. But she met Grumpy. That was a good thing.

Her dreams twisted immediately, showing her visions of Grumpy gutted and flayed, with a dwarf axe through his chest or a spear in his stomach. His blood pouring across flagstones like rivers and his head on a stick. The home where she and the dwarves lived flattened and burned, blood smeared on the leftover wood.

"The next time you see the object of your grief, you won't even remember who he is." That was one of her largest regrets. She'd ripped Charming from her, from that mangled heart (caused by her last deal, mind you), and opened up space for darkness. Space the darkness gladly took, clawing and infecting until no one recognized her anymore. Until there was space for nothing but her rage for the Queen, and for her heart of darkness.

But he had saved her. He would always save her.

Her dream screeched, rearing its ugly head. It showed Charming being eaten by a dragon, and dragged into a river by a ruthless siren. A siren with her face.

"This is really happening." The dream whispered, twisting into her head an image of James in a stockade contraption, the blade about to be dropped to skewer his head. The dream sat contentedly as she thrashed, trying to escape. But she couldn't.

The blade was falling his head was going to get chopped off. Snow White was forced to watch as his blood spattered and leaked on the cobblestones. She had to feel her heart snap and fracture.

The dream rewinded the scene (gleefully, she was sure). But this time the blade turned to water a heartbeat before James was hacked open. She'd be so happy if she didn't suspect what came next.

The Queen. Regina. Stepmother. Enemy. She waltzes across, deals and lies and power sliding off her tongue. And she takes Charming.

"You want to see the whole thing?" Her dream whispers, black mist coiling to stroke her cheek. "His whole damned fate?"

She wants to scream no. She can't see him tortured anymore.

So of course the dream shows her everything.

And Snow's at the part where black knights are dragging him out, cackling about how they'll chop off his head. They drag him through the halls. And of course Charming fights, and he somehow escapes, and his mind is screaming her name. But then he rounds a corner. There's a knight, then one behind him, with an arrow aimed straight at him. The bowstring releases with a twang.

The dream doesn't show her the rest.

It punishes her another way instead. It leaves her out in a storm, throws her off a cliff, drowns her in rivers of blood. At one point she's screaming, but it doesn't matter because she can't make a sound because she's trapped inside her own body.

It's the worst kind of cage.

But suddenly she can breathe, and her eyes flutter open. And she looks up into James's smiling face, and all the dwarves.

She can feel the poison leaking out of her veins.