She was just pulling out the last pin that would undo the elaborate updo she'd had twisted her hair into this morning when she heard it. From her place sitting at her vanity beside the open window she could hear it clearly, the sound reverberating through the quiet of the night.
It was a laugh. A simple and happy sound from someone who was simply happy in that moment. It was a sound you hear every day. Regina hears it every day, too, living in her castle with god knows how many people living there with her. People who work at the castle make that sound, the happy and simple one.
It was a very normal sound. But sitting there in the dark with only a few candles to light her room, alone for the seventh night in the week, Regina looked at herself in the mirror and wonders when she had last made that sound. Inspecting the laugh lines around her eyes, Regina knew for a fact that she'd been making that sound all her life. Otherwise they wouldn't be there, would they?
Or did laugh lines also appear on one's skin when the laughter they emitted was fake? She's been doing a lot of fake laughing and smiling all her life. So maybe that's where those lines came from.
These days her reasons for faking a laugh were becoming few and far between. Before, when she was surrounded by her family, Regina had had to keep up a front. A happy one. She had to laugh at all of Charming's stupid jokes and smile whenever Snow would give her one of her hope speeches. She had needed to chuckle at the right times when Zelena told her another story about her adventures in Oz and joke with Emma about tax dollars being put to good use at the Sherrif's station when she caught her doing nothing at her desk again.
With Henry it was different. With both of them. Her Henry was a husband and a father now, and whenever she saw him her smiles were genuine. Young Henry from the wish realm was a source of happiness, too, and with him she'd never need to fake anything.
But a few months after she'd been crowned The Good Queen, things had started to change. They'd all been living at the castle as one big happy family. But the novelty of sharing a roof with the whole family—even if it was a big roof—started to wear off. Snow and Charming took Neal and moved to a farm to finally settle down like they'd been wanting to ever since before the first curse. Emma and the Pirate had a newborn child and felt that a home of their own was necessary, too. Henry, Ella and Lucy got their own place and the same was with Margot and Alice and Zelena and Chad.
Young Henry stayed at the castle with Regina, although he had a girlfriend of his own with whom he spent most of his time.
So, nowadays Regina had no one in her vicinity for who she even had to fake a smile for, let alone genuinely laugh with.
Regina contemplates this as she brushes her hair until it's perfectly shiny, taking all the time in the world because she has got nowhere to be and nowhere to go. Another laugh comes to her ears through her window and a tear makes its way down Regina's cheek. How is she supposed to be fit to rule all the realms when a simple sound like this brings her to tears, all because she can't remember the last time she's made that same sound? Frustrated by her own weakness, Regina flings the hairbrush that's still in her hand to the mirror in front of her, and it shatters. Pieces of glass are flying all around in every direction, but Regina doesn't care. She doesn't flinch. The sound of breaking glass did drown out the merry sounds from outside though, and for that Regina is grateful.
She wipes at her tears and aggressively shuts the windows. She's sure that the loud clang of her window shutting got the attention of the people outside who'd ruined Regina's evening, and that's good too.
Regina gets up and strides to the other side of the room with purpose, glass crunching under her shoes, getting to the door and taking the knob, but remembering once again that even if she'd leave her room right now, she wouldn't know where to go. There was nowhere to go. All of a sudden, the tears are back and she turns her back to the door and leans heavily against it. The room turns blurry as she thinks about her pathetic life. A life as queen, a thing she had never wanted to be. A life as a mother, whose sons were now grown and who didn't need her anymore. A life as a person who has loved, and lost love.
She wipes at her tears again and sees that her hand comes back not only shiny with tears, but also with something red; blood. She is confused for a second but then remembers the mirror, and the glass flying everywhere. She must have cut her face, not noticing the physical pain because she's been focused on her emotional pain.
But as she looks at her hand, entranced by the blood on there and imagining how her face must look right now, she begins to feel a dull pain in her right cheek, as well as on her temple. The pain is minimal, though, and for a minute that disappoints her. If she'd gotten seriously hurt tonight, at least she'd have something to do. Something to tend to, and something to think about. A distraction from the loneliness, perhaps.
But, no such luck tonight, so Regina does the one thing that brings her some comfort on lonely nights like these. Nights where she can't keep the hurt inside anymore, when she wallows in her pain and doesn't pretend to be okay, even for herself. Nights like that are becoming more and more frequent, and so she appears in her vault in a purple cloud of smoke for the fourth time that week.
She walks to the bed, or more accurately the nightstand beside the bed, and takes out a shirt. She then sees her bloody hand again and immediately lets the shirt fall to the ground. She can't ruin that shirt with her blood, she can't ruin it with anything, because that is Robin's shirt and when, on nights like these, she curls up with that shirt pressed to her face she can imagine she can still smell him on there.
So she cleans herself with magic, both her hand and her face, and once blood-free she grabs the shirt again and sits down on the bed. Tears that had lessened when she'd been focused on her glass cuts started rolling again and before she knew it, she was lying on the bed where she and Robin had spent that meaningful night all those years ago, clutching his shirt and sobbing into the cushions.
When she wakes with a headache after crying herself to sleep, she has somewhat got a grip on herself again and tries not to think about how everyone has someone, and she has no one.
And for the life of her, Regina still does not remember when she last laughed.