a/n: Make sure you're well versed in the Neverland storyline and Regina's childhood before reading!
Also, I'm bumping the rating up to M for this chapter because it focuses on emotional abuse and depression.
28: A special kind of hell
New York
Jennifer didn't see Regina again after that night. In fact, the last she saw of any of them was when she said goodbye to Emma after breakfast.
A week went by before she plucked up the courage to call Mary Margaret. Upon Jennifer's request, Emma had given her her number before she left for Storybrooke with everyone. The first time she called, however, it went to voicemail. The second time she called, the same thing. When she called a third time and there was no answer, she started to get concerned. Out of curiosity, she called Emma and got her voicemail.
So she called Granny's.
"Granny's diner," Ruby's voice came through on the other end.
"Ruby, it's Jennifer!"
"Hey, Dr. Alexander, what's up?"
"I've been trying to get a hold of Mary Margaret and Emma but neither of them are answering their phones. I was just wondering if something was going on."
"You haven't heard?" Ruby breathed, shocked. Jennifer's blood ran cold.
"No?" She asked hesitantly.
"Greg Mendell and Tamara, Neal's fiancee, were working for Peter Pan. They kidnapped Henry and took him to Neverland. Hook sailed his ship through a portal with everyone. They're gone. You just missed them." The sentence had Jennifer's head spinning, and she felt like she was missing something. Was this really happening? She scrunched her nose and squinted her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Okay, wait. Start from the beginning. What exactly happened after I left?"
. . .
Neverland
In their quest to find Henry, Hook had the bright idea to go looking for Tinkerbell. Regina, of course, warned against it. She didn't think they were quite desperate enough to need her help yet. She supposed her reasons were slightly selfish, but her time in the Enchanted Forest had been a special kind of hell, and she wasn't ready to relive it all yet.
It may have been because when Tinkerbell first found her all those years ago she'd been plummeting to her death. That was when she was still White Frilly Dress Queen Regina. Of course Leopold and precious little Snow had been away when it happened. In fact, it was rather typical of them to be so regularly absent. Not that she would have come to either of them for solace anyway.
Especially not after Rumpelstiltskin finished telling her that she was destined to practice dark magic. He warned that, no matter how much she didn't want to be like her mother, the darkness would find her and it would eat her alive and she would become everything she hated the most in this world. He told her she couldn't run, and she couldn't hide, and she couldn't escape because darkness doesn't rest or falter or fail. It's only ever hungry. And now it was hungry for her.
Of course he came prepared with a silver lining. He promised her the ability to control it, to harness it, and to keep herself safe. She hadn't known it at the time, but he'd only said it because he wanted her to keep taking lessons with him. And that was only because he needed her to cast the dark curse for him.
She was an impressionable young girl. So if he, much older and much wiser, said the world was ending, then the world was surely ending. He told her he was helping her. But all he was ever really doing was tearing her down and molding her into whatever he saw fit. At that time, it happened to be a self-destructive self-fulfilling prophesy she would later call the Evil Queen.
But right then and right there, Regina felt like all the walls were closing in around her, and she couldn't do anything about it. She felt like she was drowning, and the only people who had the ability to save her were the ones who were killing her.
After all, her entire life up until that point had been under someone else's control. First it was Cora and then it was Leopold and now Rumpelstiltskin too. They had all been abusive and controlling in their own way.
Cora had done it by pressing Regina's entire being into a tiny little box and then decorating it with things she couldn't stand. She buried her under words like respect and manners and make me proud and you're such a disappointment and you can have the life that everyone else only dreams of until Regina was burning. And even then she tolerated the pain in fearful silence. But sometimes she boiled over. And then she would run as fast as her legs could carry her and even when her lungs burned and she couldn't breathe she never stopped not ever until vines sprouted from the trees and wrapped themselves tight around her wrists and ankles and held her there until Cora showed up and Regina would have to hide her shame. Not because she wanted to be brave for Cora but because she hated that she still cared what this woman thought of her.
Leopold did it when he wouldn't look at her for weeks because she couldn't live up to a ghost. And then sometimes he wouldn't look at her because he was ashamed that he'd bedded a woman who didn't love him and who he didn't love in return. She felt no sympathy toward him. In fact, sometimes she didn't feel much of anything. And sometimes she burned so red and so hot and so wide that she thought she might destroy the entire castle and take every single person in it down with her.
Sometimes she thought about running away. Sometimes she did. Though, she rarely thought about where it was she was running. Just away. After all, she'd learned too young that home was a person not a place. And she had never been at home with Cora. Her father used to be her home until she got old enough to realize he was letting Cora hurt her. That left Daniel. And he was dead. And she wanted to scream. All the fucking time.
But she swallowed it. She always did. She didn't really know why anymore.
The problem was that even if she was able to control the tar that spit from her lips when she was angry and the boiling mass of shit inside her, she would always have to live with it. Things like that don't just go away. And a life lived only in darkness was no life to her.
So she might as well say yes to Rumple's lessons, right? After all, he promised she could be free, and she was young and impressionable, and he made her believe that if he said the world was ending then surely it was ending.
But then she thought of Cora. And she'd rather die than become Cora.
Frustrated and hopeless and dejected, she ran to her room and looked out at the courtyard. Her heart was pounding away in her chest, her eyes blinded by tears. She'd tried to run away before, but she always ended up right back here in this room and not always by her own choosing. In this spot. This. Very. Fucking. Spot.
The railing broke. She fell.
. . .
The Enchanted Forest, many years ago
"Snow White. That's her name? Even I think that's a bit precious and mine's Tinkerbell," the fairy laughed. They were sitting outside at a tavern somewhere. Regina didn't particularly care where; she just wanted to get away from the castle.
"She's a monster. Totally indulged and adored. She sort of ricochets through life, telling people's secrets. She had my fiance killed," Regina had said very matter of fact, and at the time she believed it. Part of her still did.
"No," Tinkerbell gasped, leaning in.
"The only way I can get through it is that she and the King are gone all the time," Regina explained pointedly, as if she was talking about palace gossip instead of this huge weight that was pressing down on her heart all the fucking time.
"You're glad your husband's gone?"
"It's not a marriage," Regina laughed, shaking her head. "It's a farce. I may be the Queen, but alone in that palace I feel like the Queen of nothing." She was talking as if she wanted power, as if she liked being Queen and if that was all that mattered to her. But what she meant to say was that she felt worthless and alone and stepped on and used and like a pawn in her own life. Yes, everything she was saying to Tinkerbell was vaguely true, but it only scratched the surface of the pain and isolation she was feeling. She just didn't want to appear vulnerable or weak, so she talked as if nothing really affected her. As if this was a minor annoyance rather than the thing that had driven her to try and take her life.
"No wonder you jumped."
Regina's heart rattled against her chest and a blush surged to her cheeks and the tips of her ears, but she found the strength to look surprised and outraged at Tinkerbell. "I didn't jump. I fell," she corrected defensively.
"Right," Tinkerbell cleared her throat. "You fell."
"I did," she reassured childishly. Then she hesitated. "But if I had...well, here's to good reasons."
She said it quickly and painfully and tapped her cup against Tinkerbell's before taking a long, hard drink.
. . .
The closer their misfit band of heroes and villains got to Tinkerbell the more uneasy Regina felt. They were trekking through the forest, and her heart was beating louder than the cicadas. Tinkerbell had never truly understood how much it had hurt Regina to live in the castle with Leopold and Snow. Even with Cora in Wonderland, Regina was confined. She was a prisoner within the ruse of contentment and diplomacy she created because she was too scared to rock the boat. That was Cora's conditioning rearing its ugly head.
So, no, Regina hadn't been actively suicidal. But if she had happened to die, well, she wouldn't have been very upset about it.
All she really, truly wanted was freedom. With Cora out of the picture that only left Leopold and Snow White and a burning hatred for all three of them simmering in her chest. She wanted to make her own choices and live how she wanted. She didn't need power. Not at the time. All she needed was Daniel and the freedom and support and unconditional love he gave her.
And she'd never once thought of Daniel as her destiny despite strongly believing that he was her True Love. To her that implied a lack of choice, and the only thing that comforted her in those days was the idea of having the freedom to choose. Whether that be a partner or a lifestyle and everything in between. After all, what kind of life was she living if she couldn't choose how to live it? To her, Daniel was a symbol of freedom. He was her True Love because they'd found each other by choice, not by anyone else's doing. And it proved to her that the only way people could be truly happy was by choosing their own path, destiny be damned.
. . .
Gold and Regina were sitting on the shore waiting for Ariel to get back from Storybrooke with Pandora's box. She couldn't help but watch the troubled expression on his face as he fiddled with his ring. "You really think Belle can succeed?" Regina finally asked, one leg folded over the other.
"Yes, I do," he answered, looking out into the water. He was worried, though. She could tell.
Regina tilted her chin up and eyed him. "Are you sure it's not your feelings blinding you?" She had her hands clasped together in front of her and rubbed the back of her thumb harshly. She was tense. She wanted Henry back. That's all she could ever think lately. And if Rumple wasn't thinking clearly she needed to fix it. For Henry's sake.
"Well perhaps it's my feeling illuminating me," Gold countered, not really looking at her. He was embarrassed by the admission.
Regina furrowed her brow and tilted her head. "You really love her," she drawled, surprised. To be honest, it scared her. Rumpelstiltskin had fallen in love. And where did that leave her?
"Is that jealousy?" Gold piped, amused. Regina's face lit up, and she laughed.
"Of Belle?" She mused like the thought was entirely ridiculous. "I think not."
"No, no. Of having someone," Rumple clarified pointedly, digging the knife in deeper. Regina looked surprised for a moment until she realized that he'd been referring to a specific person. Then dread settled in the pit of her stomach, and for some strange reason she felt attacked.
Jennifer.
She was the first person to pop into Regina's head anyway.
She swallowed, shifting restlessly in her seat. And her throat felt tight because maybe it was true.
Maybe she was jealous.
a/n: well this has been part two of how I hate the writers for making the Regina/Snow feud seem selfish and childish and ridiculous. Part three on this to come in later chapters.
