Summary:For Regina, talking with her foster daughter stirs up old feelings about her family.


Regina didn't like invading her kids' privacy, especially not her foster kids.

Most of the older kids that they'd taken in have experienced living situations where none of their boundaries were respected and she and Robin tried their best to give them a better experience while they were in their care. Some of them still kept secrets though.

She never took it personally though. If anything she understood. When you thought the person in charge might be out to get you, it's safer to keep the important things to yourself. She supposed that was why Mari had hidden all the letters.

All she'd wanted to do was clean her room a little bit. Mari was a handful, fond of backtalk and full of walls, but not exactly difficult. She followed rules, showed up to school everyday and generally raised no problems. If there was one area where she lacked it was simply cleanliness.

Mari was a messy girl, letting clothes drop all over the floor, leaving globs of hair product in the sink, half empty cups left out for days. She was better about it in the common areas of the house - living room and kitchen - but after several months of having her in the house Mari's room had started to make Regina's skin crawl.

Regina liked having things in order, it was necessary for her to feel calm. Messes made her feel paranoid and, honestly, a little unsafe. One day she looked into Mari's room and just couldn't take it anymore.

She'd been putting Mari's folded clothes back into their drawers when she stumbled upon the letters. At least a dozen of them, all sent from the women's state prison.

She grappled with whether to open them, tried to remind herself that it was best to respect her foster daughter's privacy but… she was concerned and put on edge by the mess around her.

So… she opened them.

xx

xxx

When Mari got home from work she found Regina waiting for her at the kitchen table. Fear and apprehension flashed in her eyes when she said she wanted to talk. Looking back, Regina realized that she probably expected to be told that she was being sent back to the system again.

Instead, Regina simply slid the letters onto the table and waited for Mari's reaction.

In an instant the fear and apprehension turned to anger and hurt. "You went through my stuff?"

"I was cleaning your room."

"I can clean my own damn room."

"Well no one would know by how it looks," she shot back.

"I trusted you! You had no right to go through my drawers!" said Mari, raising her voice and snatching the letters off the table.

Regina's rebuttal died on her lips as Mari rushed from the table and stomped up the stairs, slamming the door to her room. She let out a regretful sigh, realizing that she might've lost what little ground they'd made in getting Mari to open up.

xx

xxx

She gave Mari a few hours to cool, per Robin's request. ("How did you expect her to react babe? You, of all people, should've known better than to give her a bed check.") When she knocked on her door, she found the room in much better shape than she left it. Clothes were picked off the floor, the bed was made and even the bookshelf was alphabetized. She would've been relieved if Mari's choice to clean hadn't stemmed from the desire to keep her out of her room.

The girl in question was sitting at her desk, doing left over homework with her headphones in. She saw Regina walk in and rolled her eyes.

"I'm working," she snapped at her.

"I know," replied Regina, letting Mari's hostility roll off her back. "I just wanted to have a talk with you."

Mari sighed. "What?"

"I just wanted to apologize," she said. "You were right. I shouldn't have been going through your things without telling you. Robin and I promised to respect your privacy and I'm sorry that I couldn't hold up that promise."

Mari suspiciously narrowed her eyes, thrown off. "Okay…fine."

"But…" drawled Regina, leaning against the doorway. "I still wanted to talk to about the letters you got."

Noticeably bristling, Mari spat, "What's there to talk about?"

"They're from your sister," Regina softly mumbled. "It sounds like she misses you."

"And?"

"And… have you written back to her?"

"Nope," Mari simply answered, trying to return to her homework.

Regina softly sucked in a breath. "You know if you wanted to see her…"

"I don't want to see her," snapped Mari. "There's no reason to."

There was bite to her tone and resentment in her eyes. And Regina could understand why, she'd read Mari's file. She'd been put into the foster system after her mother died when she was seven years old. When she was 11 her older sister had gotten custody of her but she was only 18 years old herself. It was only a year later when she got arrested and Mari was sent back to the system.

"Look, I know she made some mistakes in the past but she is still your sister and -"

"And what?" snapped Mari, cutting her off. "I'm supposed to forgive her? No, not when she's the reason I am stuck here!"

Her voice started to shake as she looked up at her foster mother. "She was supposed to take care of me! She promised she would and she screwed it up running drugs for her dumbass boyfriend instead of getting a real job! I don't need to forgive! Not when everything I've been through is her fault!"

Regina's heart pounded at Mari's sudden outburst. She took a deep breath, trying not to let show how much it rattled her. Pausing for a beat, she crossed her arms and pressed her lips together before speaking again.

"I understand," she said. "She failed you and you're mad at her for that. You have every right to be. But she did try Mari. And she's still trying even if you're not."

Mari just shook her head. "Whatever…"

"You know… I have a sister," she mumbled. "She's a few years older than me. Zelena."

She paused, taking a moment to think of her sister. It'd been years since they'd last seen each other outside of social media. She hadn't even come to Henry or Roland's weddings, had found an excuse to miss both. Not that Regina was surprised by that.

"Our mother was…strict," she said. "Scary strict. She liked things to be exactly as she wanted or she would… not react well.

"Once when I was six and Zelena was ten she told us to have the house clean by the time she got home from work and we did our best. We scrubbed the house clean until it sparkled but I… I made a mistake. I was supposed to clean the kitchen and instead of sweeping into the dustpan and throwing it out, I swept the crumbs under the fridge."

She shrugged her shoulders. "I thought she wouldn't check there but she did. And she was furious at us. That night, at the beginning of winter when temperatures were in the low 30s at the warmest part of the day, she handed us two sleeping bags and said if we didn't respect the house she gave us then we couldn't sleep in it."

"She made you sleep outside," Mari said.

"For the next three days, yes," she said, with a nod. "It's why I like - why I need for things to be clean around the house. Our childhood was not pleasant."

A completely understatement but Mari only shrugged her shoulders. "I've heard worse."

"I bet you have but that's not the point," said Regina. "The point is for years I used to dream of running away with my sister. I used to think that one day she'd wake me up in the middle of the night and we'd escaped our mother together and find some place to be happy. We escaped but we each had to do it on our own.

"She went off to college and never came back. Didn't call, didn't write, didn't reach out at all."

Talking about it still stung. She'd thought she and her sister had been in it together but turned out she was wrong.

"She didn't care about you," muttered Mari.

"No," said Regina. "She cared about me, she just cared about herself more… because she had to."

She paused before continuing. "Once I went to college I reached out to her. Took a couple tries but she let me come visit. For a while everything was fine…until I brought up our mother and it was like… she shrunk three sizes in front of me. Instant reaction. She cried and bawled and lashed out at me. Said she knew letting me visit was a bad idea, that I'd set her back.

"So I left, checked with her roommate a few days later they said she'd been a little depressed since I brought everything up," she mumbled. "That's when I realized that even though my sister loved me… she connected me with a painful part of her past that can still break her with a single thought."

Regina shrugged her shoulders. "So we don't talk anymore, she doesn't come around anymore. And it hurts but I know it's what she needs to survive so I let it be."

Mari rolled her eyes. "Big sisters suck."

"Big sisters… are people," said Regina. "Who have their own weakness and strengths and pain and mistakes. And Zelena might not talk to me anymore but it doesn't change the fact that she's still the girl who snuck an extra blanket into my sleeping bag so I could be as warm as possible. I still wish her the best."

"What's your point?" asked Mari.

"My point is… everyone tries," she said. "Your sister tried to take care of you. Did she succeed? No. And if talking to her and being around her makes you feel bad or unsafe then I get why you want to avoid her. And I'll do all I can to support you in that… but if you're just doing it because you want to punish her for not being the superhero you expected her to be? Then believe me, you've succeeded."

"Because as someone who's been cut off by the last piece of family she had I can tell you… it stings a lot harder than I think you know."

Mari just crossed her arms, remaining silent.

"Don't bite your nose to spite your face Mari," advised Regina. "Being alone in this world is a lot harder than you think."

Mari looked up at her with hard eyes. "I'm already alone."

She slipped her headphones back into her ears, silently signaling the end of their conversation. Regina sighed walking out of her room and shutting the door behind her.

As she walked down the hall towards her bedroom she slipped her phone from her pocket. Opening facebook, she pulled up Zelena's profile. She looked good, happy, judging by the photos.

Staring at her older sister's picture she wondered, as she always did, what her life would've been like if her big sister had been just a little bit stronger.

She didn't know that down the hall her foster daughter was staring at old letters wondering the exact same question.


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