Hey everyone! I hope you enjoy this next chapter. I will give a warning, this one is a little sad and there are mentions of abuse, physical and emotional. I promise to deliver some SQ/Swan Mills Family happiness very soon, I just felt like we needed more back stories to give these characters some more depth. The Fluff will come! Enjoy, and again, thanks for the follows, favs and reviews!
"An A- Regina, really?"
Regina had been dreading this moment all day. Since she received the math test in the morning, she had been imagining the look on her mothers' face and wondered what the extent of her punishment would be. In her 12 years of experience, anything below an A always led to something bad. Based on the face she was receiving now, she was worried.
"An A-… I mean really Regina?" She said the words slow and pointedly, as though she needed to hear them again to really believe them. "This just tells me that you didn't try. You didn't apply yourself. You never apply yourself." When Regina opened her mouth to speak, her mother silenced her again.
"How do you think your father would feel about his underachieving daughter?" Regina could feel the tears building and the tightening in her throat. She wouldn't give her mother the satisfaction. "Well we can't really ask him, can we?"
The woman poured herself some clear liquid…Regina wasn't sure if it was vodka or rum, but judging by the amount in the bottle, her mother wasn't being picky today, she was just drinking. She downed it and continued, her words thickening and her eyes glazing.
"No, no Regina we can't ask him because he's gone. He's dead, and all he wanted was for his beloved daughter to be great. And what are you Regina? You know what you are? You're mediocre. You're so close to being great, and you have so much potential. But you don't care. I mean an A- is the cusp of greatness for sure. But it might as well be a C. they're going to get you to the same place in life. Nowhere…Why must you always let me down?!"
At that moment the woman threw her glass to the ground and the sound of the glass shattering sent shivers up Regina's spine. She was careful not to react, or to set her mother off anymore than she already was.
"Look what you've done now!" She was raging. "Clean up this mess and when you throw out it out, throw this garbage out with you." At that moment, Regina's mother took the test that she had seemingly forgotten about and ripped it in half, and then in half again. Regina couldn't stop it now, and a single tear trickled silently down her cheek.
"That's it, dear. Cry. Maybe crying and feeling how worthless you are will inspire you to do better." She left the room, not without filling another glass, and made her way through the mansion and up the staircase to her master bedroom where Regina heard the door slam shut.
Regina exhaled the breath she had been holding and bent down to pick up some of the larger pieces of glass. As the tears started to fall freely, knowing her mother wouldn't be exciting her room for the rest of the evening, Regina accidentally grasped a sharp edge a bit too tightly. She only noticed the damage when red droplets joined the clear ones on the floor. She skirted around the glass and pushed her hand under the sink. Only then did she feel the pain of the scar. She applied pressure to stop the bleeding and in her haze of distraction, didn't notice that her mother had come back downstairs.
"I see you've managed to cut yourself, and have focused again on yourself rather than the blood that is going to stain the floor. Why on earth are you so clumsy? Stand up straight when I'm walking to you! Clean it up, and stop crying. Tears are for the weak. God, I hope you are never a mother, Regina." Regina's eyes widened at that statement. This was going further than usual. "You can't even take care of a little spill and some blood, and with this continuous mediocrity, children deserve better. I hope you live alone, like me. And I hope you die alone, like your father."
Regina woke up with a start, her mother's words echoing in her mind. She wiped the tears that started to fall and tried to slow her breathing. These nightmares… memories… always had a way of affecting her. She was angry, so angry, but also sad. Regardless of how poorly she treated Regina, she was her mother. Her death had still affected her. All Regina had wanted was her mother's approval, and she wasn't sure that she ever did receive it.
She turned on her nightstand light and looked at the now healed scar that cut its way across her palm. She traced a finger along it. Had it been stitched she might not have had the scar as evidence for that night, but her mother had never seen it up close. Regina couldn't lay in the darkness anymore, so she got up and fastened her silk robe and made her way downstairs.
"Boys! Get down here! It's time for another lesson in strength!" Yelled the deep baritone from downstairs.
Henry sat in a ball in the darkest corner room he was given. He looked around and found 3 sets of eyes, those of the other children also put in this room. They looked at each other and they read the fear in one another's eyes, but none of them spoke. They knew as they heard the stomping up the stairs that if he heard them speak they'd be in even more trouble. Plotting against me, are you? He had said. Henry's mouth stayed shut and he slowed his breathing so to be looked over. If he doesn't turn on the light, he could miss me here. Henry prayed to not be noticed, just this once.
As the footsteps got closer, Henry's world seemed to slow down. He thought of 3 months ago when he arrived at this house, and how his new foster parents had seemed so perfect when Mr. Brooks dropped him off. They smiled and talked about how they were going to make Henry feel at home and how they were so excited to have their new son. Mr. Brooks left quickly as per usual and he hadn't seen the shove into the staircase his "father" had given him, telling him to put his stuff down in the green room and if he couldn't find it, to find the room with 3 other "little shits like you."
Henry returned to the present when the door was pushed open and it smacked against the wall behind it.
"Are we hiding, boys? You know, hiding is just going to make it worse. If you stand up to me like a man at least I'll be able to respect you." The man took a drag of the nearly finished cigarette in his mouth and threw it at one of the corners where Henry knew Jake was crouching. When there was no movement, the man smacked the light switch and saw the four pairs of young eyes looking up at him in fear. God, he felt strong.
"Let's start with you, Four." Henry knew that meant him and his stomach sank. He tried to speak but an involuntary sound came out when the man grabbed him by the arm and yanked him up, squeezing hard on the burn marks he had created two nights pervious that had yet to heal. "Whiners get even more beatings, they need to be stronger. You know that, Four. What's the matter with you?" He got dragged down the stairs and the pain through his forearm screamed out.
Henry woke up and uncurled himself from the ball he had been sleeping in. he wiped his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He followed the crown molding around the four walls and tried to push house 5 out of his mind. He hoped that someday soon it would be less vivid. The burn marks were barely visible anymore. He rolled over, trying to find more sleep, and realized he needed to go to the washroom. When he left the washroom, he realized he could hear some noises coming from downstairs that he couldn't hear behind his closed bedroom door, so he silently walked down the stairs to see what it was.
He walked down and saw Regina drinking tea on her plush couch with the TV on, though he could barely make out what anyone on it was saying. At the creak of a floorboard, Regina's head snapped in his direction but her eyes softened immediately.
"Henry, I'm so sorry, I woke you didn't I?" She turned the television even lower.
"No… I couldn't sleep." He lied. He decided it wasn't Regina's job to hear about his nightmares.
"Why don't you sit?" She offered. He took the spot nearest the opposite armrest. "Whenever I have bad dreams, I come down here and make myself tea and try to find some old funny re-runs on television." She said, trying to lighten the mood.
"You have bad dreams?" Henry asked, turning from his once rigid sitting position to face her.
"Of course. I think everyone does. Everyone has something to be afraid of, Henry." They looked at each other, understanding the other more than they realized. "Do you like hot chocolate?" It was late, but she decided to throw the rules out the window. It was Friday night and she was bonding with her new child. Also, her mother would have never let her have hot chocolate, especially at 1 in the morning. His eyes lit up, but his voice stayed low.
"I guess…" he said,
"Oh come on, I know that look. And it tells me you definitely want hot chocolate this evening." She smiled and got up to fix him some. "You can put on something if you want, I'm not really watching anything. Choose a movie if you feel like it."
Henry was in shock. He wasn't in trouble for coming downstairs, he was up at 1 in the morning and was getting hot chocolate and a movie? He decided not to question it and push his luck so he went over to the cupboard of DVDs Regina had. He wasn't surprised that they were alphabetized. He looked at them, and at the bottom corner he was surprised to see some cases that were not movies…they were video games. He pulled out Mario Kart 8 and ignored the question of why Regina had video games and stared at it in disbelief.
"I figured it was a matter of time until you found those," Regina said from the doorway. Oh no… was he not supposed to touch these? Crap, things were going so well and not he was probably going to have to go upstairs.
She set down the hot chocolate on the table beside his seat and said, "Do you want to play? The system is new and to be honest I've only set it up and turned it on to make sure it worked. I didn't know if you'd want to play it but at the store they said this was all the rage for kids your age and I wanted you to have something to do if you felt like it. Of course we'll establish rules; no playing before homework and I don't want you to play for hours and hours at a time. Its important that you get fresh air and you read books and-" She was rambling, she knew, so she stopped.
"I'd love to play, but I haven't played it yet either. I just heard about it at school." He took a chance and added, "We could play it together…that is if you're still staying up and not watching TV or anything."
Regina thought about it. Another thing her mother would have hated. Why not.
"Alright, let's have a little fun, shall we?"