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Years had erased the finer details of what the attire she had used to favour in this world brought with it. The high-heeled boots were unfit to tread the uneven forest floor. So far she had resisted the urge to hitch up the skirt of her dress even at the cost of being pestered by branches and leaves tugging and tearing at her ceaselessly.
Small feats of magic kept her warm, fed and watered. Occasionally she allowed herself a while's rest: her feet ached badly by now and her muscles burned in protest. But sleep never seemed to come.
Soon the lack of voices intruding upon her ears and thoughts and nerves cradled her into a state of uncharacteristic tranquillity. On the other side of solitude she found the luxury of absolute abandon, the freedom to remain encased within her own mind, to lose herself inside the swirl of emotions without any regard for the outer world. There was no need to pay mind to what kind of image she wanted to project, or the consequences should it fail to convince. She could be herself and not question what that meant.
So she let herself be lost, ceasing to battle for control over her emotions or force her brain into rational thought.
Images rushed through her, filling her entire being: bits of memories and fantasies, shreds of emotions, and the rare flash of present reality. A face, a smile, a tiny fist clenched around her finger; a word, a hug, his forehead under her tear-salted lips. A cloud of purple smoke swallowing a retreating yellow bug. Purple, and inky black, and green trees against blue skies. A well, a diamond, a glowing heart. A chance gone to nought. Red for anger and for pain; blue for the tears that wouldn't come; black for the future that need not.
An owl's hoot. A wolf's howl. A crack of dead wood under her feet as it dissolved to dust.
Shimmering in the moonlight, a swift stream crossed her path, humble but not narrow enough to simply step over. Regina blinked, forcing the fog clouding her judgement, her senses, and her heart to subside. The sensation of water trickling through her fingers made her skin erupt in goosebumps. She splashed some of it over her face. Shivering, she surveyed her surroundings. Far away on the horizon, above the tops of the trees, the gloom revealed it would slowly begin to give way to daybreak. Regina had hoped to have reached her destination by then. She shook her head in an effort to shake off the fatigue and the lingering lethargy - she should never have allowed herself so much lenience. Shunning momentarily the contradicting voice that wept with hopelessness, she gathered all the determination she could muster and searched for a way forward. Her fingers tingled in mockery of the obstacle - magic would eradicate the problem in a heartbeat.
Even as her fist unfurled, a twig broke somewhere behind the bushes, and steps sent the leafy ground rustling. Adrenaline surged through her, reminding her that she was still very much alive. Her eyes darted towards the source of the sound. Regina stood firmly, ready for the clash. She wouldn't seek shelter. Perhaps a fight would make her actually feel alive for a moment - not that it mattered much.
Nothing happened. A soft whisper of leaves told the tale of receding steps. Whoever had come so close to discovering her presence in the forest was now moving away from her again. The anticlimactic moment might have left her bitter and disappointed, even angry once. Now she felt nothing.
After a while, without the slightest spur of curiosity but purely for reasons of practicality, Regina followed. Knowledge was power.
What did she need power for anyway anymore? Perhaps it was mere inertia keeping her moving forward.
Not far along, however, the path the mystery shadow had been following ended in a thick wall of forest shrubbery. Regina's senses tingled. Running her hand over the leaves and branches barring her way, bidding her time, her palm came to rest on a peculiar formation of leaves. Upon closer look, it hardly required a forester to recognise the foliage had been tampered with. Had she accidentally discovered a secret hideout?
As she began to cautiously walk around the wall of green, a low murmur of voices hoarse with sleep, the crackle of a rekindled fire, and a rising bustle of early morning activity seemed to confirm her suspicion. Pressing against a moss-covered rock the sparser foliage allowed for a better view, Regina squinted through the leaves.
Men in garments of varying degrees of shabbiness were hard to make out against the backdrop of the forest scene, which she had to admit was cleverly achieved by the predominant usage of green and brown fabrics. A fat sack lay by the fire, leaning against a wooden chest. A balding monk dragged his corpulent body to a cask of ale and poured a generous tankard for himself and his tall, robustly built crony. He offered a jug to anther one of their fellows - a woman, Regina noted with surprise and an involuntary touch of respect, for in this world it had always been hard to break the bounds set to women - but she refused and toasted with a flask of water instead.
The rising bustle meant an increased danger of being discovered. Undoubtedly she would be capable of handling a confrontation but she had no interest in these people. Rumple's castle, on the other hand, would only be a short way away. Regina retreated in a wide arch and resumed in her former direction.
With renewed permission to roam free, her mind returned to the things she had loved and lost. The hidden camp and its inhabitants receded into oblivion.
The place was bleak and sinister as ever - it was called the Dark Castle for a reason. Sable stonework seemed to swallow what little light the fading stars lent the retreating night. Regina pushed at the massive double doors in expectation of resistance or at the very least the wail of rusty hinges. Neither came. The door yielded to her touch and she slipped into the sombre hall. Cobwebs had crept across the high ceiling, running from corner to corner in criss-crossing patterns; they adorned the ornate chandeliers and the dust-covered furniture. The library was down that corridor flagged by cracked vases of shrivelled roses. Regina turned her back on the gaping mouth of the corridor - it held no charm for her for the moment.
As she strode towards the grand staircase, her boot became entangled in something. Staggering for a moment, she fought to remain on her feet. The wretched thing was a small camisole of some dark material. Or perhaps not - the lack of light was making everything seem black. Regina picked it up and headed upstairs. The echo of her steps resounded off the walls dully; she strove to step with more care. What did she have to be wary of anyway? An echo? The odd bandit in search of abandoned treasures ? No, the sound simply displeased her.
Doors lined the spacious landing: big and small, wood and stone, arched and square. It made no difference. She pushed a random one open, jumping slightly at its sharp creak and chiding herself for the reaction at once. Once in the room, her steps were muffled by the thick cover of dust eaten into the plush carpet. Crossing the length of the chamber, she struggled with the latch to get the window open and chase out the stuffy, stale air and let some of the fresh morning in.
A golden glow was pushing through the steely, low-hanging clouds on the horizon, sprinkling the faraway treetops with fine yellow specks of light. It was the dawn of a new day.
Something in Regina's chest contorted painfully with an uncalled for intensity that momentarily knocked the air out of her. She felt a lump grow in her throat and tried to swallow it back down again but found herself struggling for breath instead. Her eyes burned viciously - but they remained dry.
A new day was beginning, but for her, everything had already come to an end.
How many times could a person start over? How many times could a person be robbed of everything - everything - they held dear? How many times could a person lose their raison d'etre and still find a way to carry on?
The aged duvet-cover caressed and tickled and scratched her cheek. When had she even gotten to the bed? With a dry sob erupting from the very core of her being, she hugged the pillow unwittingly. There was nothing else left for her to hold on to.
Henry had been her everything. No - he still was, and would always be, her everything. And now he was gone forever.
Regina had tried with all her might to give her all into that last act of magic before the curse had swept them away. She had focused all her thought, all her emotion - most of which had been, and still was, pain - on one thing and one thing only, a thing that was contrary to everything she had been working towards leading to casting the Dark Curse and most of her time in Storybrooke. The happy ending she had ached for so much had had to be given up - she had chosen to give it up, wrapped in tears and sputtered syllables. All the happiness she had ever dreamed for herself and him had been her gift to them: Henry and Emma.
She had no regrets. Her son, her little prince, had had to come first. There was no hole in her heart now. But the agony - oh, the agony was eating away at her, even as her ruthless mind shouted accusations at her ailing heart for being selfish in her grief instead of rejoicing over the bright future Henry could look forward to. A better future that meant Regina stepping aside never to have been a part of his life in the first place. Was she such a terrible disaster to be around that the only way to make her son happy had been to completely erase herself from his heart?
Regina clawed at the sheets with trembling fingers, kicked the duvet in helpless frustration, buried her face in the pillow to stifle a cry. And still her eyes remained dry.
I have not a tear left to cry.
Eventually, exhaustion had drained the last of her energy, and left her lying limp between the covers. Unthinking. Unfeeling. Barely alive.
It had been two days and three nights since she had left Snow White and the others, and longer yet since she had last slept. Now sleep finally claimed its due, pressing her eyelids shut with persistent weight. She dreamed of times gone by, of tiny grabby fists waving in the air in pursuit of a dark, loose strand of hair.
The darkness shifted constantly, ebbing and flowing in the wake of her breathing: in and out, in and out. Its smooth, slippery arms entrapped her and uncoiled again, and again, the fluid mass ever winding its way around her. Washed out images of moments past flicked in and out of sight, their texture grained and scratched like an old film. A flutter of her eyelashes or the faintest sigh stirred inky ripples just beneath the surface.
A distant peal of thunder reverberated from the massive walls. What little light there was flickered at the gust of icy wind, then went out. All light - except for a pair of bright red eyes floating beneath the ceiling. Regina gasped and jerked back on the bed, shrinking against the bed post. Dread rose within her like a tidal wave, washing all else out of the way without compromise. The creeping fingers of hopeless misery felt all too familiar... Shaking uncontrollably, she blinked - and the spectre was gone.
All that remained was the all-encompassing darkness only vaguely illuminated by the slim silver sickle in the sky. She must have slept through the day.
Regina ran a hand through her hair. Could it have been what she feared it had been? Had it been no more than a dream? She fought to force her heavy breathing into its normal pattern again. It can't have been real; she would be - gone - if it had been. Why would it flee before accomplishing its purpose? No, she was being foolish. She'd had a nightmare, that was all.
But the loud crash of stone against stone seconds later was definitely real.
Regina kicked the sheets off resolutely. Ghosts did not knock pieces of furniture over - men did. Ghosts could be tricky to foil; men, on the other hand, were a different matter. As she moved to the door, her fingers flexed of their own accord - magic was a primeval instinct to her. The unsuspecting enemy downstairs knew not what they had gotten themselves into.
Perhaps she was being reckless. At least she was something now, beyond lost and hurting.
The stone beneath her boots threatened to betray her presence, so she trod carefully, the ensuing delay testing her patience to the point of madness. When she reached the foot of the stairs, her nostrils flared and the back of her neck tingled. They would have been clue enough, these senses of hers, even without the tell-tale evidence of the vase lying at her feet shattered to countless rugged pieces.
Whoever she was coming up against was in the library - or, if they already knew about her, possibly lying in ambush in a dark nook of the long aisle leading there.
Well, their mistake - she was no easy prey.
She no longer took particular care to be inconspicuous. Although her steps were still measured so as not to make more noise than absolutely necessary, she walked on upright, with her head high and with a swing to her hips - she radiated power and self-confidence, which she had learnt often had a debilitating or at the very least demoralising effect on her adversaries.
Perhaps if she had curbed her pride and adopted a more cautious pace, she would have noticed the shape lurking in a left-hand niche before her. This way it was too late - by the time movement registered from the corner of her eye, a dark shape had already detached from the wall and rushed forth towards her. There was no time to raise a magic-tinged hand. In a hopeless instinct, she ducked, and felt something catch against her hair briefly - and move away on dark, leathery, skeletal wings. She inhaled sharply, cursing herself for allowing panic to rob her off common sense. A bat was certainly no reason to lose her cool.
The library door was ajar, as the sliver of yellow light on the floor betrayed. Someone was comfortable enough to have started a fire. Who could possibly feel so at home here? She felt her anger flare - an unsettling emotion but a welcome one all the same, for it was better than the lethargy overcoming her for the past days. And it was something her magic could feed on. She had sought this place out in hopes of finding a place of recourse, room to mourn without witness and perhaps even figure out where to go next. No one would rob her of this sanctuary now.
A stealthy entrance might be the more reasonable option but to her, it was no option at all; she only knew one way of making an entrance.
The door flew open at the touch of her fingertips, her steps echoed off the stone, and her eyes flashed dangerously - and instantly squinted and blinked, blinded momentarily by the intense blaze from the fireplace.
"Make no move," a calm voice spoke from behind her, "and you shall not be harmed."