I'm so happy! The show confirmed this past weekend that Cora's heart is not in her chest. Where could it be...hmmmm. Maybe my theory is possible. Wouldn't that be epic?

Oh and Cora was set to rip out Snow's heart and give it to Regina. Hmm. If this is true, does she know?

Oh and Mr. Gold said... "I guess I shouldn't bet against you." to Emma. Right after my chapter about his long running tally and putting all his hope on one horse, Emma. It's like they can read my mind.

Holler if you think, that Regina was sending Hook on what she thought was a suicide mission and was unpleasantly surprised to see him and Cora. That perhaps the little speech she made, was serving a different purpose, other than a mourning.

Last chapter to this little theory musing. Last up Snow...but she'll never tell.

***
When Regina first told Snow about Daniel, his death, she was shocked and horrified. But since she had seen Regina then and the creature before her now, she knew it was the truth. The shock disappeared and was replaced by guilt.

No, you were a little girl. A stupid little girl trying to do the right thing. To save her from the greatest loss one could ever suffer. The loss of a mother.

She tried to beat it back, the rising tide of guilt. She met Regina's eyes. At least, they once looked like Regina's eyes. They were cold and spiteful, not at all the same eyes that she gazed into, eager to see the incredible person whom had saved her life, so many years ago.

When Regina held out the apple and explained it, Snow was confused. First, her attempted murder and now, a lifetime of tortured sleep? While this new level of torture, made sense, since the first had failed her, for the first time Snow looked into Regina's eyes and saw something. Something more than hatred she now expected, more than the sorrow that she now understood, more than malicious excitement at Snow's predicament. She saw, what she could only describe as intimacy. Not in a welcoming sense, but in a sense that this apple, this very specific apple, should mean something to her. Snow liked apples, but the story behind this apple, was clearly missing.

Regina hated her for Daniel, but there was more. Snow felt overwhelmed by the sudden knowledge that this once kind person had hated her in secret for so many years and she was still uncertain she had the whole story. She felt drowning, drowning in anxiety and terror. She knew she was unhappy in her marriage to her father, she had picked up on that as a teen. But this was clearly more than that. If Daniel's death was the tip of iceberg, the thing she mentioned first, what was the rest of it?

Snow tried to rack her brain for something, anything, to explain the fire and the brokenness in her stepmother's eyes. Coming up with nothing more of any great weight, she began to panic. Would she never know? How would she ever sleep again...the irony. When Regina promised that David would live if she bit the apple, Snow wanted to believe her so badly. Her fight was with Snow, not him.

As she bit the apple, however, just before sleep overtook her, she doubted that Regina would even keep that promise. There was joy in her eyes at Snow's acceptance of her fate, mixed with self-hatred. Regina wouldn't let him become like herself, she would kill him out of mercy. No chance for revenge to destroy him. No dark nights, all alone in misery.

So therefore, Regina's apple didn't quite have the effect she had planned. Snow was alone in the dark, with just herself. At least at first. But she wasn't tormented. At first, she spent time thinking of David, how she missed him and how his torment would be over soon. She consoled herself with this knowledge. That Regina still had a heart. No matter how mutilated.

But then after what seemed like weeks but she later discovered was more like only a few days, something changed. She kept seeing a face in the mirrors, out of the corner of her eyes. And it was not her own. It was a friendly looking face, but a sad one.

"Hello?" Perhaps Regina had cursed someone else here as well.

The image shifted. Now in the mirror in front of her, Snow saw not her own reflection, but the other girl. It seemed familiar, like someone she had met, but she couldn't quite place her finger on it.

"Hello? Who are you?"

The girl, about 17 or so in appearance, had long brown hair, soft, but very sad, brown eyes and she was wearing a simple, but elegantly cut dress. She shook her head and placed a finger across her lips in a hush gesture. She had a simple wedding ring on her finger and her hand fell across her stomach. Snow noticed it was a bit round, perhaps she was pregnant?

"Can I not speak to you?" Snow asked.

The girl, now looking even more familiar, but still un-identifiable to her, gave her a sorrowful look. "You may speak, all you like, but it does not mean anything." Her voice was soft and velvety and so achingly familiar. "I do not wish to speak to you." Her words were harsh, but her tone still smooth and calm.

"How are you in here?" Snow asked curiously. "Did Regina curse you too?"

The girl's eyes flickered in recognition of the name, but in pain as well. Her hand on her stomach trembled. She shook her head no, fervently. "No, we did." Her voice which was so soft and velvety before was now tense and raw in this reply. It seemed to come out of its own accord and the girl frowned that she had even responded.

Snow frowned. "Who did?"

The girl scowled with a face, half angry and half guilty, that Snow had seen before. On Regina. "We did. We cursed her."

"I don't understand...is this about Daniel? Who are you?" Snow inquired.

The girl banged on the glass inside the mirror, angrily, "It does not matter. You must never tell anyone that I am here. You must keep this secret." She watched fiercely for a response, fire in her eyes.

Snow found herself nodding. She had told a secret before and look where that had gotten everyone. The girl seemed to accept this nod. "Good." She whispered sadly.

Then she looked up. "Please try to save my baby, please." Her face was desperate and her voice broke. She gripped her stomach even tighter.

"Who?"

...

Snow was abruptly awoken, surprisingly by Charming. It took her a moment to process where she was and shake the spell from her mind. Snow smiled broadly. She was pleased to see David alive and rescuing her, but she was surprised. Here he was again, having escaped from Regina and now despite everything, professing his desire to marry her. Snow wanted nothing more than this, but her mind couldn't help, but sadly tell her heart, that with this, would come a fresh wave of suffering for Regina and therefore a new form of torture for the two of them.

When she awoke from the red room that night, screaming, the flames still present in her mind, even she stared at the candle David had lit, she knew this must be it. This was her punishment for escaping.

When David asked her what she had seen in her curse, after the second or third time back in the burning room, she told him. About the darkness, the mirrors, about the room with no doors and no windows and the hot, burning flames. But not about the girl. Never about the girl.
She could keep a secret, even if it hurt, even if she wanted so badly to tell him everything, to ask him if she was crazy, to theorize, to just be comforted in her growing unease about the whole thing.

When she became pregnant with her own child, Snow, finally understood the girl's suffering. In a constant state of fear about her child's wellbeing, she thought back to the girl in the mirror. She wondered if she ever got out. But she didn't worry too much over it, it was probably safer in their anyway. Motherhood was damn painful. No one was ever safe, not for long and it hurt most of all when it was the thing you wanted to protect the most. But even her waking dreams of terror, she still told no one about the girl in the mirror.

***
Another curse entirely had caused Mary Margaret to forget the girl, and the burning red room. But as she held her dear David in her arms, her Charming, as he too visited the red room of fear and pain, the memory came back.

She still didn't know what it meant, if it was just part of Regina's torment for her, or something more, but whatever the intention, it had worked. The torment and fear returned as she tried to in vain push them aside for David, to console and awaken him. She held herself together, pushed his worries about her away, with the mention of just being worried about him. Falling asleep again, Snow laid in his arms, awake and once again aching to say something. Now more than ever.

The voice and the face for Snow, as a young woman, had been years since she had seen or heard, the memory a bit more distant and forgotten then now. But after her recent trip to and from their home world, things were fresher and more ingrained in her mind.

She knew who the girl was.

The girl was Cora. Not bitter and cold, bloodthirsty Cora. There was both youth and sorrow on her face, something that Cora had never demonstrated. There was kindness, there was guilt, and there was fear. None of these, were things that Snow would attribute to Cora either, but she couldn't deny them. The look of these emotions on her face was so close to Regina's, perhaps even her own in her new motherhood, if one could still say that about having a 28 year old daughter, that she couldn't deny them. However, the girl got there, in the mirror, it was not Cora, not the one that she knew.

And with fear, as she settled down up against her husband, her true love, she knew it was a secret she would never tell. Because to say it aloud now, now that she knew who she was, now that she understood her pain, well, to say it aloud now, would not only be the betrayal of the worse kind, the kind you willing acknowledge. Of course this was assuming the young Cora had been real and not a figment, or an illusion. But if Regina didn't already know about her, it would do her no good at all to know, no, and it would certainly not be saving her, it would be like ripping Regina's heart out.

Yes, exactly like that. And Snow's heart along with it...perhaps both of them.

"Snow?" David interrupted her thoughts. "What's wrong, you're trembling."

Snow shook her head. But David wasn't going to let it drop so easily. He gave her a stern yet compassionate look. "You know that you can tell me anything, right?"
Snow nodded. But not this. "I was just having a moment. Where I wondered if any of this was real, if I wasn't still sleeping, constantly tormented over and over for all eternity." She had tried to keep her voice calm, but it sounded more like thin, worn out attempt to seem brave.

Charming, her prince, held her even tighter. "I'm real. Right now, right here. And I know there is no way to prove that to you. And I know how much you like proof." Snow could feel him smile into her neck as he kissed it. "But you're just going to have to have faith, tonight. I know you can do this, Snow. Now close your eyes and just enjoy me and you, right here, right now. Don't let Regina or Cora get to you. Right now, we sleep and rest. Together." He kissed her again, and Snow felt like she on fire, the kind she would gladly burn with. Fairies, she loved him so much. She smiled broadly.

Yes, that was it. Snow was just psyching herself out. Regina was finally getting to her, after all these years, that was it, nothing more. There was no young Cora, there was no stupid secret to keep.

There was nothing to tell.