A/N: I'm so glad that I received such a favorable reaction to the first chapter! Normally I wouldn't update nearly so soon, but I'm celebrating a bit, and I want the ball rolling. So without further ado, here's the next installment!

As you'll notice, this chapter is set before the first. Since the actual show is so big on utilizing flashbacks, I'm doing my best to imitate that. There will be an ongoing timeline in the present (any unspecified chapter) accompanied by explanation/flashback chapters which will be indicated at the start for your convenience.

The Handmaiden's Philosophy
Chapter Two

Four days ago...

Regina's POV

Regina had always been an early riser. Be it because of her own natural inclinations or at her mother's insistence (she'd become rather soporific during her teenaged years) she had awoken with the sun to watch it crest the horizon each morning for as long as she could remember. She liked mornings. She liked the cool air and the quiet and the fresh quality to the filtering light of dawn that just wasn't there at any other part of the day. For a long while, viewing the sunrise was one of the few joys she was able to experience at all.

If she was being honest with herself, watching the sunrise was one of her very few joys even now.

Regina's thoughts were rather heavy this morning. She got this way, sometimes. She grew quiet and introspective, and spent long hours on her balcony or wandering the gardens just… thinking. It was a rare occasion that she called for her morning meal on the balcony, but Regina was well aware that her doing so was something of an unspoken signal to the castle's servants that she wasn't in the most forgiving of moods.

Today was one of those days, and as was her custom, Regina was lounged gracefully upon a divan on her balcony, still dressed in her nightclothes and sipping on tea with lemon. She supposed such sloth wasn't a Queenly thing to indulge in, but rationalized that so long as she was Queen, everything she did was Queenly. It was a privilege that she had more than earned, she thought.

The Evil Queen. That's what they called her, she mused as she gazed out upon the castle grounds, eyes dark even in the pale morning light. Well, those who lived in the Silverwoods did anyways, she amended. Her own subjects –citizens of the Summerlands—wouldn't dare to name her as such. And to be fair, they had little reason to regardless. Regina was, above all, a competent Queen. She had little to thank her mother for, but for that. Still, regardless of the reason, she was glad to have for the most part escaped the moniker in her own kingdom, at the very least. It wasn't really who she was anymore. There was a time in her life –a dark, and angry time—where hearing the peasants cry out that name in fear sent a thrill through her entire being. She liked the fear. Relished in it. Regina had spent so much of her life just being afraid, all the time, and to think that she had graduated from being such a pathetic creature into someone powerful and awe-inspiring was nothing short of intoxicating to her. It was a feeling that Regina had wanted to drown in, and she wrapped herself in that same unholy fury like the most comforting of blankets, and had brought the fire that had always burned so painfully inside to the outside to devastating effect.

The Evil Queen. She was free. It never hurt less, but seeing the hurt inside of her reflected on the faces of other people had at least made her feel less alone.

But then there was Snow White. Oh, how Regina hated Snow White. The girl that had everything, and yet still wanted more; who destroyed everything she touched with that sickeningly sweet smile on her face, believing all the while that she was good and just and fair. Regina wanted to scratch her eyes out.

Unfortunately, Snow had her moments of not complete idiocy, and for a while, she had come close to actually winning their fight.

But Regina didn't lose. Not to her, anyways. Never again.

For a while, she'd thought that Rumplestiltskin's Dark Curse was the answer to all her problems. It would give her a new beginning, and everyone else an unhappy ending. It was… perfect.

Except for the fact that to enact it, Regina would have been forced to sacrifice her own father: the thing she loved most. She needed to take his heart from his chest and crush it to dust between her fingers. She'd come so close to doing it, too. She'd plunged her hand into the man's frail chest and held the pulsating red organ in her hands… but she just hadn't been able to bring herself to squeeze.

Regina had thought herself weak in that moment, as she stared into her father's face, unable to kill him even if the sacrifice could have finally made her happy.

That night, Regina had done quite a bit of soul-searching and pondering, staying up long after the candle at her bedside had spluttered out.

What was she doing? What did she want? Mother had always taught her that power was the one thing that could make her happy. So she'd become powerful. But Regina wasn't happy. That was why casting the Dark Curse was so important. But… would the curse make her happy, really? Banishing everyone to a world without magic, without their memories, while she, alone, remained? Untouched by time, but according to Maleficent, also untouched by love? Maleficent was a unicorn-besotted fool, but Regina reluctantly admitted that she was also a talented magic-user, and she was inclined to believe the blonde when she said that while the Curse would bring her many things, happiness wasn't one of them.

If that was the case, she'd then pondered, what would make her happy?

It seemed to Regina that everyone always had a different opinion on what would bring her happiness. Her mother had said power brought happiness. Tinkerbell, True Love. Rumplestiltskin advocated the Dark Curse, and Snow White had always been annoyingly fixated on family. None of these things seemed to have the potential to make Regina happy, however, so she was rather at a loss as to what to do.

In the end, she had settled upon simply being better than those who would presume to know her heart.

She was the Evil Queen Regina, and she would show everyone –down to the last peasant—that she was more than a silly girl in love with a stable boy. More than a trinket to decorate an old man's arm and warm his bed. More than a heartless dictator. More than a malevolent witch. She was a Queen, and she would reign as such with such success that even Snow White would be forced to concede that Regina was right. That Regina was better.

Because it wouldn't matter if Snow died. It wouldn't matter if she lost her memory. Snow White wasn't worth the effort it would take to kill her, and Regina wanted her to live, knowing that. It would be so much more satisfying than letting the little chit find peace in death.

So instead of casting the Dark Curse, Regina had taken fate into her own hands, and gone to see Snow White and Prince Charming with an offer. Give Regina the Summerlands to rule as her own without interference or acts of war, and Regina would drop her vendetta against the couple and their kingdom, the Silverwoods. She would also refrain from casting the Dark Curse or attacking with her still-considerable army.

In the end, Snow White and Prince Charming had little choice. They had the child they were expecting to think about, not to mention a kingdom to rule with little to no experience between them. They couldn't afford to deal with Regina. The Summerlands was the smaller of the two kingdoms that had been under Leopold's –and subsequently, the Evil Queen's—rule anyways, and Snow had never really cared for it on the few occasions she'd visited. It was a fair deal, all things considered.

And so Snow and Charming became the rulers of the Silverwoods, and Regina the sovereign of the Summerlands, a cease-fire called between them. That was nearly twenty years ago, and since then, an uneasy peace had existed between the two kingdoms. Generally, the citizens of each tended to steer clear of each other, as did the respective royalty.

Because during that time, Regina had indeed proved herself to be an excellent ruler, despite her history of violence against those who dared to stand against her. The Summerlands flourished under her guidance. She was not the most conventional of rulers, being somewhat progressive in policy by necessity as a lone female monarch, but she was still beloved by her subjects despite her infamous lack of mercy towards criminals. The Silverwoods, on the other hand, did not fare nearly so well. As a woman –and a sickeningly naïve one at that—Snow White had never been trained to rule as a child. She had grown up with the expectation to marry a Prince, who would have, as King, made the executive decisions in her stead whilst Snow sat at his side looking pretty and pushing out heirs. Unfortunately for her, the Prince she had married was no Prince at all, and was even less prepared for the role than she. Regina could admit that, under such circumstances, the pair had done moderately well for themselves. Still, the reality was that Leopold had been a very traditional man with very traditional habits and taste, who had ruled in a time of prosperity and peace. It was all well and good for Snow to emulate him, but the Silverwoods was still suffering the aftereffects of the quasi-anarchy that had descended with the dispute over the throne between the widowed Queen and erstwhile Princess. An exceptional leader was needed to heal the country of the damage, and Snow White just wasn't that leader. In the end, the country had fallen into such financial disaster that the royal couple had been forced to promising the hand of their daughter, Princess Emmaline, to the crowned Prince of the Southern Isles, allying their kingdoms. Regina felt more than a little smug at their misfortune, of course, given the prosperous state of her own kingdom, but she'd still felt bad for the young princess. The girl had been only four years old at the time her future had been decided for her, and Regina of all people was familiar with the horrors of arranged marriage. There was no worse feeling in the world than that of being sold like a prize heifer.

Even so, she'd been more than a little floored when, fourteen years later, Princess Emmaline had vanished without a trace only a week before she was due to be wed. Snow and James had scoured their land in search of her, but Emmaline had never been found. Even now, two years after the fact, no body had been recovered nor ransom note delivered. The Silverwoods' alliance with the Southern Isles had been dissolved, and it was the opinion of most that the Princess was dead.

Regina rather thought she wasn't. She knew from personal experience how difficult it was to kill the members of that family. Though she knew not where Emmaline might be hiding, she strongly suspected that the girl would return to her family one day in an explosion of rainbows and happiness and true love and all manner of other Snow White-endorsed sappiness, and all would be well and forgiven.

She really didn't care either way. Princess Emmaline was truly only significant in her absence. Politically, her only use had been to tie the Silverwoods to the Southern Isles. It was Leopold II, Emmaline's younger brother, who would be the next ruler of their country.

Shaking her head to clear it of such reminiscing, Regina stood from her lounger and moved back into her chambers, teacup still in hand. She must be getting old, she thought to herself amusedly, if she was spending so much time thinking of days long past. Not that it showed. She'd spelled herself to stop aging quite some time ago, and was perfectly preserved in her prime. One of the many perks of being a magic-user, as dear, foolish Maleficent would say.

At the thought of her friend, Regina paused before her vanity and considered that she'd not seen her for quite some time. The sorceress's company would be a pleasant diversion from her thoughts. Immediately, the Queen decided that she would take a trip to Maleficent's castle as soon as possible. Tomorrow, perhaps. Thus decided, Regina drained the last of her tea and pulled the silk cord by the wall to call for her handmaiden. It was well passed time that she got dressed for the day.

"The navy blue a-line, girl," she barked out as soon as her handmaiden –a cowering little fool with mousy features called Eloise—rushed through the servant's entrance.

Stammering out her acknowledgement of the order, Eloise scrambled to Regina's closet to collect the requested garment. Seating herself at her vanity, the Queen didn't bother suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. Technically speaking, she had no need for a handmaiden. Unlike other members of the upper class, she was perfectly capable of dressing and styling her hair on her own with magic. Certainly some days doing so would be far less bothersome than tolerating the bumbling antics of the little fools brought in to serve her. Cowards, the lot of them. Regina cycled through handmaidens faster than any other category of servant in the entire castle, most unable to deal with her volatile temper and other assorted mood swings for more than a few weeks at most. But Regina never stopped using handmaidens anyways.

Though she would never admit it out loud, she needed the human interaction. After the death of her father some years ago in his sleep, literally no one had touched Regina in a gentle way aside from the handmaidens and the occasional lover that she used and summarily discarded. Being Queen was a very lonely task, and though Regina hated little fools such as Eloise and many of her predecessors, their interactions were the closest things to physical comfort she had left. And as much as she hated it, the truth was that even Evil Queens needed something as simple as nonaggressive human touch on occasion. Some would say that Regina had everything, but it was this simple thing that she secretly craved and rarely indulged in.

Poor Eloise was a particularly pitiful specimen of the serving class, however. She trembled atrociously in Regina's presence, fumbling with the hooks and laces in the Queen's intricate gowns and –even worse—pulling her hair when she styled it.

Regina hated that. Mother had pulled her hair as a child. Leopold had pulled her hair as he put his disgusting hands on her body. Snow had pulled her hair when she wanted to practice braids.

So it was a perfectly reasonable response, Regina thought to herself, for her to toss a fireball over Eloise's head when the insipid girl pulled her hair. This, of course, had sent the pathetic thing into complete hysterics, and Eloise had fled the royal chambers after the initial fireball was followed by a verbal tongue-lashing worthy of... well, a Queen.

With an exasperated sigh, Regina snapped her fingers and finished up her hair herself. It was never the same, done with magic, as it was done by hand, but it would have to do. She made a mental note to acquire yet another handmaiden after her trip to visit Maleficent.

Preferably one with a little less bumbling idiocy, this time.