Chapter Two: Death is too good for you.

"Y-Your…Majesty…"

His words were incoherent, slurred and drenched in grunts of pain, pleading and murder. She was choking the life out of him. All that pent up anger over the lack of love in her life, the love Snow White was now revelling in, was racing through her veins, channelling in her magic and tightening around the peasant's throat. Oh how she loved witnessing other people's misfortunes.

Their agony and displeasure.

How dare her Kingdom rejoice and live happily, when she, a once innocent soul had endured far too much anguish and torment in her life.

This killing method was far too quick and merciful. She needed to make him /suffer/ for what he had done. Anything else he had stolen was worthless but that ring was inexplicably valuable.

The thief's ruggedly good looking face was sinking in a deep shade of scarlet to match the Queen's usual crimson ripe lips. Any longer, another minute of this strangulation and yet another life would have darkened Regina's already blackened heart.

She whipped her hand to the side in an action that left Robin gasping for breath. He clutched at his bruised neck, coughing, spluttering, and doing anything to regain his life which had so very nearly been taken away from him. Confusion from the lack of oxygen had left him stunned.

"I swear, I have never set foot in your castle until this very moment."

The archer pleaded with her, speaking nothing but the truth. He was always honest and this time was no different. He had no reason to lie to the Evil Queen.

"Shut up, you idiot."

The words rolled off Regina's tongue in low fury, looking at and speaking to him worse than her idiotic guards. He needed to pay for what he had done. There were only two other people who had inflicted pain on her. And those were her own mother and stepdaughter. Her mother had suffered the terrible fate of never being able to see her daughter again. Trapped in another world after being pushed through a looking glass. And Snow White? The Queen had a much harsher fate for her. At first she had wanted the princess dead. Now she realised that Snow needed to suffer.

Just as this thief did.

"Do you know what I do to intruders?"

Regina barked at the figure, lunging forward to yank down the hood that covered the man's face. She was met with blue oceanic hues, eyes that she swore she had seen before. In another land, another world, another time perhaps. Astonished by the initial shock that his eyes afflicted her with, she didn't let it knock her composure.

"Cut. Off. Their. Heads."

Her words left her tongue sharply and slowly, every word dripping in regal power and cruelty.

Robin didn't even flinch. Something in the way she had looked at him, really gorged into his eyes told him that there was no need to be afraid. Which was insanity because he had heard the tales. The Queen who knew no bounds of her torturous and vain ways. Even he knew that there must have been something to make her like this.

A traumatic event.

People weren't born evil.

Evil was made.

People became evil through what life had thrown in their direction.

He sympathised. The misery in her eyes was painful for him. No one should ever experience such sorrow.

His attitude changed. Gone was the apologetic, clumsy demeanour. Call it lack of oxygen to the brain. He wasn't scared of her. How could someone so alluringly beautiful harbour such treachery and scorn?

"What's stopping you? You could have killed me a moment ago but you spared me. The truth and only the truth is that I lost my wife when my son was born. The ring I am asking you for is hers. I need it for /him/. It is the only thing he has left of his mother. My boy asked me to bring it back to him. Long gone are my days of being a thief. I would do anything for my son, but I of beg you. He's already motherless. Please don't leave him fatherless too."

The last words that left him were his defeat.

The Queen's stone cold heart didn't falter.

Family meant nothing to her.

"Ah, you have a child too. I'm sure he will make a fine meal for my crocodiles…"

Regina's tone was full of amusement.

She was warped, that much was true.

No one threatened his son.

"Spare my boy. Do whatever you want with me, /kill/ me but look into your heart and don't kill the innocent. He's a mere toddler."

A loud, shrilly cackle echoed throughout the chambers, bouncing off every wall and hitting the archer at every angle.

"Oh stop whining. What are you? A man or a mouse?"

She mocked in laughter, hands coming to rest on her hips as a malicious smirk overtook her features. Gracing those plump lips as the inhumane smirk met those gleamingly sadistic orbs. To the world they seemed black like her soul. If they looked closer however, they would witness the hazel in them. A metaphor of peoples view on her. How misunderstood she really was. No one except that imp of a Dark One, her mother and her father had witnessed who she really was. The true love she had lost had brought out the best in her. He was never to be mentioned again.

"Oh no. Death is too good for you."

She purred, taking all of him in. His tousled golden locks, the prickly beard that covered his lower face, those thin lips, that muscular body she could see through his baggy clothing. Those hands. Well, she might as well enjoy herself with this one. Graham had been raised by the wolves and was increasingly becoming a bother.

Fresh meat was necessary.

A hand lunged forwards out of nowhere.

Into his chest, squeezing, fingers clawing in search for the heart she was aiming to rip out, to steal just as he had stolen her valuable ring. He gasped, groaning in utter pain, kneeling down as he experienced the most excruciating pain. Perhaps he /should/ fear her. In less than ten minutes he had been brutally tortured, what else could this Queen possibly do to him?