Standard Disclaimer: The characters ain't mine, I'm just borrowing their strings for a while, so don't sue me please! Please point out any errors in grammar or spelling privately and I will correct them.
Chapter 2 – Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
It was nearing twilight at the Dark Castle as Regina stood upon her balcony, looking out over the sprawling forests of her kingdom. Placing her elbows upon the bannister, she leaned over with a gratified sigh. It was finally happening. The day had finally arrived. After waiting so long, she was going to have her vengeance on Snow White, the loose-lipped little brat and insufferably resilient bandit who had been the source of Regina's almost constant misery since rescuing her worthless hide so many years ago. That injustice was soon to be corrected once and for all.
With a triumphant grin, Regina surveyed her lands for the last time. Before long it would all be swept away by a hurricane force of magic the likes of which the Enchanted Forest had never seen: the Dark Curse. Casting the curse was her greatest achievement and the means through which she would obtain her long sought revenge. In that moment, the sweet taste of justice was so poignant as to be like honey on her tongue, for soon she would be switching places with Snow and all of her ilk, living out her happily ever after while she watched them suffer endless agonies.
There was only one notable exception to Regina's disdain toward Snow's compatriots, an individual who had picked that very moment to arrive in her chambers. Having felt rather than heard or seen said person, Regina tensed for a brief second, dreading the looming confrontation. It should not be so difficult for her to do what was necessary; after all, she wanted her revenge more than anything. But more and more lately, she had come to have reservations – small though they were – as to whether or not that was wholly true. A part of her wanted to spare this person from what was coming, though that tiny portion of what remained of her conscience was not enough to prevent her from casting the Curse. Regardless of how much she wanted to, she simply had too much invested now to go back on that decision.
Swirling around to face her guest, she was met by a familiar pair of lucent green eyes already swimming with emotion. Red's face was, all in all, a picture of grief with her trembling chin and her ruddy cheeks which were colored from the intensity of both her exertion from traveling and her palpable sorrow. Regina's hardened heart constricted in her chest at her lover's obvious distress, though she allowed no evidence of that internal conflict to reflect on her visage.
"Come to plea for mercy, my dear?" she asked, falling back on sarcasm out of instinct as she scrambled to reinforce the weakened walls around her heart. It was frightening how this simple woman had so painstakingly reduced them in strength over the course of the past year. "If so, I assure you, you'll find none...for yourself or for your little friends. They're going to get what's coming to them and there's nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it now."
"I didn't come for that," Red replied, sniffling as she angrily wiped at her teary eyes with her sleeve.
Straightening up, Regina looked at Red in confusion. "Then whatever are you here for?"
When Red stood there silently, looking very much like a lost puppy, Regina grasped for a likely reason as to why she had been sought out so close to the time of her curse hitting. All of the sudden, though, a thought occurred to her and her face twisted in an almost madly euphoric leer.
"Oh, I see," she said, lifting up the hem of her flowing silken skirts in order to approach her distraught visitor. Once in the werewolf's personal space, Regina pressed forward until their faces were mere inches apart. At the proximity, Red's eyes slid shut and she breathed a tremulous breath. Regina smirked in satisfaction. "Come for one last rendezvous have we? Well, I could certainly indulge you, dear. After all, these memories will have to last me for a very long time."
Tilting her head, Regina closed in to kiss Red's enticingly pink lips, but before she could capture them, her prey stepped back, pushing Regina away as she did so. The Queen stumbled a step before righting herself and immediately straightening her spine to glower in a furiously affronted way.
"How dare you, you insolent little girl!"
"Dammit, Regina!" Red shouted, gesturing wildly with her hands. "I'm not here for that. And can you drop it with 'girl' and 'dear' and just say my name! Don't you think I've earned that at least? Doesn't what we have mean anything to you?"
"Earned it?" Regina asked tauntingly, lashing out due to the impudence her normally more docile lover was showing and also at just how closely to the mark those words had hit. "I suppose I could grant you that. You have worked very hard for me, haven't you? So hard, in fact, that I'm sure your knees and back have grown rather tired from your...dutiful labors."
"Oh, don't be crass," Red spat, her red rimmed eyes hardening. "I know what you're doing, you needn't hide behind insults and anger."
Regina's eyebrow quirked up at the bold claim. "Oh? And what, pray tell, am I doing?"
At the question, Red rather adorably tucked her bottom lip between her teeth and stepped toward Regina, sidling up into the Queen's personal space as though she had an open ended invitation. Her mouth forming a hard line, Regina reached up to grab the girl by the throat, but her hand was easily swatted away.
"Stop it!" Red implored with desperation in her eyes. "I don't want to spend the last moments we have fighting."
Regina sighed. "What do you want then, Red?" she asked, suddenly tired of fighting against what she really wanted. Even though it was a sign of weakness, she allowed herself to surrender to the affection she had developed for Red, hating herself as she did so.
Regina could not explain how Snow White's little werewolf pet had managed to worm her way beyond the iron walls she had erected around her heart, but she had. There was just something about Red that was so real and inviting that Regina simply couldn't help herself. That fateful day in the forest, it was not her intention to bond with the girl; she'd only meant to plant seeds of doubt in Red's mind about Snow's motivations and glean what information she could before she sent Red scurrying away. But that all went out the window when Red had unwittingly confessed the sin that had been eating away at her for years, that she'd been responsible for the death of her mother. Arrested by the bitter tears and broken expression in those crystalline eyes, Regina felt her resolve to manipulate the beguiling werewolf all but wither away. Something inside her had demanded she reach out to Red, a fellow wounded soul, and to invite her to dine together so that they could share their mutual pain over a delicious meal and an expensive bottle of wine.
That night at dinner, Regina had felt more warm and homely than she had since Daniel died, and to her great shock, the feeling did not disgust her all, particularly when someone so haunted and achingly beautiful was provoking it. Of all the men and the few women Regina had bedded since becoming Queen, none ever captivated her the way Red did. There was something undefinable about the girl that called out to Regina, beckoning her ever closer like a moth to a flame, and like the same, she had been powerless to resist the inexorable draw. Many times over the ensuing weeks, she reassured her more sensible self that it was only a fling, that she was using Red in any number of ways, when in reality something much more than an affair began that night. It was not until it was much too late that Regina realized she had been caught up in a web of her very own design and from which she was unable and unwilling to escape.
Looking at Red now, so sorrowful yet so alluring, she could not help but be swept away by the very same feelings that had drawn her to the girl in the first place as she watched a solitary tear leak from Red's eyes and then trail down the girl's porcelain cheek. With remarkably open candor, Red then returned Regina's gaze so that she could answer the posed question with a simple but profound statement.
"Just to be with you."
When Red proceeded to reach for her hand, Regina made no effort to shake off the advance. Instead, she closed her eyes, trying to memorize the sensation of those long fingers tangled up with her own shorter ones, committing to her senses the rough texture of Red's fingertips from a life of hard work. In the heat of the moment, knowing this was likely to be the last time she would have an opportunity to be so close to her lover, Regina wanted to create a permanent imprint of how she was feeling, for as she'd hinted just moments ago, it was going to have to sustain her over the boundless years of the curse.
It was almost terrifying to think that right at that very moment, Regina was as close to being in love as she had been since the day she laid Daniel to rest. While that scared her witless, it also quite astonishingly provoked a desperate need to hold on to Red despite the fact that she knew that to be out of the question. The parameters of the Dark Curse had long since been set in stone and there was no changing them now, even if she wanted to.
Shaking her head to ward off bitter tears, Regina turned away from Red. "You shouldn't be here, Red. Go back to your criminal of a friend Snow White and her pathetically charming Prince. Leave me be so that I can revel in my pending victory."
Though the words were spoken with force, they were lacking true conviction, which Red picked up on, seizing the opportunity for all she was worth.
"I don't want to be with Snow," she passionately insisted, circling around to stand before Regina. Raising her hand into the void between them, she tentatively and tenderly rested it Regina's cheek. Again, Regina did not flinch away. This time she leaned into the touch, her body welcoming the contact regardless of the protests of her mind. "No matter what happens next, I just want to be with you," Red then declared as if it was the plainest truth she had ever spoken. The tender inflection of her voice was a flood of warmth being poured over Regina's heart, melting away the ice so that the raw, ragged, and over-abused organ was exposed. "So wherever it is this curse is sending us, whatever is going to happen to us all, take me with you. But please...please, don't send me away."
The heartfelt confession stunned Regina. All of those promises Red had whispered in the night and her earnest confessions of a desire to live her life by her Queen's side had been true. Regina had just been too hardened and jaded to realize it. Suddenly, she felt sick to her stomach. As if released from from the confines of a dam, her memories surged forward, inundating her with reminders of the many gestures, both overt and subtle, that Red had made and of the countless admissions of affection that Red had spoken during their year together.
But then, as if to add to the torrent of emotions Regina was feeling, Red stepped even closer, working her slim but powerful arms around Regina's waist as she touched their foreheads together. Her eyes were so full of devotion that they were practically glowing.
"I love you, Regina."
Regina very audibly gasped. Part of her was overjoyed but another much darker part of her was incensed that Red had gone and ruined their arrangement. Being that her heart was so blackened by her actions, when she took Red as a lover she had believed herself above the risk of falling in love, particularly since most of the time the only strong emotions she could muster were hatred and anger. Still, she had insisted that their dalliance was to remain without strings. Regina had thought at the time that it was mostly for Red's benefit, for she was aware that the affair was not the same for Red, a fact which was evident from the moment they first kissed.
To be honest, since becoming Queen, Regina had taken her share of lovers to satisfy her more carnal desires, the most notable of them being Graham, the Huntsman. She had been kissed many times before, but Red's kiss was something different. It was sweet in its hesitance but forcefully zealous, and through it, Regina had felt the girl's raging emotions being poured out of her to such a degree that their impact had almost made Regina's heart begin to stir again.
Much later that night, Regina had lain awake with a sleeping Red in her arms nestled as close to her side as possible. All she could think was how very glad she was that she had preemptively insisted upon a casual relationship. Having experienced the overwhelming intensity of Red's passion, she'd realized how easy it would be for her new lover to become emotionally compromised. Werewolves were pack creatures by nature, built to form lasting bonds, but on top of that, the human part of Red had a heart constructed to love selflessly. While that made her a perfect target for a woman like Regina to mold to her taste, unfortunately, she'd found herself unable to stomach the thought. Corrupting such purity was a sin even she was unwilling to commit.
The morning after, Regina had been sorely tempted to send Red away with a commandment never to return on pain of death. The problem was that in one night, she had become hopelessly addicted, unable to love Red but also incapable of sending her away either. Caught between her warring desires, Regina had determined to settle into a status quo, a routine that would help her keep her emotional distance while still enjoying the physical compatibility she shared with Red. But that had not lasted. Before long, monthly liaisons were turning into weekly ones, and soon enough nearly a year had passed and Regina was awakening to an expanse of pale flesh beneath her head and under her fingertips and realizing that she had grown uncomfortably attached. The very next day she decided to enact the curse.
While sacrificing her father had been hard (he was the only person Regina still allowed herself to fully love), she'd rationalized it away as the price she had to pay for her happiness. But now, the thought struck her, troubling her greatly: what had she gained by sacrificing Red? Nothing at all. Rather than protecting herself as she'd intended, all she had done was to cast away an opportunity to take something for herself that was separate from her vengeance, something that might flourish beyond the boundaries currently restraining it in this world into a beautiful and lasting relationship, the kind she'd dreamed of sharing with Daniel. In that moment, Regina realized with horror that she might have kept Red by her side without fear of consequence, an option she had considered implausible, though she shouldn't have.
The curse had come with constructs that were left for her to define, so it would not have been hard to provide Red with a cursed identity that as enamored with Regina as the real woman was. And in doing so, she would have had a doubly happy ending, for not only would she get to enjoy the immense pleasure of watching Snow suffer, she would also have lived a life of luxury with Red at her side. But now it was too late. She was trapped with the curse as she had constructed it – out of fear – without Red as a part of her life.
It was a terrible cost to pay for her revenge. Knowing she would have to live without Red's intrinsic warmth and big expressive eyes and gorgeous smile pained her in ways she could not have predicted. No more would she get to hear the heartwarming laugh that made her insides thaw or touch the amazingly responsive body that fitted so flawlessly against her own as if fashioned to be that way. She was never again going to enjoy the pleasure of kissing Red's lips or of being held in those deceptively strong arms while she slept. But the worst would be waking up without seeing Red's face, absent of the alluring transform it underwent each morning in going from a sleep-laden charm into a lazy smile that reflected a happiness that Regina envied, feared, and yearned for all at the same time.
As the reality of what she had done slammed into her, Regina stumbled back. In cursing her enemies, she had inadvertently cursed herself.
"I can't. I'm so sorry," she replied brokenly, having finally realized her mistake only when it was too late to fix it. "What's done is done. I can't change what's coming. I would if I could, if only for your sake, but I can't. I'm so sorry."
With a strangled cry, Red hid her face in her hands and began to weep. Silently crying herself, Regina stood there motionless, feeling almost as helpless as she had the day her mother had ripped her true love's heart out and crushed it before her eyes along with her hopes and dreams. She felt like she was being torn into a million pieces only to be left broken and defeated through a self-inflicted wound. This was not how she was supposed to feel on the eve of her finest hour. She was supposed to be overjoyed, exultant in her victory over her enemies, rejoicing in the coming of her Curse, but instead, Regina felt utterly wretched.
Paralyzed by the immutable nature of her actions, she languished in indecision. On one hand, she knew there was nothing she could do to comfort Red, not really. What words could possibly assuage the grief of knowing you were to soon be parted forever from the person you love? She knew from experience that no words could temper that pain and because the blame for Red's anguish lay solely on her own shoulders, she would be the most vile of hypocrites if she were to try.
Suddenly, an explosion in the distance rocked the castle, startling both women out of their sorrow.
"What was that?" Red asked, looking fearfully out the opened door leading to the balcony.
There, in the distance, a fog of purple magic was forming, climbing higher and higher into the sky until it blotted out the moon. Slowly, it crawled toward them, a tide of unstoppable destruction that would rip the denizens of the Enchanted Forest away from their homes forever.
"It's the curse," Regina answered, her voice muted in resignation. So this was it, her last moments with this remarkable woman who had changed her life for the better without her even having known it. Turning back to Red with a desperate look on her face, what was left of Regina's pride melted away. She grasped Red's face in her hands, her thumb trailing softly over lips she had kissed countless times.
"Red, I have tell you something before it's too late," she began, her voice strong despite the butterflies in her stomach and the subtle trembling of her legs. As she talked, she took every opportunity she had to touch her young lover, running her hands through that glorious mane of thick brown curls, trailing her fingertips down a pale cheek, tracing the outline of a strong jaw, and brushing her index finger down the slope of a perfect nose. "For all of those times I pushed you away, that I kept you at arm's length...I want to say that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If I could, I would take it all back. I would turn back time and let myself feel all that of the love that you gave me because you gave me so much. So much more than I deserve.
"I want you to know that I would do things differently, and I beg you to remember that should the curse ever break. You'll be angry with me and you'll have every right to be, but remember what I'm saying right now before you act. Because as much as I hate Snow White for what she's done to me, and as much as it is possible for me to do so, I love you. I do. I know that it's not in the way that you want, and I know that it's my fault for not realizing until now...when it's too late and I'm about to lose you. But should your memories ever return to you, please remember that at the very least you weren't the only one to have said it."
Nodding, tears slid in streams down Red's face. Regina could tell by the conflict in her eyes that she was having to make an effort to not dissolve into another fit of weeping. For the first time in her life, Regina was at a true point of conflict herself. While she was exceedingly proud of achieving her revenge, she hated herself for what she had done to Red, an innocent woman who, more than anyone else she had ever known, deserved to be happy.
"I will," Red eventually managed to say as the tide of the curse began to sweep past the edges of the forest surrounding the Dark Palace. It was almost time. "I love you, Regina. Don't forget that. Don't forget me."
"Oh, my sweet girl," Regina whispered around a tightened throat. "I could never forget you. You will live in my heart forever."
The wind began to howl as the curse swept up the hill to the palace and the doors of Regina's chambers began to shake, the curtains fluttering and flapping with the torrent. When it slammed into them both, Regina would have fallen were it not for Red's strong arms catching her. But even though Red's reflexes were sharp and her strength kept them steady, her eyes were wide with fright.
"Regina..."
"Shh," Regina cooed, drawing Red back into her embrace. "Just kiss me my darling and it will all be over soon."
Without having to be told twice, Red desperately surged forward, cupping Regina's face in one hand and gripping the back of her neck with the other. Their lips met hotly, clashing together in a desperate but fruitless bid to hang on to one another. And as the wind began to swirl around them, they both leaned into the kiss, deepening it and pouring their hearts out to one another in one last moment of physical connection.
Thrusting her tongue past the threshold of Red's lips, Regina swallowed up the moan erupted from Red's throat and gripped tightly at the material of Red's simple woolen vest, so peasant in comparison to her own lavish gown. Such things no longer mattered. In mere moments the social constructs that had governed life in the Enchanted Forest for millennia would be all but obliterated. But even were they to persist, Regina had come to accept a bitter truth that in such things, her younger self was perhaps more wise than she realized.
When Regina was a younger girl, she had loathed the trappings of her station and longed for the freedom of choice that it prevented her from having access to. The privilege she should have enjoyed was slowly becoming a gilded cage, a life-size prison from which her only time of escape was idling among the workers her family employed.
On the rare days she had time to herself, she would often observe the commoners she saw nearly everyday of her life but for the most part did not know. She loved to study their interactions, closely watching how their families worked together to give a point of reference to contrast with her own. At first, all she could think of them was how miserable an existence it must be to so spend oneself so thoroughly for relative scraps. The low pay, absurd hours, and harsh conditions under which peasants often labored could not be reconciled by a young mind that still believed in fairness. While her initial studies elicited only pity for her father's employees, that all began to change one day when she was 13 years old.
"Look at them, poor wretches," Regina vividly remembered her mother saying on said occasion when Cora was escorting her to the stables for her weekly lesson. In the process, they passed by a large hay field where the workers were bailing under a scorching hot sun. They had appeared to Regina's young and prim self to be disgustingly bedraggled with their shirts drenched and their foreheads dripping with sweat, and with taut and weathered faces formed by long enduring the conditions of such exhausting work. When her mother stopped their progress for a moment to watch the men work, the always opportunistic woman had taken the time to use what Regina was witnessing as an object lesson.
"This is why you must appreciate the gift you've been given, Regina," Cora had said as she looked on with open disdain. Her mother had a way of always knowing what Regina was doing, feeling, or thinking, so Regina was fairly certain she'd noticed the sudden interest in the common laborers her daughter had developed. The object lesson had been Cora's calculated response. "I came from such stock," her mother continued, "and there is nothing to be admired about such a miserable existence as theirs, nor is there anything of value to be learned from it. Tell me: is a lion concerned with the welfare of an ant?"
"No, Mother," Regina had replied, eyes downcast.
"No, indeed. You, my dear, are of a better breed than the peasantry. Never forget that. However much you hate the social functions, codes of conduct, and repressive roles of the gentry, you'll never know the toils of the field or the cloistered suffocation of a mill. You'll never know hunger or want for shelter or the basic necessities of life. So be thankful that I've secured a better life for you, because it is for you that I have done all that I have done. I'll not see those sacrifices squandered. Do you understand, Regina?"
"Yes, Mother," Regina had answered, suitably cowed by her mother's austerity. After that, they'd continued on toward the stables.
But all the rest of that day, Regina stewed on her mother's words. At first, they'd been very convincing to a young girl who was accustomed to obey out of both fear and habit. Regina did not question her mother very often and for good reason; Cora was not a woman to trifled with even by her own daughter. Yet, Regina had been so moved by the plight of the workers that she hadn't cared about potential consequences. Knowing the danger (and finding she quite liked it), she decided that day to take a more active interest in the welfare of the estate's employees. Thus began her years long observation of peasant life.
What teenage Regina had eventually discovered was that to her great surprise, even though the lives of most peasants seemed unbearably hard, those simple people possessed a dignity foreign to those of aristocratic breeding. Noble blood, she'd realized, could not teach one how to love truly or how to have compassion on others less fortunate than oneself; it could not teach a person how to be painfully kind or to appreciate even the slightest, most seemingly worthless gift or token of appreciation; it could not instill a person with recognition of the innate value that can be found in even the most pathetic of human lives. This conclusion flew in the face of Cora's oft-stated ridicule of the peasantry, in which she delighted in deriding their uncouth speech, prematurely aged skin, unpleasant odor, and general imbecility.
While some of those things were undeniably true, they were things beyond the control of people who had no means with which to improve themselves or their stations. Regina hadn't been able to find fault with that even on her most haughty days. In seeing what her mother was unable or unwilling to, she had learned that those things which could not be controlled should inspire a person to embrace what they could, which the peasants around her family estate often did to extremes. This all-encompassing immersion resulted in a life lived to excess in ways her sheltered self couldn't comprehend. Some of those ways she'd considered unseemly, such as rampant drunkenness and promiscuity and a penchant for colorful language that made her ears tingle and her cheeks burn whenever she heard it. But in other more important ways, she'd found she quite envied the ability they possessed to fully experience the human condition.
Most of the peasants she came to know personally during her self-imposed task (and very secretly for fear of her mother punishing her, though never without great satisfaction) were able to appreciate life more fully than she believed possible for a person of high birth. Getting to know some of her father's workers taught her why that was. In noble social circles, everything was restrained and so insufferably pretentious that it had always revolted Regina, but it was something ingrained in highborn individuals almost from the cradle. It was not so with commoners, whose laughter was more joyous and their sadness consuming in equal measure, and whose hatred burned like the rising sun but who also loved with unrestrained passion. To Regina's dismay, she'd realized that this ability to surrender to emotion, to feel for all it was worth, to wring all the living out of life that one could, was painfully absent in all noble circles, as it was in both her parents lives and in her own.
As such, Regina came to inevitable conclusion that status was and should be irrelevant to her. Life, that younger more impressionable and open version of herself had learned, could not be valued and love could not be defined. Such things were larger and greater than petty human constructs, and to try to label them, to stuff them into a neat little box was the epitome of prideful hubris which so defined high society. Nature had given people such gifts in the hopes that they would be cherished, that by experiencing such gifts human beings would learn that life was far too fleeting and precious to squander. But too many people callously relinquished this extraordinary cosmic privilege in the name of power, or wealth, or of social advancement. In the light of this illumination, noble society was, she decided, the greatest farce in the history of the universe, and Regina wanted no part in it.
It was this revelatory experience that opened her up to the possibility of more. Had she not spent such time with common folk and learned what it really meant to be alive from them, her relationship with Daniel would not have been possible. But because young and naive Regina was willing to step outside of her box and cast aside her predefined position, she was granted the priceless gift of Daniel's love, one that defined her as a person more than any other for good and for ill.
Sadly, when that love was ripped away from her, the open and fertile plains of that girl's heart were transformed into a barren and accursed valley, crushed from all angles by the suffocating, mountainous behemoths named Cora, Rumplestiltskin, Leopold, and Snow White. To her current distress, Regina could only acknowledge shamefully that she had become the woman her mother always planned for her to be, having buried what she learned all of those years ago about the worth of a human life and about what it meant to truly be alive.
It took a boldly sassy, endearingly sweet, disarmingly humble, and astoundingly beautiful girl to bring her slowly but surely back to a measure of that girl she used to be. Red. A simple name for a simple person. If only Regina had dismissed Red based on that outward simplicity as she normally would have, she might have been spared the pain she was soon to endure, but Red had gripped her cold and blackened heart to the point she could not turn away. Unbeknownst to Regina, her heart had begun to stir whilst fascination turned into obsession which turned into something that she had long since forgotten she was capable of feeling. Letting Red into her life was about to bring her untold suffering but she knew that however much misery awaited her within the confines of the curse, the memories they had made together would never fade. As such, she couldn't bring herself to regret even a moment. Life was cruel in its irony.
There was a time in Regina's life that she thought herself dead inside save for her hatred, but oh how wrong she had been. Tentative touches from calloused fingers and reverent kisses from perfectly pink lips had brought her back to life one day at a time. Regina's heart was beating and she could feel the energy of living thrumming in her veins once more. There would be no going back for her now, at least not to the woman she had transformed into under Rumple's purposeful hand. Regina remembered what she had learned so long ago and she would not be quick to forget it again.
But with that remembrance came the pain of knowing that only at the end did she finally realize how worthless her possessions were and how empty her power felt when there was no one to share them with. She had once lived in a cold and lifeless castle, but when Red was there, it felt more like a home than any she'd ever had. And there was a time in her life when she'd warmed her bed thoughtlessly with many lovers, but now it was a place of refuge, having been forever consecrated by a peasant girl's unconditional love. Regina was glad that bed would not make the trip with her, for she could no longer stomach the thought of any other sharing it with her save Red and she could no longer sleep in it alone.
More than ever before, Regina felt like a miserable fool. She'd fallen headlong into her mother's trap, accepting without a fight the life of pointless luxury that Cora desired for her. She became true royalty, the very thing she hated most, and loathed herself for it. In the face of losing Red forever, how could it matter anymore that she was a bred monarch whose wealth was as vast as the ocean and that Red was a poor woman who didn't even know who her father was? It couldn't. It didn't. Nor did it matter any longer that Red was the best friend of Regina's sworn enemy.
All of those things which had seemed to define her life for so very long had been stripped away, reducing her to a state of pure feeling and pure emotion. At last, she knew what it felt like to live as one of those simple workers back on her father's estate, and it was a consuming gravity that pulled her under until she was fully immersed. Being able to experience so keenly made Regina feel as if she could happily drown in the sensations produced by Red's lithe body pressed fully against her own and wrapped up tightly in her arms, by the taste of those sinfully sweet and supple lips, and by the warm and heady aroma of her scent. This was what was important in life. This feeling. This moment. This woman.
And so she tuned out the noise of the curse as it battered against the ramparts and brickwork of her palace, and ignored the creeping feeling of magic slithering and clawing its way up her body from her toes to her head. All Regina could feel now was the softness of Red's lips on her own, flavored by the bittersweet taste of wild strawberries. With all her might, she committed those things to memory, and as she succumbed at last to the enormous weight of the moment, a cloud of irresistibly powerful magic overtook them and everything went black.