Return to Original Sin

Regina

It is often said that as humans we consider the possibilities of "what if" scenarios. Personally, I find that ideal lacking in the reality that is the "what if." Don't get me wrong, I am more than in agreement. As an individual, you might say I have centered my entire life around the traumatic effect my "what if" nostalgia inflicts upon me. One can say I am the human embodiment of bitterness, however, my most recent "what if" scenario had been reality. I had attained something I had long thought impossible in my life: a second chance at happiness. A man I loved to hate and respected and loved was mine and I was his. We were happy and incredibly content. In both a metaphoric and literal sense I had my heart back, but as with many tragedies, happiness is the calm before the storm and fate is a cruel mistress whether you respect her or not. Unfortunately for her, as am I.

The Road to Hell was Paved with Good Intentions

"I understand you need to speak with me, Captain?"

"Regina-"

"Let me guess. You wish to plead for Miss Swan. She was only 'trying to do the right thing' and she couldn't possibly foresee this happening when she saved the Lady Marion?"

"Aye, but that is not exactly what I came to discuss."

The once-pirate-now-hero-and-lovesick-puppy stood in her home office doorway and quirked one eyebrow in her direction as he prodded the end of his metal hook.

"Please, do enlighten me as to your intentions then."

Regina motioned for the man to come in and have a seat across from her at the desk.

"I came to offer my ear." He offered a smirk by way of a truce for Emma Swan.

The pirate was even more insufferable now that he was restored to his more human and original person. How could a sex-crazed pirate with unusual prosthetics and a rum addiction be more of an atrocity now than he was before exactly?

"And what good is it for you to lose another part of your anatomy?" Regina returned as she shuffled through the paperwork on her desk and took a seat.

"Well, I do think I have a faint idea of what it is like to have someone be your second chance but even that second chance can easily be taken from you."

"Ah, yes, you lost your precious Milah years ago and now you get your redemption by way of Miss Swan. Are we really here discussing rebound relationships right now, Captain?"

"I believe what I am trying to say is that it may be in your best interest not to do anything rash. I should inform you, as I doubt you remember, that you were originally the reason for the thief's loss in the first place."

"I beg you pardon?"

"You had her taken for aiding Snow White in the Enchanted Forest all those years ago. You executed her and took her from her family, leaving the thief a widower and the boy you seem newly invested in, motherless."

Hook crossed his legs and dug his hook into the wooden armrest in the chair he filled, focusing the full intensity of his ocean-like eyes on the former Evil Queen. As with the waters he often navigated, a storm brewed in his eyes and that was largely due to conflicting emotions: Empathy and Determination.

"Swan saved her from such a fate and as to avoid catastrophic consequences in the past we brought her to the future, in no way knowing she was the very key to your happiness's undoing. However, I urge you to think on this as another part of your second chance. This is one less wrong you have to share with him. This is an opportunity."

"You have thought about this a great deal since your return."

"Consider it an act of an interested observer."

"You mean you are looking to avoid whatever retribution I may seek on your lovely Miss Swan."

"Let's not be so specific, Regina. When you seek retribution it is never just one person who suffers. I am merely asking you to consider the greater good here."

"As she did when she saved someone who should have died, defying every natural law and latent consequence?!"

"Aye, because as much as I am not a religious man I do appreciate a good proverb. Two wrongs don't make a right Regina and if you see Marion's presence as a wrong you just may take it to mind to right that with a wrong of your own that can only end badly for everyone."

"My, my you do sound like a wizened hero. Bravo, Hook."

"I remember someone once saying that evil isn't born but made. The trouble with characters such as ourselves, Regina, is we are flexible. We don't exist within a fixed point. I am not so cocky as to say I am incapable of returning to who I was for all those years, in fact I may very well be more likely now that I have something to lose once again, but as of now and until that point where I may revert I will endeavor to be good."

"A wonderful sentiment, pirate. I wish you the best." Regina threw a stack of papers down and looked up to meet his reflective gaze, watching him slowly stand and turn to leave.

He stopped midway out the door and looked back, researching her face and noting a familiar deep pain in her eyes and in the tension in the set of her jaw.

"You can only blame everyone else for your pain for so long before there is no one else available to you to care about either way, Regina."

"Is this where you share your superior wisdom from all your great worldly travels?"

"No, this is where I remind you of your son and of those others who you have come to care about and they care about you in return."

"Ah, yes, back to protecting the Savior from the Evil Queen. Using my son, nice touch. I appreciate said reminder but I am seldom able to forget the connection we all have that I am forced to consider."

"Ah, then I would be remiss if I failed to mention the hailstorm that would come down on you if you decided against my advice."

"Yes, yes, I would be reigniting old feuds and reinvigorating bad blood."

Regina was growing tired of this pointless conversation. She was indeed contemplating her next moves but was in no way shape or form stupid enough to blatantly act against Emma Swan or other persons who acted as obstacles to her destined but vaguely prophesized future with one particular vigilante and his young son.

"I am rather busy, as you can see so if you could let yourself out."

Regina motioned a hand towards the door, hoping he would leave and not see it fit to return with a regular morality based tangent. As so many times before, her family and Snow White's were enthralled in a complicated destiny but never before were her hands so tied as to how she could act. Henry of course was a consideration. He not only believed in her but he believed in all the fairytales and their happy endings. But who was she to not offer him a twist on such traditional tales. After all, those children's classics left out so much of the truth.

Killian stood and watched her as she stared as her desk, eyes moving as if figuring out her thoughts then her focus returned to his uninvited presence.

"I guess since there's nothing left to do but leave I should mention one last thing."

"And that would be?" Regina could hear her irritation as she took up a pen in hand and breathed deeply to restrain herself from turning the man into a frog. Yes, a frog. How quaint. It would be wonderful to see Emma Swan try to undo that with True Love's Kiss, but her luck Swan's kiss would restore him and he would be a prince.

"Just as you are willing to avenge your allusive happy ending, as am I."

His gaze shifted from reflective to combative and as he turned his hook upward the light glinted off of it in murderous promise. Regina simply quirked her brow and ran her tongue over her teeth before smiling as a way of acceptance. There was an understanding between the two of them now, a verbal contract. It was a simple expectation wrapped in complicated "what ifs" and "maybes." They had both recognized their abilities as people and their history. In short, they had both recognized their willingness to return to evil and wicked doing if the star aligned just right. In any case, Regina still felt a villain was only a reflection of the hero. A villain was a hero who had been given the choice to decide between selfishness and a bigger good and they chose selfishness.

The Captain left with little else but a nod and a wave of his hook. The door shut behind him and Regina actually felt respect for the man. Emma Swan was in fact having a significant influence over him and he had never been as wicked as some, namely her mother, but he was capable of quite a good deal of evil in the name of love and Regina appreciated that for she was another cut from that particular cloth. Come to think of it, as was Rumplestiltskin. What was that old adage about feuds? It was not the lack of belief but the presence of equally convicting beliefs that cause persons to fight. People such as Regina, Hook, Cora, and Rumple seemed destined to fight for something they could not attain or sustain while those such as Snow White were allotted happiness regardless of hardship. No matter the loss those people would always have what others, no matter the cost, could never keep.