Sardonic Break: Chapter VI
The emotions that plagued Snow were torrent, at best. She tried her best to stay composed. She was a queen after all but even that did not seem to help.
As the torrent threatened to drown her, the look of barely withheld temperament on her Knight's face terrified her beyond all reason. She also wondered if she was even to consider her, her Knight anymore. The look on Elizabeth's face deemed otherwise.
Snow had prayed to every God and Goddess almost every night since helping the Blue Faery enact the spell, that this would never happen. But it seemed that her prayers were no longer being answered. Perhaps she should have prayed for forgiveness instead.
She felt her faith waver and she shook her head to rid herself of those blasphemic thoughts. Though now, she surely believed that she was going to Hell for all that she had done to Elizabeth.
She knew this to be set in stone as the magic she relied so heavily on failed her. She knew that this was yet another severely challenging obstacle that Elizabeth had to face and overcome, alone.
For Snow knew that no amount of explanation would suffice. No amount would ever sound decently plausible to warrant why she had taken Elizabeth away from her rightful Kingdom so long ago. Guilt reared its ugly head once again around her heart and burned with no remorse.
Elizabeth felt completely torn in half. Light was battling the Dark within. The Darkness waged war. After being dormant for so long, it burned her blood. Now, there was no way of telling which side would win this archaic battle.
She began shaking as suppressed rage, at both sides, exploded within her, consuming all she was. Her soul began splitting in two as she stood between the Queens who were the physical representations of her own new personal hell.
The Dark pierced her with the screams of a life that was hers so long ago. She wanted to believe that they were not hers. She truly wanted to be an outsider looking in. She didn't want those screams to be hers. That was, until her eyes fell on Regina and a menagerie of emotions threatened to overwhelm her. But what plagued her most of all, while watching Regina fighting against herself to stay composed, was a fierce sense of broken loyalty. A loyalty that she had broken, to Regina.
Elizabeth could not even begin to imagine the horrific torment Regina went through in her 'spelled absence'. She could see the years of pain etched into her face. All the pain that she tried so desperately to hide from the world was on display now.
She wondered if she was the only one who say Regina for what she really was. A deeply wounded soul who had everything she ever loved continuously ripped away from her.
And the more she thought about it, it all seemed to be at the hands of the ones who called themselves Good. The Good whom believed that wounded souls were always Dark. And that no matter what, those wounded souls did not deserve happiness.
Rage boiled through her veins as she herself was one of those souls. Especially now, even moreso. Yet she was given 'redemption' by the Good. She was turned into a warrior for Good and spelled to forget of her wounded soul. So why wasn't Regina allowed that same courtesy? She now understood why she never truly felt at home, regardless of Snow's generosity and never-ending platitudes.
She could not fault Regina at all for retaliating viciously. She was only trying to suppress the ever-growing screams that were fed to her soul by the Good.
The self-righteousness almost made her sick, for the Good saw no bounds when they believed something was right. The fact that she was made a part of them made her even sicker. Sick because she now knew that she was just as responsible for the broken yet beautiful soul that stood only a few feet away from her. She had to fight down the bile that rose when she looked at Regina because it was filled with shame at herself, shame for letting herself be led by the Good.
But as her gaze turned to Snow, upon seeing the look on her face, she knew and understood that no one else would even try to see what it was that she did, in Regina. Her broken yet beautiful soul only had one ally on this plane of existence. And Elizabeth swore to herself that she would never leave nor be taken away, again.