Again I apologize for the long wait! :/ it has not been a super fantastic few weeks for me lol! But here is an update for you all! I hope you enjoy it :) please leave a review letting me know what you think and what you would like to see in the future!
-Storybrooke-
"Regina," Snow called gently as she walked in to the large home with Emma in tow. There was no reply so carefully they stepped in to the home and their eyes took in the sight before them. Books were everywhere. Open, closed, stacked, discarded. On the floor, tables, and chairs. Countless books everywhere and it caused a frown on both their mouths as they walked in further. At the sound of an angered screamed paired with the ruffling of pages and a loud thud of a book hitting the wall, both Snow and Emma cringed and paused before turning and walking toward the sound.
Regina stood bent over a table covered in old books from their land, flipping furiously through a new book's pages as her dark eyes read each page with a speed unheard of. She was as beautiful as ever even with her tousled hair and thinning figure. They all knew she wasn't eating properly, if at all. Hence the paper bag from Granny's with a chicken sandwich in it that Snow held in her hand, "Regina."
"Go away Snow," she singsonged irritably with a low and incredibly threatening growl to her voice as she continued flipping through the pages in front of her.
"We brought you lunch," Snow continued anyway with a gentle and worried voice that Regina completely ignored. Ignored until she was closer and placed the bag on top of a large closed book and placed one hand on the table and reached to touch her arm with her other, "Regina-" her gentle voice was cut off abruptly and replaced with a startled gasp as she leapt backward. Regina had spun around at the contact of her hand on her tense arm and she spun around with a sharp letter opener in her hand and stabbed it a good inch in to the heavy wooden table where Snow had had her hand placed but had pulled it back just barely in time.
"Regina!" Emma shrieked, her eyes wide at the uncharacteristically vicious motion. Yes Regina had a temper and yes sure she was considerably easier to set off since Henry had disappeared but to nearly stab a letter opener through Snow's hand?
"Do not touch me, Snow White," she seethed and sharply jerked the long slender blade from the wood. Snow's eyes were wide and her narrowly saved hand was up at her chest that rose and fell sharply with the rush of fear and adrenaline but Regina paid no mind and with a hard scowl still creasing her entire face, she turned back to her book.
"What the hell, Regina?!"
"Emma don't-" Snow tried to stop her gently having already forgiven the act and scolded herself for not knowing better.
"No! We are all worried for Henry! We all miss him! We are all trying to figure out a way to get him back home! We are not all trying to maim one another because of it!"
"Spare me the speech of righteousness, Miss Swan," she smiled bitterly, her voice tense with rage as she looked up at the blonde from beneath her dark lashes.
"He's my son too, Regina," Emma snarled back and pointed to her chest and Regina's smile grew all the more vicious as a low laugh was heard through her perfect white teeth.
"You know nothing, you insolent child," she hissed and Emma unwisely rose to challenge her, "you gave him away and you still believe you can just swoop in and act as though you have been there his entire life. You didn't want to know him, you didn't want to deal with him, you know nothing about him! You have hardly known him a year! You are a friend to him! By no definition of the word are you his mother apart from the fact that you dropped him on this earth!"
"I gave him up to give him his best chance!"
"And if he hadn't have come in to my care?! Please enlighten us all on how much you adored every single foster home that lent you their couch for a night!" She yelled furiously and Emma had no answer. Of course she didn't. Regina's voiced quieted to its normal volume but it only seemed to become more deadly, "I have raised him from a baby, I have seen him every day for the past eleven years, I know everything about him, he is the only person I love in my life, and now he is gone! You do not get to say anything, you don't even know his favourite fucking colour! Now get out of my house or so help me I will burn you to a crisp right where you stand, you useless fool."
With a snarl still on her furious face Regina watched Emma step backward a few steps before turning around and walking out of her space. Snow on the other hand hesitated, a sympathetic look in her eye that made Regina's blood boil before she turned and quickly followed her without a word.
"Emma," Snow called after her as she closed Regina's front door behind her and then ran down the path so she could catch Emma's arm in her hand and spin her around, "Emma it's not true."
"Isn't it?!" She cried and pulled her arm from Snow's grasp and took half a step backward, "I don't know anything about him! I don't know his favourite colour! I don't know his favourite food or his favourite song or his favourite movie! Hell I don't even know his favourite superhero and he is always reading those comic books! I'm just here, Snow! Just floating around in this space! I don't have any idea what I'm doing! I don't know how to get him back and even if I did I know that the first person he would go running to would be Regina! I can deny it all I want but he will choose her over me! Any kid who was lost from home would run to the person they've known and loved their entire life! Not some woman they met a little over a year ago!"
"What's going on?" David asked worriedly, concern plain in his features as he walked up from the truck after watching Emma's frantic body language without any dialogue to be paired with it. He placed a comforting hand on her upper arm and she flinched away from him with a false laugh as she turned and walked away. He looked back to Snow with a silent question and she shrugged her shoulders up and folded her arms over her chest with a weak and worried smile.
"Regina's not handling this very well."
...
Regina hissed at the pages that gave her nothing and then threw that book across the room and she followed its path with her gaze only to have her dark eyes land on David standing in the doorway. She all but snarled at him before she slid another book in to place in front of her and opened its pages, "whatever has possessed the Charming brigade to keep entering my home without invitation."
"When was the last time you ate?"
"Why do you care?"
"Regina."
"Don't 'Regina' me, you-"
"How about the last time you slept?"
"Would you like me to keep a god damn journal so I can keep log of every step I take and I can hand it in to you at the end of every day?"
"Well I won't say 'no' if that's your chosen method. I'm sure I'll find it truly fascinating to read about every trip from one wall to the other in this room," he nodded and looked around the space, his arms folded over his chest as he stepped further in to the room and she laughed furiously under her breath.
"Well aren't you just hilarious."
He gave a short amused hum and stopped in front of her on the other side of the table and when she went back to ignoring him he let out a long irritated sigh, "Regina."
"Get out of my house, David," she snarled as she glanced up from another book and then went back to flipping through its pages.
David shook his head at her and she grew all the more irritated, "have you looked at yourself lately?" He asked gently with a worried tone lacing his voice that only seemed to aggravate her further, "Regina you look frail."
She gave a harsh scoff and looked up at him incredulously before going back to her book, "I am perfectly fine."
"We are not friends," he stated and leaned forward and braced his weight on the cluttered table with his hands and she raised her eyebrows as if to say in her most heavily sarcastic voice 'no? Really?', "I do not like you. But so help me, Regina, if you starve yourself to death I will crawl through the depths of hell to bring you back here so Henry can have you," his voice was stern and almost angry as he stared at her through hard eyes and she stared right back at him.
A long and tense few seconds passed before Regina relented and reached forward to snatch the paper bag from Granny's off the table without breaking eye contact with David. He gave a curt nod and she gave a bitter smile with a cock of her head, "wouldn't want the charming prince putting it upon himself to disrupt me in the one place I should be free of him."
"I do hope you remember that," he nodded and she gave another harsh smile as she opened the bag with more force than what was necessary.
-Enchanted Forest-
"What is on your mind?"
"My mom..."
"This one? Or the one from your alternate universe?"
Henry gave a small breath of laughter out his nose and shrugged his shoulders, "both."
"Missing her?" David asked softly as he lowered himself down on the small cushioned bench against the wall. Henry sat with his back right against the wall and his knees up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them.
"Yeah," Henry whispered slowly and gave a weak smile as he met David's eye only to have tears form in his own. He turned his head away before they could fall and once he had buried his face in to his knees, he felt David's hand move slowly over his hunched shoulders in a gesture of comfort.
"Is she much different than the queen here?" David asked carefully and the boy shook his head and sniffed quietly as he lifted his head but didn't look him in the eye.
"No. Not really. She's still hot tempered but...I don't know she's just more settled. More...comfortable."
David nodded his head and kept a hand over the boy's shoulders but he still kept his teary eyes down and away from him, "I bet it's hard looking at someone you know so well, someone who should know you better than you do, only to see that they don't know you at all," he offered quietly and watched the first tear fall down Henry's cheek, "someone with the same face as the one you love most."
Henry nodded and rolled his lips in to his mouth as he dropped his head forward again so it was hidden behind his legs. His breaths were shaky and full of tears and while David's moving hand was comforting, it wasn't what he wanted. He wanted his mother. He wanted the woman who had remained with him despite his efforts to push her away.
After a few long moments of shared silence, Henry spoke quietly against his thighs, "she really is good you know."
"So you keep telling me."
"Because it's true," Henry stated surely but quietly as he lifted his face and looked at David, "you've seen little glimpses, you can't argue with that. And you can make her stronger, you can make her stay good."
"And you can't?"
"No. I'm just a kid."
"Fair enough," David agreed quietly and Henry nodded without another word. The both snapped their heads up when a set of hurried footsteps was coming toward them. One of the ladies in waiting. She was one of the younger ones. Pretty. And at times a little naive. Perhaps it is why Henry so easily managed to convince her to help him in his plans to rehabilitate the queen.
Henry cocked his head a little as she approached them with a worried expression. She didn't run but she was quite close to it, "Sarah? What's wrong?"
"Henry," she curtsied politely and did the same to David before turning back to the boy, "I am afraid her majesty has found herself in another episode of rage," she explained quietly and the boy frowned while the man sighed, "you requested I tell you should I come across her in such a state."
"Thank you Sarah," Henry smiled as best he could and she nodded her head in a small bow and risked a quick glance toward David for reasons unknown to his young mind, "can you take us to her?"
...
"How many imbeciles must I kill and replace before one of you fools gets it through your head," she cocked hers as she stepped forward and crushed a guard turned beetle beneath the toe of her heeled shoe, "that you do not come back here until your task has been completed successfully."
She walked forward with a snarl on her mouth and her eyebrows knitted together in her anger. One hand was on her hip and the other snatched forward and took a grip on his clothing around his neck and pulled him down to her level so she could look him right in the eye, "I want Snow White. Bring her to me. No more excuses," she hissed and her grip tightened as her jaw clenched with her bubbling rage, "should you return here without her, I will take that as a request for me to take your life."
With a flick of her fingers the third black guard behind the one in her grip fell to the floor with a cry of agony as both his legs broke beneath him. She watched his eyes flick down and to the side toward his fallen colleague but otherwise his expression remained steely. She could hear Henry calling her and she could hear footsteps running toward her but they were muffled by the rage pounding in her head. "Do you understand?" She forced out through her bared teeth and his grey eyes flicked up to meet hers.
"Yes your majesty."
"Good," she nodded with a cruel smile and sharply released her grip as she pushed him back up to stand at his full height. "Quit your mewling," she snarled at the black guard on the floor who was quietly writhing in pain. With another flick of her fingers his neck was snapped and hardly a moment later her arm was being yanked backward. She practically hissed and she tore her arm back and whirled around and bent forward so her eyes were directly in line with his.
"Stop it!"
"You do not get to tell me what to do, boy," she snarled as she stepped forward and Henry took half a step back.
"Stop hurting people!" He shouted back and she opened her mouth and took a quick breath to shook back some other harsh remark but Henry found himself being pushed aside and his place was taken by David. An act that only seemed to infuriate Regina further.
"Enough."
"What makes you think that I will bend to you, shepherd?" She pushed and he pushed back.
"Because we both know the boy is right. And you cannot push me away," he spoke sternly and strongly as he took half a step forward in to her space but she only rose to the challenge, "what are you doing?"
"I'm getting what I want."
"Oh is that what you're doing?"
"Yes."
"And what you want is to kill people at every turn?"
"I want your lover's head on a silver platter," she answered smoothly with that perfect rasp in her voice as she tilted her head with a truly cruel and conniving smile.
"And how many lives are you willing to ruin or take in the process?"
"As many as it takes," she growled as her top lip curled back and she rose up to get in his face.
"This isn't you."
"Are you sure? It seems to come rather easy."
"Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's correct. You are a coward."
"I am many things but a coward is not one."
"You are a coward and a blind fool," he snarled and pushed a finger against her chest hard enough to make her take a partial step back. A mistake he realized as he found himself spinning through the air and colliding harshly with the stone wall and falling to the equally unforgiving stone floor.
"David!" Henry shrieked as he watched his mother fling him through the air as though he weighed nothing. He was too shocked to move though as he watched her storm up to David as he grunted and began pushing himself to his feet. He didn't manage to stand up to his full height though before she had a hand wrapped around his throat and slammed him back against the wall.
"I do not take kindly to guests who forget their place, shepherd," she hissed and tightened her grip enough for David to cringe and grab at her hand.
"Mom!"
"Make no mistake. If the boy were not here, you would be dead," she snarled, her teeth bared and her eyes hard and cruel. Just as Henry had found it in him to run to her and take a grip of the skirt of her gown to pull her away from David, she released him from her deadly grip and he fell to the floor coughing as she spun around and stormed off. Malicious glares shot at her remaining guard and the young maid that had them quickly bowing their heads and avoiding her eye contact.
Henry watched her storm off for a moment before he dropped down to David's side. Once he was satisfied the man was going to live he himself lost his temper a little and gave the man a hard shove with both hands and an angry growl that had David looking at him in irritation and confusion as he tried to catch is breath, "why won't either of you two listen to me?!" He shouted and David rubbed his neck as he wheezed.
"What are you talking about?"
"You can't yell at her! It doesn't work! The Evil Queen doesn't back down from a challenge! You will lose every single time! You need to show her that you can care about her! You need to remind her what it is like to have someone who is there for her no matter what! So stop fighting with her!"
"I can't stop fighting with her! She is impossible!"
"She is not impossible! I am managing just fine until you blow everything up!"
"You're managing just fine because-!"
"Because I actually care about her!" He screamed and David let out a furious breath through his teeth as he pushed himself in to a sitting position, "I won our huge fight because I made it clear that I am here to save her from herself. Now you need to do the same."
...
David pushed open the heavy wooden door and closed it behind him with a rather inconsiderate thud before he leaned tiredly against it with a long sigh and held his gaze on her furious dark eyes. Her posture was as straight as ever as she turned her head to the side to look at him while her hands paused in their motion of draping what looked to be a folded blanket over her arm. Her mouth was set in a scowl and her eyes were hard and he was irritated and rather ill tempered as well. Which wasn't going to help either of them if this tactic didn't work either.
The boy had pounded in to his head that she did not respond well to anger and that he must try to be patient and kind with her. That he needed to show her another way, that he needed to be tender to coax her in to the light. One last try. If he didn't see results then so be it.
"Did you get lost, Charming?" She bit out with an absolutely vicious tone that was still so incredibly velvety smooth leaving her lips.
He clenched his jaw a few times and then let out another quiet sigh as he pushed himself off the door and began walking toward her, willing with every fibre in his being for the patience and kindness he needed. "I am at my wit's end," he smiled bitterly and she huffed an amused breath out her nose as she looked away from him and tossed the thin blanket from her arm on to a chair.
"I am starting to believe we will never see eye to eye," he shook his head and walked closer and she turned to face him, arrogance and untapped fire in her eyes and her smirk, "all we have done is try to tear each other apart when they boy is not the focus of our attention. And you are as stubborn as a fat blind mule," he gritted out and he saw that will to challenge and fight spark in those lovely eyes.
She didn't back down, didn't back away when they were inches apart and it was when he was that close that he changed his approach one more time, "however I have begun to wonder," his voice softened and her expression remained the same. Arrogant, daring, victorious, "when was the last time someone touched you," he finished with a quieter voice and when the backs of his fingertips gently moved along her cheekbone, her face fell in to confusion and she flinched away from his touch and stepped backward from him.
Her dark eyes were now softened and guarded and her lips fell in to a frown as her eyebrows fell together ever so slightly. The air around her changed instantaneously with his gentle hand. It went from tense and arrogant and powerful, to quiet and confused and...was that fear?
He stepped with her, encouraged by the change, and she stepped back again and again with her eyes searching him rather frantically for his motive. He continued forward without a word and with a fully renewed patience and sense of curiosity, only stopping when her back hit the heavy wooden post of her bed's canopy and his front was just hardly touching hers. Her breath was sharp and tense as she let it out in a long exhale and dropped her eyes while her hands moved behind her to dig in to the post that prevented her retreat.
"When was the last time a man loved you?" He asked quietly and she flinched away from the soft touch of his fingertips on her side but bumped in to his other arm that held some of his weight against the bed post. "Or the last time he held your hand just because he wanted to?" His voice was just above a whisper and her eyes were kept down as she swallowed and tried to control her breathing.
"What about the last time he held you as you slept? Or gave you a gift that mattered?" He questioned as he moved a fingertip along the line of her pretty collar bone. Her shaky breath blew across his neck and she tried to sink further in to the hard wood but other than that she didn't move or speak. "How about the last time he tucked your hair behind you ear," he started and she flinched and turned her head away from his touch as he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, "and told you just how beautiful you are."
He frowned a little when he saw her eyes closed and a tear falling down her cheek but he did not stop. He took less than half a step closer so their bodies were actually touching and he felt hers quiver with the change and try to squirm free of him, "when was the last time his warmth and presence made you smile or put you at ease?" His voice grew softer and softer and she grew closer and closer to breaking in to helpless sobs.
She couldn't look at him and while this time she didn't flinch from his touch, she remained shaky and tears continued down her cheeks as his fingers followed the line of her jaw from its corner to her chin. He had found her. Found the broken woman beneath the mask that Henry had so adamantly assured him was there. She was beautiful and hurt and afraid. Which was what he had been told by the boy but hadn't believed until he saw it now before his eyes.
"When," he started with his voice even more soft and gentle than before as he moved his thumb softly and slowly over her bottom lip and her face creased with the saddest pain he had ever seen, "was the last time he kissed you and erased every worry you held?" More tears fell from her closed eyes and her lips parted ever so slightly to allow for her to suck in a better breath but his thumb remained on her bottom lip moving ever so slowly and softly.
"Get out," she pushed out in the saddest and weakest of whispers as his gentle touch pained her heart and his strong body warmed her soul back to life after she had buried them both deep to try to never feel this endless ache again.
He nodded once but she didn't see it and before he accepted her wishes, he dropped his head down a little lower and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. She quivered beneath him and her sharp breath blew across his ear at the gesture and as he pulled away he shook his head a little and she kept her teary eyes closed, "I do not want to fight with you, Regina," he whispered and moved his thumb over her cheekbone to wipe away some of her tears before he stepped away and turned his back to her as he walked to the door.
Regina felt her body convulse with a silent cry at the loss of his warmth against her and she tilted her head back and pushed it against the bed post so that if she were to open her eyes she would be looking at the ceiling. Her breaths were sharp and uneven and her fingers dug in to the dark wood as she tried to ground herself. But she was too far gone and Daniel flashed behind her eyes all the same.
David looked over his shoulder before he left and frowned a little more when he saw her. Clinging to the bed post, her head pushed back, and her chest rising and falling sharply with every pained breath. He left her with her privacy though and closed the door behind him as he left.
When she heard the door open and close she slowly spun off the post so her knees were against the edge of her bed and then turned one more time so that the backs of her knees were against the bed. A motion similar to rolling before she sat down on her bed and fell softly on to her side as she brought her legs up on to the mattress before she rolled over on to her other side and curled her knees up toward her chest. With her back now facing the closed door she finally let her quiet cries come to shake her body and hurt her throat.
David stood on the other side of the closed door and just stared at the marvellously carved wood. He could hear her crying. Soft and muffled through the heavy door, but he could pick it out all the same.
"You brought up Daniel, didn't you?"
David's brow furrowed at the name and turned his head to the boy who had the quietest presence sometimes. He didn't even know he was there. "Who is Daniel?"
"Was," he corrected quietly and David looked at him with more questions, "he was mom's stableboy. Before she had to marry the king."
David shook his head in confusion for it didn't make any sense why a stableboy would bring out such a sorrowful reaction. But then he remembered their conversation on the balcony a few nights prior and he remembered the touch she gave her left finger when he questioned her desire to give up life as queen to be the wife of a mere stableboy. He felt a small ache in his chest start to grow and he refocused his gaze on the door for a little while.
And as he turned and left he couldn't help but wonder what the queen looked like when she was in love.