When Regina awakes she is lying in a hospital bed surrounded by all the people she loves.
The family of the woman you killed.
There are tears on the faces of all of those around her and Regina can't help but wonder how they can even stand the sight of her. She can't stand the sight of herself after all. She can't get this evil woman out of her head and she can't rid herself of the guilt she feels over everything she's done- like killing purest soul that ever walked the Earth or any other realm.
Rumpelstiltskin was right, she has become a monster. Just like him and her sister and her mother before her. All these faces above her with mourning written into every single tear track that hasn't dried is yet another reminder of everything that she's done wrong.
Are they going to kill her? She kind of hopes they will, it what she deserves after all, especially seeing as she has so clearly botched the job herself.
But wait; why isn't she dead? She should be. She should most definitely be dead after what she did to herself. Which leaves only one explanation…
The Queen.
That monster inside her head has done something. And with this realisation comes another; the scent of magic is everywhere around her, it is clinging heavy and pungent to everyone crammed inside her hospital room, and second, she's tied down, wrists bound in magically draining handcuffs and tied securely to the rails on either side of the bed she lies in.
But how?
If the Queen got out, if Regina is still only alive because of the Queen's quite frankly miraculous self-preservation skills, why isn't everyone in this hospital room dead? How did she reassert control? Was it the cuffs? She certainly doesn't remember any fighting but surely there must have been and Robin…
Where the hell is Robin?! That last realisation chills her to the bone the most, there is a hole in her head where once her former lover's voice sat. Her last connection to the man she loves is gone.
And that's when Regina loses it.
She begins to thrash and scream and wail because she can't take any more pain, she can't handle the total loss of control that has forced its way into every single corner of her life. Robin, Snow, Daniel, they're all gone and it's all her fault.
This is why we never loved anyone when I was in control dear, it's so much easier to hate than love. The repercussions are so much easier to deal with.
Regina ignores her, it takes everything she has left not to give up there and then and let the Queen kill everyone left in the room including herself.
She knows that those animalistic noises must be coming from her but she is too far gone to care, to far down in the watery depths of her own personal hell for it to even register that there is anyone left in the room to watch her suffer.
The one tiny rational part of her brain left wonders though what this is doing to Henry. Wonders how he is coping with the events of the last few days. Henry. Her one saving grace. The one thing she hasn't totally screwed up, because whether of her own doing or his genetic inheritance, Henry is fundamentally, quintessentially good. And it breaks her to think that now, in spite of everything she did to try and protect him from herself, every instinct she fought, somehow despite how desperately hard she tried to be good, she still ruined Henry's life. There is no coming back from this, her love died and she ruined Henry's life completely. All she managed to do in the end was prove to him that she was every bit as awful, as evil, as everyone had always said she was.
Rotten to the core.
Eventually Regina feels her breathing begin to slow and knows her latest panic attack is beginning to subside as an eerie calm sweeps over her. She can focus again now, which means unfortunately that now it is time to face the people in the room surrounding her.
I'm going to kill them all. I'll make them suffer for everything they have taken from me.
One by one she faces them, she looks each of them in eye and tries to decide who it will be that will carry out her death sentence.
Emma meets her stare with one of her own, Hook glares, his arm securely wrapped around Emma's waist as if daring her to touch his beloved Saviour. There is the Blue Fairy and Tink, and surprisingly Zelena standing in the corner, looking every bit as lost as Regina feels. There are a few other inconsequentials, a warden and nurse, Gold, Regina notices is mercifully absent, though no doubt he will hear about all of this, it is his way after all.
And then there is Charming. The man who has lost everything. Tears slide down her cheeks as she meets Charming's gaze. After everything she put him through back in the enchanted forest, after how far they had come, for it to end like this…
With us victorious.
Regina can hardly stomach it. There has been so much history between them, so much bloodshed. And yet David isn't glaring at her, there doesn't seem to be any malice in him at all… only acceptance. And as she stares at him, tears well up in his eyes too and begin to slide down his cheeks, mingling with her own on her already damp sheets. And then suddenly he is embracing her and they are crying together, mourning the loss of the woman who was in many ways the centre of both their lives, the very reason for their stories in the first place.
The tears dry as quickly as they came.
'Regina,' David's voice is weak and croaky from disuse and all the crying, 'I'm so sorry.'
He's sorry?! Regina is sure she just felt her jaw hit the floor, Charming, he's sorry? But how and why?!
'After Robin, we should've known that something like this might happen, we should have looked out for you a little more and we want you to know how sorry we are for everything you've been through these last few weeks, hell throughout the last forever.' Charming looks so sad, so genuinely sorry, that Regina begins to laugh hysterically.
'You're sorry?! David, there's a malevolent presence in my head that wants to kill you all, you shouldn't be sorry, you should be burning me at the stake! I've spent so long fighting my instincts, so long trying not kill you all and now I can't anymore and I can't live like this! So please, for Snow, for Robin, for every other martyr I've ever destroyed, please, please kill me. I can't stay like this anymore.'
'Not even for me?'
Henry. Why, why, why did Henry have to be here? Why did he have to be in the middle of this? Why couldn't they just leave her to eliminate the Evil Queen in peace?
'Mum? Why won't you let them help you?'
Help you? The Queen's laughter rings throughout Regina's head drowning out everything else. There is nothing the heroes can do to help a woman who tries so hard to deny who she really is. Tell them dear how the darkness tempts you even now…
The Queen pushed hard against the barriers keeping her and the darkness locked at bay in Regina's head. Now was the time to strike, now, now, now while Regina was weak and down and Henry was playing with her emotions so beautifully, she would have to break, to keep herself alive, for Henry Regina would do anything and the Queen knew it all too well. Regina would let her out to play if it meant keeping Henry safe and happy, for Henry they would both do anything…
So this was the Queen's plan all along. To bruise her and break her and bleed through the cracks. To take over little by little until there was no distinction between them anymore. Finally Regina can see it and she stifles her laughter at the realisation. They had been one once, been whole when she had allowed the darkness to consume her and the Queen desired so much to be in control once more. To have her revenge for the wrongs she had decided had been committed against her.
But now wasn't the time. Even for Henry Regina would not put the town in danger. And this was the Queen's mistake. She had underestimated how far Regina had strayed from the dark path Rumpelstiltskin had laid out for them. She had assumed that once she broke Regina down enough, she would come quietly back to consuming the darkness that had sustained them for so long.
'I'm so sorry Henry.' Regina knows she is crying again but she is done keeping it together. She is done trying to be anything for anyone anymore. She loves every single person in this room and she has no idea how or when that happened but all that matters to her now is keeping them safe.
So she's going to do it. She's going to make the heroes sacrifice.
She's not really sure that's what they'll call it after everything she's done but she doesn't care. She going to go apologise to Snow in person. She's going to pray to whichever God is listening that Hades was wrong, or lying or something so she can go apologise to Robin too.
There so many mistakes she's made and so many people she need to apologise too and the best way to do all of it is to leave the land of the living. For good this time.
Tears are running down Henry's cheeks now too. 'You're not going anywhere, please mum.'
'I'm so sorry Henry but I don't have a choice, while I'm alive you're all still in danger and I can't have that.'
The Queen is furious, locked away and being demeaned by everyone she ever hated. She wants to rip them all apart, limb from bloody limb and rule over both the enchanted forest and Storybrooke. Regina will fail. She will not let that woman take away her revenge. She is too strong now, too big a presence in Regina's head for her to silence her easily. She has come too far now to get what she wants. Not to mention her magical mark is on everyone in this room a million times over and when she is free again, when Regina makes a mistake, she will destroy them all.
Come Regina we both know you don't have the strength left to defeat me even if you truly wanted to. One more failed attempt to get rid of me and finally I'll get to finish what we started all those years ago.
'There's got to be a solution mum. Don't give up now, you just to have faith. We'll defeat the Queen just like every other villain and we can't lose you.' Ugh hope, the Charming family's solution to everything. The one thing Regina is sure that no matter how much she has come to love them, she will never be able to stomach. The eternal optimism is nauseating. But for Henry… For Henry, Regina will agree to try anything that means she gets to keep him a little longer.
She looks around at the faces in her hospital room, meets the eyes of all the people who should hate her but for some reason don't, and she nods. If they want to try and save her, she'll allow it. Maybe she really can be worthy of a second chance.
She can't really believe in their faith that there is a possible solution for her problem. She doesn't believe that it is in any way possible to remove her deepest and darkest of instincts and the stakes are so high that none of them can possible afford to fail. And yet still the heroes refuse to take the easy way out and just put her out of her misery.
So it's just another day in StoryBrooke then really. All in a day's work for the heroes, defeating another villain. Regina just has to make sure she can keep the Evil Queen at bay while they work or its game over. Surely it wouldn't hurt anyone if she somehow managed to find Robin inside her head either, she doesn't think, but Doctor Hopper might have something to say about that.
In the end she's not entirely sure if she believes they can do it. She's not sure that her faith in them isn't entirely misplaced, but if Henry found out she didn't believe in the truest believer there'd be hell to pay. And she's learnt that sometimes it pays to put a little faith in people and their abilities. So she's ready to take the first step. And she's surprised to find that like any good hero on a difficult journey, even with the odds staked against her, she has hope.
That's it! Finally I managed to overcome the very common, University invoked Lackofmotivationitis and bring you the third and final chapter of Regina's Playtime! Believe this was seriously hard to write, but I'm so glad I finally finished! Please direct all comments/queries/concerns to the review section and I'll gladly get back to you. Thanks for sticking with me guys! Minty xx