That's the thing about Regina. She's a woman who has had her heart broken repeatedly…and that can lead someone to do terrible things.

The words of one of her best friends were ringing out in her ears. A never ending reminder. A truth she did not want to behold lest it kill her. She wanted nothing more than to set it aside and never return to it. That did not feel possible. Every time she closed her eyes, she could feel the thought overtaking her. Every part of her body shook. She didn't want to open her eyes. She felt sick. She felt alone. If there were anything she feared, it was being alone. The idea of being truly, fully alone was one which terrified her to the core of her being. An all too clear reminder of the way her mother had forced her life to be. A reminder of how she had felt when she lost Daniel. A reminder of how she felt in her marriage. A reminder of how she felt when the people loved Snow more than her. A reminder of having to take her husband's life to become finally free. A reminder of how it felt to lose her daughter, even if only for a few months.

The worst part is, too, that things are unlikely to turn around in a complete manner for her. Do we all have more than one true love? Yes, of course, we must. That's not in question. Our lives can take so many different turns that in each we have a different end. The question is on her. It's not a comfortable one, either. Will she find another true love? Hopefully…but that's something even more unpredictable than most curses.

It was certainly strange to consider the things Sherry, though in particular Fenella, had to say to Red about her. Whether or not Red knew the two were telling her whatever they discussed was beside the point. Regina knew. Red heard it. She was such an enigma, but she was also, in many ways, a fresh set of eyes. The way she cared for Lynn to bring her to Willowsand in the first place and to keep her safe from Snow and the man with them while also travelling with them was remarkable. She almost could not believe it. Red was the kind of sister she had always wanted. An aunt of sorts to Lynn. That was another thought Regina did her best to set aside. Getting attached to someone who mere weeks ago had been a complete and utter stranger and viewing them as a sibling would be reckless. Stupid. Childlike. Then again, she hadn't been granted a childhood. What did that even feel like?

"Are you alright, dear?" Regina startled, feeling Lynn tug on her dress. "Is something wrong?"

Lynn shook her head, looking up at her mother, and smiling. She hugged her as tight as she could around the leg, and giggled when her mother reached down to affectionately muss her hair.

"It's good to see you smiling again," Regina knelt down, letting her daughter wrap her arms around her neck and hold onto her like her life depended on it. "I know these last few months have been hard for you, dear. You're doing so well."

Lynn stared at her for a few seconds, eyes wide, and then nodded.

"I'll never let anything like that happen to you again, Lynn," She went on. "I promise. And you know I don't take those lightly."

"Promise mean always!" Lynn babbled. "Like how you queen!"

Regina managed to laugh a bit. "Not quite," She said, tapping her daughter's nose.

Lynn giggled and grabbed her mother's finger with her tiny hands, smiling. Regina couldn't help but smile herself. Her little girl. Her baby. She was with her. She was safe. She was happy.

"Snow isn't going to hurt you ever again," Regina lowered her voice, reassuringly setting her hands to her daughter's shoulders. "She won't be able to hurt anyone ever again soon enough. That is a promise. Do you understand? Do you know what I mean by that?"

Lynn stared at her, confused.

"I'm going to make sure that Snow cannot harm anyone," She said shortly. "Most especially you. After what she did, she…"

A fate worse than death. The curse which worked on Stefan and Leah's brat.

A sleeping curse.

Regina glanced up, her eyes falling on one of the trees. Her favourite. Apple tree.

That man she is travelling with. She has feelings for him.

A lure.

"We'll be travelling, soon," Regina finally said, squeezing Lynn's tiny hands. "With friends."

"Why?" Snow spoke quietly, not wanting to wake the sleeping princess in her arms. "Why does Regina think any of this is worth it?"

Charming, beside her, shook his head. "It's reductive to keep saying, I'll admit, but she really has become the evil queen. If she ever really was like the woman you described saving your life, that woman died years ago."

Snow swallowed hard, trying not to let the worst of her thoughts bubble to the surface. Then again, it was almost impossible for them not to. Regina was completely divorced from reality. Not only that, she was completely divorced from the kind, unequivocally good person she had been that fateful day. She bit her lip. Never once had the thought crossed her mind but, now, it occurred to her that, even if they had never met, even if Regina had not been forced to marry Snow's father, Daniel likely would not be alive. Cora likely would have killed him either way. To get to Regina. To motivate her as queen. For some sick reason, one which she could not imagine, Regina still wouldn't have the person she loved most. She still would not be happy with them. And she very much could have still become the woman she was now. It hurt just to think about, but there was something about the name that rang true in the worst ways possible. The evil queen. It was just about fitting for all Regina had become.

"I don't know what the right thing to say is or not," Charming continued, keeping pace with her. "But I know that you are, truly, a good person, Snow. Whatever she is, whatever she has become…that I can't explain. But I know that you have been through just as much if not more hardships than her, and you are a good person. That means a great deal. And it means a great deal more than you may realise."

Snow glanced at him. "You don't have to say that."

"I don't," He agreed. "That does not make it any less true."

The two of them paused, staring at each other for a moment. His gaze kept falling between her and the baby princess in her arms. Then, he took a few seconds and kissed her.

Those few seconds would prove to be quite the mistake.

Those precious few seconds of solace, of happiness between them was the perfect opportunity for an ambush. Before either of them could realise it, several highly trained members of King George's guard came out of the blue. They grabbed Charming almost as he and Snow naturally broke their kiss, and hooked his arms under theirs, beginning to drag him off. He whipped around, starting to kick at them, trying to get free for long enough to get his sword. Snow whipped around in a panicked frenzy, unsure of what to do, but held the baby princess Aurora close to her chest, protecting the little girl with her entire body. Whether she heard it or not, whether the words left his throat or not, Snow turned and ran. No one gave her chase. Charming was growing more and more difficult for the two men who had grabbed him to restrain. Snow White was far from their first priority. She was not their priority in the slightest.

Ever so briefly, Charming managed to break free, but he was tripped by a couple more members of his "father's" guard, and pinned to the ground. It all happened in a matter of seconds. His hands and wrists were painfully bound together. Rope. Some metal. Something scraped him up and down, and he no longer could tell if blood were being drawn from him when, from his elbows to his fingers, his entire body was searing in pain. The sensation was one of the worst he had ever experienced. Worse than the fall from the top of the barn storage to the ground when he had been a young teenager. It was worse than the first time he had met his "father" because of Rumplestiltskin. Worse than the day he realised he was faced with marrying someone he did not love or losing not just his life but his mother's and their livelihood. It was horrible. Violent.

And they seemed to be enjoying it.

Whether or not all of them were truly enjoying their task was something which, likely, no one would ever be capable of being certain of.

That at least some of them, however, was clear. Some of them were enjoying this.

They ripped him, now bound, off the ground.

They shoved him into a carriage brought to transport him under the guise of luxury befitting the prince.

And the world went dark to him the second his head rammed into the back wall inside the carriage while the boot of one of the guards in there with him was smacked against his mouth.

She felt like the world was beginning to close in upon her.

The critical gazes of the two women across from her made her sick to her stomach.

Yet she couldn't help but trust them.

There was something about the way Fenella and Sherry spoke that made her feel, perhaps despite her better judgement, alive. Human. So fully human that it was painful. It was startling, too, what had happened earlier that day. Regina. The almost absentminded way by which the queen told them all they would be travelling with her to George's kingdom. The thought terrified her. Would she have to run into Snow, to Charming? How would that feel for them all? Worse, what would they think of her? Would her friends now view her as a traitor? The feelings she had towards them had not changed. They were still good people. They had made a mistake - all of them together, herself very much included - but things were set right. It was not a matter of good people or bad people. Still, it was too much to bear the thought of. Irrational as it may have been, if only because of how much of a caretaker of sorts she had become towards Lynn, the idea of Snow and Charming knowing she spent time with Regina. Alone. With Regina's friends and family.

Would they judge her harshly for it?

Could she ever go back to the way things were?

More treacherously: did she want things to go back to the way they had been just a few months before?

"If you're confused by Regina, don't worry," Fenella's soft, high pitched voice cut into her thoughts. "It's not something you should feel you understand well after just a little while, anyways, Red. She's a complicated person, to say the very least."

"That I know," Red said almost monotonously, absentmindedly rubbing her neck and adjusting her cloak, almost as if she were scared it would suddenly disappear from her. "Sorry, this has all…just been a lot."

"As reasonable an explanation as any," Sherry eyed her for a second. "Is there something specific you're thinking about? Or is it just the general…difficulties about the situation?"

"Both," Red admitted, shocked by how freely she was speaking. It was so close to being routine that shock seemed almost inappropriate a word to use to describe the sensation. "But," Her voice lowered, almost embarrassed. "I do worry that…with this fixation on Snow, with her constant…desire for revenge…"

"And?" Sherry lightly probed.

Red hesitated. "I worry that Regina's fixation on Snow and everything that has and continues to go along with it is not only hurting herself but hurting Lynn too. Unintentionally, of course. I know Regina well enough, now - that's odd to say, sorry - to see that she would never intentionally do anything to hurt Lynn. I just…I don't know. I don't know how to tell."

"Well," Fenella said, pausing briefly in thought. "Why do you wear your cloak?"

"Because," Red sighed heavily, shaking her head. "Because it keeps myself safe and others safe from me. Without it…without it, under the full moon…I'm not fully human. And I've hurt people in that state, people I love. It stops me from hurting anyone without intending to, and that includes myself."

"That's almost exactly what you just described fearing might happen to Regina, in the sense that you worry she doesn't have a cloak of sorts in that manner," Sherry reached over, gently setting a hand to her shoulder. "It's clear how much you care about Lynn, you know. I have no idea how that relationship developed, especially considering the circumstances. However, I see it clearly, and Regina does as well."

"You're also right that Regina would never intentionally do anything that could hurt Lynn even in the slightest," Fenella added, adjusting her glasses. "But I get what you're saying. Truth be told, I often wonder the same thing."

Red raised an eyebrow. "How do you reckon with it?" She said, unable to hide her disbelief.

"That's tricky. The best thing, though, that I've found, is to let fate play itself out."

"Is that wise?"

"Maybe not. But, at least for me, I've come to realise that there are some things that are beyond my control. Some things that I will just never know…and having to let them go, making myself let them go…that has helped me more than I can properly explain."

Replies to Reviews:

barrattajennifer: i've never thought of Red and Regina as a couple in any sense, and i think that's clear by this chapter, but i definitely agree, now that i'm thinking about it, the possibility was there. the panic dynamic that Leah and Stefan felt in handing their daughter to Snow and Charming is, in some ways, a taste of what they did to Regina for Snow and Charming, and it's a lot more intense than either of them would like to idealise it as. Henry is very much desperate to see his daughter happy, and seeing her and his granddaughter is one of the things that he gets a lot of joy from. it's almost a flashback to when Regina was younger, when he remembered her being consistently happy, before Cora destroyed so much of that for her. in that sense, it's no wonder why Regina became so attached to her daughter; she's not only all she has left of Daniel, but she wants Lynn to have everything she was never able to so much as is possible: a loving family, a mother who cares for and loves her unconditionally and unquestioningly, and a life where she feels not only happy and loved but safe.

jasouatfan: Regina's shifting views on Red and Red's shifting views on Regina are so interesting to explore! they really do underscore how flawed both of their perceptions of each other and the world are, and simultaneously reflect on the way Snow and Charming have been and continue to approach the world. there is a lot more nuance than any of them - Regina, Snow, etc - were comfortable acknowledging, and having to see it now is both uncomfortable and liberating.

Sammi16: of course! as i've stated previously, this is one of my favourite stories to write even if it can often be one of the most challenging! i'm so happy for all the thoughts everyone has given about the story and its direction so far, and i'm looking forward to continuing to play it out!