Deposition [Evil Charming, 3/3]
Regina almost doesn’t know what to do with herself.
She’s standing in front of her bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors in hand, trying to decide if she’s capable of restoring her hair to its (now trademark) bob. It’s grown too long now, down to her shoulders and constantly in the way, and besides; long hair is for girls and she is not a girl.
Snip.
A lock falls into the sink, which she’s lined with paper towels, and she is instantly relieved. Another snip, and another, and another, until the sink is inky black with her discarded curls. She examines her finished work with quiet approval, satisfied on the whole that it has been done evenly. She gathers her hair between the paper towels and dumps it in the trash.
Though it was but a simple change, Regina somehow feels better with herself.
Today is going to be a nothing day, she can feel it already. Ever since the debacle last week Prince Charming hadn’t the nerve to show his face on her doorstep. She wonders if he’ll just leave her here to die. Regina wouldn’t be surprised. He looked pretty shaken up after she almost killed him (which, she continues to remind herself, was his fault), and maybe Snow White finally decided enough peace was enough. In a way, Regina wishes the Charmings would just get it over with already. Living here like this, with no magic, no Henry, no human contact at all - it is hell. If she is to die, then the sooner the better.
Regina makes it down to her study and runs an errant hand through her hair just before seating herself at her desk. It’s piled with books, scrolls, documents of every kind; texts she’s exhausted searching for a fix to her little problem. And nothing. “Magic is in tune to the energy of the caster,” is all it ever says, “and only the strong of heart can control its full power.” Yes, well, she supposes suicidal sorceresses don’t exactly fit that criteria, but in that event there should at least be some loophole, some way to wield magic with no connection to the heart. And, by God, she would find it, or she would, to assume the old cliché, die trying.
She sighs, raising a finger and pointing at the pen on her desk, hoping a purple stream of mist would pool out of her and push the pen a centimeter forward - a centimeter, that’s all she’s asking. But, as usual, nothing happens. Nothing fucking happens.
“Your hair, um, looks nice.”
Within seconds she’s on her feet, heart stopped. Why did he let himself in without even - without even so much as giving her the courtesy of announcing his arrival? Her blood simmers quietly beneath her skin because this is nothing but another reminder that this is no longer her home, in fact nothing in this spit of a town is hers anymore. The Charmings reign victorious once again. Once again, they have everything. She has nothing.
“Charming,” is her only greeting, rigid and unyielding.
“I just - wanted to swing by, see if you were alright. Got some more groceries.” He’s so unbelievably discomfited that Regina can hardly resist the urge to thump him. He can do nothing but stare at her, rather nervously, unsure whether or not to expect another outburst.
“Well, I’m alive. Your task is done. So, go.”
But he doesn’t want to go. She can feel it, and if she’s being totally honest with herself she doesn’t really want him to go either. There’s a pull between him and God, she hates it, but she’s vulnerable now and he - no, she isn’t going to let herself think that, not even in the privacy of her mind.
“Regina, look,” he begins with the usual words, for the umpteenth time, like some kind of sweet-toned chorus he employs only in her presence, “I want to apologize for last week. I don’t exactly know what happened, but I’m starting to understand that it may have been partially my fault. So, I’m sorry.”
She folds her lip in under her tongue to bite back a snide retort, and he can tell. Which prompts him to speak again.
“I want to be honest with you. You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined my wife’s life. You’ve ruined my daughter’s life. You’ve done a lot of wretched, unforgivable things. But - somehow, I do forgive you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Another martyr complex. Must be a family thing.”
“Come on, don’t play this game. You’re better than that.”
“Am I?” she challenges, softly.
“Yes,” he assures her, firmly, taking a step closer. “You’ve been through a lot in your life. You’re a strong woman, at your core. Knowing what you’ve experienced I don’t know how you managed to survive. I don’t pretend to justify the evilest of your actions, but I’m just saying that I understand where the pain comes from. So let me help you. Stop fighting it. For God’s sake, Regina, please.”
Somehow he’s managed to get only a foot away from her. Somehow she isn’t bothered.
All the same she lowers her eyes. “You need to give this up, James. This isn’t a fight you can win.”
He’s breathing heavily now, irritated by her persistent desire to thwart him. She can feel his breath on her face. It smells like beer, and she wonders, briefly, why.
“It isn’t for you to decide whether I can save you or not.”
“Isn’t it? I have control of my life, whether you like it or not. That’s something you and yours can never take from me.”
“But that’s just it - you aren’t in control! Look at you, you’re a walking corpse! You can’t control your magic, you can’t control your emotions, you can’t control your hate. You let go of the wheel as soon as the curse broke. Your life has not been under your jurisdiction for a month, at the very least, perhaps longer.”
He’s skating on thin ice, because Regina can feel her veins throbbing with magic and if he continues to incite her rage then she really won’t be in control.
“Regina, you are weaker than you have ever been and - ”
“Just. Leave!” It comes out in a ragged, unbridled shriek, born in part from desperation and in part from recognition of the validity in his words. But he doesn’t shirk from her. Rather, he gets only closer, his own brand of frenzy matching, even exceeding, hers.
“You don’t get to push me away, you don’t get to tell me I can’t save you when I know that I can.”
“James - ” she blurts, backing away from him.
“Look, you showed me who you are this past month and now it’s my turn.” He pauses. Swallows. “You’re hate - you’re filled with hate, more toward yourself than anyone else, I’ve realized that now. But, me? I’m love, I’m filled with love. That’s who I am. So, I - I can save you, I can - dammit - ”
She’s suffocating beneath his lips before she can even blink, her arms pinned beside her against the wall with fingers hinged in a claw-like position; reaching toward him, as if to stop him, without moving. “No - ” she whimpers, when her lips are freed from their captor, “Stop - stop!” Her heart is beating so fast it feels like it might pump its way right through her, and she hurts, she hurts everywhere, and she cannot breathe.
But he will not relent. Perhaps he is kissing her more for his own purposes, more to test his own emotion, rather than to please her. But the worst part is that he is pleasing her. Her muscles are frozen rigid but she’s melting under his touch, her skin sizzling when it makes contact with his. Her puckered red lips make way for a strangled moan and she wraps her hands into his hair, digging her nails deep into his scalp as if to remind him that she is cowed, but not clawless.
Even so, she sinks to the ground.
James follows until they are puddled on the floor, and Regina thinks to herself, this is fitting - because for all her life the sex act has been a gesture of submission rather than an act of love. She wonders, what is it now? It feels like love as he weaves his hands tenderly through her hair and gently unbuttons the front of her blouse - it feels like love as he presses soft kisses to the base of her neck that travel down to the crevice between her breasts -
But it isn’t love. Is it? It’s frustration. He wants so badly to be able to make a difference in her life because that’s his nature, that’s who he is. But he can’t. Prince Charming has met his first lost cause and it’s killing him. This is a last resort. This has nothing to do with her. This has everything to do with his pride, she realizes, with his fucking pride. That strikes a familiar cord.
When the weight of his body rolls over hers she stiffens beneath him, all sensory functions halted so that she feels nothing but the fading arousal tingling in her numbed extremities. Her eyes widen and so does her mouth, until she’s screaming. She doesn’t even know what she’s screaming, but something’s coming out of her mouth that is so primal, so visceral, that it causes James to cry out too. She doesn’t stop until he’s off her, on the other side of the room.
“Oh, God - ” he hisses disbelievingly, voice tinged with contrition and abhorrence. “Regina, I - I’m so sorry, I don’t know what - ”
But she doesn’t hear him. She’s lying corpselike on the ground, staring at the ceiling rigidly with breath coming in rickety gasps. It’s soundless and stagnant and neither is capable of moving or breathing or talking or thinking.
James is too shaken to stand, so he crawls to her side on all fours and like a frightened animal peers at her face. It’s different somehow, though he can’t explain it. Her eyes are seeing things far past what his can see; it’s like her body is an empty vessel for her mind, a mind that is free to explore (and clearly is) outside the realm of the present. He reaches out and takes her hand. It’s cold.
“Regina,” he says, though it is more of a question than a call to earth. “I’m sorry.” It’s a lame apology as ever because, let’s face it, James has never been and likely never will be any better than David at making amends, but he offers it anyway because it’s all he can say as he stares at her like this, gutted and void and empty. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t - I don’t know what made me do that. God, I’m so sorry, Regina. I’m so sorry.”
He begins to get desperate. She’s not responding. Hell, she’s practically catatonic! What is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to get help, if - how is he going to be able to explain the impetus?
Before he knows it he’s trembling. He can’t think, he can’t breathe, he can’t - process what’d just transpired between the two of them. “Regina,” he calls out brokenly, trying to summon her back to him. “Regina, talk to me. At least look at me. Please.”
“No,” is all she says, and when she says it, she sounds like a little girl.
But he’s still holding her hand.
“What did he do to you?” he asks, after a silence.
And it’s then that she turns to him, swivels her head to the side and fixes her eyes on his with such a penetrating gaze that something inside him goes cold.
“He killed me,” she whispers, and the curious thing is that she’s smiling.
- - -
It had been a long night for the queen and it shows on every plane of her body.
She’d begged Leopold not to visit her that night because there was to be a ball the next evening and if he was too rough with her she wouldn’t be able to dance as she ought. But he was heedless. She doubted he even heard her pleas. His eyes were glassed over with that bleary faraway sadness against which she was always helpless. She knew he was thinking about his wife, about Snow White’s mother. Regina had never seen a man more sorrowful. And she wished she could feel sorry for him, because she did at first, and pitying him would soften the complexity their marriage, but - she could not help it. She hated him.
“Regina, Regina!”
Cue the little demon.
Regina’s standing in the middle of her dressing room, hoisted up by a stool so that her maids can more easily measure her and fit her into her lovely ball gown, and Snow White, having finished her preparations for the evening, naturally resorts to her default occupation. Bothering her stepmother. It’s been three years since Regina became queen and nothing has changed.
“Oh, you look so beautiful!” she coos in that sticky-sweet timbre, clapping her pretty white hands together with annoyingly genuine glee. “You must save a dance for me. Promise you will!”
“I will do my best to escape your father’s clutches,” is Regina’s response, stagnant, devoid of any variance in tone. She is being utterly serious. There are no vocal embellishments to suggest otherwise. Yet Snow White trills out a few giggles as if her stepmother was joking, once again mistaking the queen’s unobserved misery for some kind of witty sarcasm.
Erstwhile, the maids have been jerking wildly at Regina’s corset laces, which, naturally, she is quite used to - but just then there is such an uncharacteristically violent tug that it almost causes the woman to stumble off the stool. Snow braces herself as Regina’s temper flares and she rounds on them. “Is there a problem?” she seethes, righting herself.
“It seems you have - well - grown, milady, since the first fitting,” squeaks one of them, terribly shaken. Regina’s malice toward the servants is well known and feared throughout the castle and it is quite clear that this maid is painfully aware of it.
Before Regina’s stomach can drop, Snow squeals.
“We must fetch one of the physicians! What if - ”
“I am sure I have just been overindulging in sweets lately,” Regina snaps, before the eager princess can finish her thought. “Now leave me be, Snow White. I’m sure your father desires your company.”
“But - ”
“Leave me for just a moment, please,” Regina exclaims, voice trembling with unshed tears, a feigned nonchalant smile cutting through her face. “All of you.”
When they follow her orders and she is left alone, she peels at the sleeves of her dress and tears herself out of it. She feels like she’s choking on it, like its bodice is made of steel rather than fabric; like it is going to suffocate her if she is in it any longer. When she is stripped to her bare skin she turns sideways in front of the mirror and rests a calculating hand on her belly, straightening her shoulders and lengthening her body so as to get a more adequate assessment.
She wonders how she didn’t notice it before. A little bump, a tiny, almost indiscernible sloping mound that peaks by a fraction just near her navel, an unmistakable swelling of her overwrought womb. It seems like nothing, like merely a shadow of a possibility, but she knows - she knows.
Her eyes are leaking before she can hope to stop them. Panic surges under her ribs and then she’s on the ground, naked and vulnerable and totally alone and for the first time in years missing her mother. Her arms are curled around the small roundness and she pulls her knees into herself, not caring that her maids are probably outside with ears pressed against the door waiting to hear her breakdown so they can have the satisfaction of reporting it to their king. No one is on her side. Not here.
Regina wants it out of her.
She wants to reach into her stomach and rip the thing from her body. She would gladly claw through her skin right this very moment without a second thought if she were brave enough. But Regina is a coward. Everybody in the kingdom knows that. So instead she lies on the floor and cries and wishes for someone to save her, because she is too empty and too weak to save herself.
She feels disgusting. She wants to vomit and scream and die all at once. She is the incubator to a monster’s spawn. She is a vessel for evil. Something dark and heinous and horrible is growing inside of her, feeding off her, using her like every single person in this forsaken world seems wont to do.
The easiest way to kill a parasite is to starve it.
She hates herself for it, later.
Just as she hates herself, now.
Regina Mills never wanted to be a tragedy.
Yet her whole life has been nothing but a tragedy, in which she alternates as the hero and the villain or sometimes both at once.
Perhaps it’s true, what they say: that she’s evil, irredeemable, wicked. Perhaps it’s true that she deserves the worst of punishments, though she believes she’s already suffered it with the loss of her son. Perhaps it is finally time to end this dismal story of hers. Perhaps she doesn’t need control of its resolution. Perhaps she just needs to wait, and watch, and let it happen.
Not that she has that much of a choice, anyway.
Regina is walking through the streets of Storybrooke like the main attraction of some special promenade, freed from her shallow domain for the first time in a little over a month. She is a prisoner but she holds her head high like the queen she once was, even daring to meet the malicious eyes of the enraged and bloodthirsty villagers. Her arms are idle at her sides, sweeping against her pantsuit with little rustling, whirring noises. That is one of the only sounds to be heard, the friction of her fabric, because this is the moment they have all been waiting for - her trial, her reckoning, her judgment day - and none of them dare shatter the consummation of their victory with jeering, vulgar voices.
Charming walks beside her, face set still as stone ahead of him in order to prevent venturing so much as a peripheral glance at his captive. He hasn’t spoken a word to her since that day last week. And she has relished every minute of this silence. Better to ignore things than to feel them. Luckily they share that philosophy.
It appears as though town hall has been renovated into somewhat of a refugee camp, Regina muses with dark delight as they approach it. There stands an immaculately constructed scaffold at the center of the lawn, no doubt a product of Gepetto and his boy (if his boy survived, anyway), and no doubt meant for her. Surely enough, Rumplestiltskin stands atop it, little beady eyes pointed fixedly at her, an executioner waiting for his client.
She learned long ago that there is no such thing as fear.
It is merely a social construct, meant to bind people to one’s will - a tool for the mighty, as it were, and one that she wielded expertly in the past. Regina was taught that fear is an illusion, fear is for the common folk, the lower class, the unworthy. And, as she is destined for greatness, there is no room for fear in her heart. But she has known fear, in the gleam of her mother’s eyes, the thin lips of her dead husband, the effortless love between Emma and Henry. Indeed, she is ashamed to admit it, but she has known fear better than she has known anything else.
It is not fear that she feels now.
When she mounts the scaffold she feels Rumplestiltskin’s eyes on her. But she is calm, collected, indolent. She knows how this trial will end and he does too, but she cannot force herself to care. The masses of people encircling her are trying to get a reaction, succumbing to their urge to call her names and fling insults at her like rotten fruit, but she does not hear them. She does not hear anything.
“Silence!” Rumplestiltskin’s voice shatters the cacophony, and he pounds his cane against the wood.
Out of the corner of her eye Regina sees the royal family huddled together, holding their breath. It is then that something excruciating sparks within her, because she sees Henry. She sees that he is looking away.
“I’ll try to make this fast, dearies, as I know we’ve all been dying to have this settled ever since the curse was broken,” he drawls, in that infuriatingly smug voice of his. “You see before you Miss Regina Mills, former mayor of Storybrooke, former queen of the land from whence we came, and the sole reason for all your pain and suffering. But you all know this.”
Shouts of “burn the bitch” and “kill her already” filter into Regina’s ears and inspire the bemused chuckle that curls out of her lips. As if death is a punishment at this point.
“We’ve kept her in check, locked away in her house for the past month, and to our fortune she has shown no signs of rebellion. But the fact remains that she has done evil, evil things to all of you - to all of us. And each of us has the right to have a say in her penance.” His voice commands utterly, but it’s still murky to her. “The royal family has finally agreed, by popular request, to two options - banishment, or death.”
She’s swimming, or floating, or drowning, or all three. Regina’s out of focus like a blurry camera lens, only sensing indistinct shapes and sounds and pigments. She doesn’t even try to fight it, she just lets this soul crushing apathy, this choking passivity, swallow her whole. The air around her thickens and she lets it. Her veins flex in frustration and she lets them. She can’t breathe and she doesn’t care. Because nothing matters anymore, now that Henry is inertly watching her condemnation. Nothing matters anymore now that she’s been reminded in the most painful of ways that he is no longer hers, perhaps has never been hers. And it’s not that he hates her, or is angry toward her, or will never forgive her, no -
It’s that he doesn’t care. The woman who changed his diapers and took him to school and packed his lunches and bought him toys and kissed him goodnight and took him in when he was lost is about to either die or be imprisoned for life and he just stands there, in Emma’s arms, and waits.
Unblinkingly.
Uncaringly.
Even Snow White, even Emma Swan, even Prince Charming, show more tense rigidity than Henry Mills, the bearer of her surname.
Speaking of Prince Charming, her eyes lock onto James’s and suddenly her world crashes back to reality. He has that horrible effect on her. And he’s looking at her with pity again, damn him - his eyes are filled with that same blue gloom that was there when he held her, and kissed her, and -
Damn him.
She can’t take this anymore. When she feels threatened by her heart she closes her eyes and so she closes them now, because James touches her in a place she thought was long, long dead, and she can’t afford to have it brought to life now. Her heart beats a slow, resonant protest, but it is no use. No matter how much it acts up now, it’ll still be silenced in a few short moments. She’s certain of that. She’s glad of that. She deserves that, she’s decided. All things considered, Regina is a bad person. She’s done bad things to good people, often without significant reason. She’s unfairly attempted to sabotage the happiness of perhaps the only person in her life who ever loved her unconditionally. She’s irrational, vengeful, malevolent, hypertensive, thoughtless, arrogant, vain - everything an “evil queen” like that of Henry’s imagination should be. At least she fulfilled his expectations in that respect.
God, she is weak. If only her mother could see her now.
At length, she opens her eyes. She is still a queen even if she is a queen deposed and she will face her judgment like a queen and not like the peasants who judge her. This isn’t the time to fall victim to her heart. Falling victim to her heart is what got her on this scaffold to begin with.
Just then there’s a rowdy surge in the crowd, and Regina assumes their little democratic show has finally reached a majority. Fine. Good. She’s ready to hear her fate.
“Well, your majesty,” comes a voice from behind her ear, “I’m going to have to ask you to kneel. Please.”
She can’t bite back the scoff that trips over her tongue as she listens to his directive, just as she can’t bite back her bitter retort, “Like hell.”
But it’s fragile and breakable and he knows it, so he rests his palm on her shoulder and shatters her bravado. “Have it your way,” he murmurs.
She is shoved to her knees.
Her arms are fastened tightly at the wrist behind her back. Her muscles whimper with overwork and starvation but she ignores them. Their suffering will be silenced soon, anyway.
Rumplestiltskin steps forth, boot at her eye level, and opens his arms beneficently to the crowd. “We will now put it up to her victims to nominate Miss Mills’ executioner.”
With her luck, she thinks to herself, she’ll receive her reckoning at the hands of a dwarf. Then again, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Well. That’s what she tells herself, anyway, until she hears James’ name being hallooed from the crowd. James. King James. Charming. That’s right, that’s - of course they’d pick him. Of course they’d want their king to rid them of the blight on their kingdom. Of - of course.
The symphony of unrest quiets, then, as Rumplestiltskin asks Charming if he will accept his people’s nomination. Regina hazards a circumspect glance at the royal family and bears witness to a sickeningly sweet scene: James and Snow White share a look that only lovers can understand, then she inclines her head, sniffles, tucks Henry’s numb visage into her bosom, and turns away. She’s fought it for so long but her people want what her people want and her first duty is to them. She’s too weary to fight anymore. James looks like he might be sick, and Emma, as usual, is just standing there uselessly, unsure of what to think or feel or say.
The king pulls his sword from the sheath hanging at the belt loop of his blue jeans and steps forward, face as colorless as the achingly cloudy white sky stretched like a blanket over the sun behind him. Regina summons a smirk when she sees how bloodless, how unwilling, he truly is at the prospect of being her executioner, and her smirk only widens when he bends down to the side of her face and breathes, hot against her cheek, “Use your magic. Get out of here.”
But she has nowhere to go, and perhaps he realizes that when she doesn’t answer.
“Please don’t make me do this.” He resorts to pleading, as if it will somehow convince her to flee like a coward. “I care about you, Regina. I don’t know how or why, but I do.” He pauses, licks his quivering lips. “And I know you care about me too.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” she snaps. She can’t be hearing this, not now, not ever. If she is to die by his hands she will do it with a quiet heart.
Resignation seeps into the corners of his eyes and he gives a short nod, a short sigh. “So be it. I will try to make it quick.” His voice hitches, snaps, cracks, on the last word. Poor little king, she thinks to herself.
Within moments the cool embrace of the blade’s edge is on the back of her neck, and she sucks in what very well may be her last breath.
She wants her last thoughts to be of Henry and Daniel. And -
“Stop, stop!”
“Henry, wait - !”
The sword retreats off her neck and Regina spins in the direction of the royal family, where she sees Henry breaking past the barrier of Emma’s and Snow White’s arms, and - and straight for her.
When he reaches the scaffold, he takes Charming’s sword and petulantly throws it to the ground. “This is ridiculous!” he shouts, chastising the crowd. “In this world, we don’t behead people! Look at yourselves, cheering for Prince Charming to murder Snow White’s stepmother! He’s Prince Charming, he doesn’t kill people - he can’t!” Breathless, the boy takes a step nearer to Regina, who is motionless, and utterly stricken. “She did bad things,” he concedes, breathily, “I know that. And I know we took a vote. But I don’t care about that. It isn’t fair. This isn’t how fairytales are supposed to end,” he shouts, with a clear disillusion. “She’s - she’s my mom.”
And that was it. That broke her.
For the first time in a month (no, for longer than that), Henry embraces her. She holds his body tightly against hers and for a minute she vows she will never let go; she swears she’s hallucinating or perhaps already dead and she’s going to hang on to this mirage as long as she can. Regina doesn’t even try to hold back her rasping sobs. She’s clinging to her son like she’s clinging to her life and he’s clinging back with equal intensity. “I’m sorry,” she wheezes, “I’m so sorry, Henry.”
“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I understand now.”
When the little boy manages to pry himself away from Regina, he takes up Charming’s sword once more and points it at the crowd (even though he’s struggling because it’s much heavier than he thought it would be).
“If you want to hurt my mom, you’ll have to get past me first.”
- - -
When they’re alone, Henry produces a small folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
“I think it’s better than the last one,” he says with a sheepish shrug.
With fingers still trembling, Regina carefully unfolds the offering. It’s another one of his sketches, this time more finished. She runs her hand over the ridges of his pencil-markings and her gratitude and pleasure manifests in the glassiness of her eyes.
“I love it,” she manages to say, softly. “Thank you.”
It didn’t come without a price, but it’s the closest thing she’s ever had to a happy ending.
Regina Mills never wanted to be a tragedy.
And maybe she doesn’t have to be.