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She runs because she can, and because even before Leopold, Regina was running from her mother. Even when she was chasing Snow White, she was running from the life she’d been forced into. She’s gone in a cloud of smoke (tinged with white, which she won’t think about), ands she never sees Robin’s face or Emma’s or even Henry’s. She just sees zigzags of pain flashing in front of her eyes, because this is all one giant circle of loss.
Zelena’s house—home, house, Regina has no idea, she didn’t know her sister well enough—rises through a cold fog in front of Regina. The doors aren’t protected by magic, and Regina steps inside.
She makes tea with her magic. She cleans the house with her magic. She straightens picture frames with magic. She won’t touch anything; she just lets the magic pour out of her. Pots wash themselves a hundred times, flowers arrange and rearrange, napkins are folded in every imaginable pattern.
Zelena, she thinks, you left me.
Zelena is Robin and Robin is Zelena in her head suddenly, and she falls to her knees, still doing magic. Her body can’t take all of it, she realizes, and it’s not used to this half-light magic she’s making (because despite her anger she loved both of them, Zelena and Robin, and her magic knows), and she’s shaking, but she won’t stop.
Henry, Henry, Henry, her heart says, he can heal you, he believes. But she can’t be with him right now, because she’s afraid of hurting him.
*
Rumplestiltskin comes to her, his face tight with irritation. She remembers days like this when she couldn’t produce fireballs or make a mirror show her what she wanted.
“Why are you wasting magic, Regina?” He says it slowly, as if to someone stupid. You are stupid, her mother whispers, you loved, you idiot girl, why did you love?
She’s going mad, she thinks, but she laughs and tells Rumple: “Because all magic has a price, and I’m ready to pay it.”
But she’s been paying the price of magic from the beginning. Prices that Cora had never expected anyone to have to pay, they fell on Regina Mills, a child. There are scars on her lips and her heart and deep inside her female organs that spell out what magic can do.
He’s looking at her with those eyes, the ones that have always beckoned her into the darkness.
“You will have your revenge, I’m sure,” Rumple says. His voice is mild; his eyes are not.
“I don’t want the revenge,” she says, and it’s true. She wants Robin back and Zelena back and she wants to be all right for Henry and Roland. “I want to pay the price.”
For killing Marian, which she did once in one lifetime. What is a lifetime, she wonders? They’ve all lived so many—how many people have they been? How many people will they be? Was she happy in one of those lives?
“Miss Swan tells me Henry is upset,” Rumplestiltskin says, and it sets her on fire. “Pulls yourself together.”
There’s a wedding ring on his finger.
Villains don’t get happy endings.
Maybe she was the only villain. The real one. The big bad one that had to be slain.
She knows it isn’t true, that Rumple did worse than her (and maybe will do worse one day in the future too). She knows Hook has killed. She knows, she knows, but her heart has more than darkness, it has cracks now.
“Go,” she says. “Tell him I’m fine.”
He goes (she never expected him to stay, he is not that man for her, he never stays). He walks out the door, and she thinks, you left me, Rumple. It’s the same thing she used to think in Leopold’s palace, when Rumplestiltskin used to lull her to sleep with magic with a cruel little smile.
*
She returns to Henry in the night, apologies everywhere. He forgives her, wraps his arms around her, and for one moment she forgets the people who leave because Henry stays.
(Except he doesn’t. Except he left. Except he had to.)
She curls into her bed, an animal with only one panicked howl.
*
8 AM. It’s a morning, any morning, Regina can’t really tell them apart, because the world is white outside and no one seems to have left for days. Sometimes she goes over to Zelena’s with a pop of magic, but in there everything is the same too.
“There’s a meeting about the winter,” David tells her from the foyer, his cheeks still red. “At Granny’s. It’s in fifteen minutes. We’ve been trying to call you since yesterday afternoon. Snow thinks you’re dead or something.”
Regina does smile at that. Snow White, the child that Regina held for so many years, the child that never noticed the hatred rolling off her stepmother’s body. The child that somehow became halfway dear to Regina again in the past year and a half.
They—David, Regina, and Henry—pile into the truck.
She finds everyone there, Snow and Emma, the baby, Red, Granny, the dwarves, the fairies—the whole town has gathered to talk about the abnormal cold. Everyone includes the Merry Men. Everyone includes Robin and Marian.
Her hands itch to do magic again, and she busies herself with heating the diner with extra warmth, until Snow places a gentle hand on her wrist.
She can feel him throughout the meeting, his hands on her body, the way he pulled her in and kissed her hard and let his mouth wander after. She can feel the bristle of his chin and how his soft hair brushed her cheek. She can feel what it was like to be terrified to make love to him (because she never made love, not ever, not once in her life), but how he guided her and taught her how sweet it was.
When she looks up, he is watching her, and she thinks she might be flushed.
There is something in his eyes that makes her think he might be remembering too. He might remember the nights that they accidentally met in her old palace’s gardens during the Missing Year. He might remember the anger that fueled them to snap at each other, and he might remember how he once comforted her in the kitchens when she was peeling a potato because she had nothing else to do but remember Henry. He might remember what that tattoo means for the both of him, and he might remember that as much as he hates her now (for what she did to his wife), he might have loved her once.
She hears little of the meeting other than Ice Queen, and then she bolts as soon as it is acceptable, almost dragging Henry away.
*
She rests a palm on her front door before the knock comes. She knows, somehow she knows that Robin is there. Those are the things that scare her. It’s one thing to give him up, it’s another to feel him everywhere and never have him.
“Regina,” she hears, and she thinks his mouth must be very close to the door if she’s able to hear him. His mouth is close to her hand, just a panel of wood between them, and isn’t that it—they’re so close, if one of them will just open the door and make it happen.
Except, Marian.
“Please,” he says, and she can’t help but wrench the door open and stare at him with the hardest eyes (there’s water in her heart, it’s where she’s keeping the tears, but her eyes are dry).
“What do you want?” she says.
“I’m here to see you.”
Regina can’t look him in the eyes, those warm, easy eyes.
“I miss you,” he tells her, and she wants to vomit, the anxiety charging inside her, her head spinning, her thoughts reminding her that he should not be here, he should be with Marian.
“I appreciate the sentiment.”
“Can I come in?”
It’s freezing and she should say yes, but she shakes her head.
He sighs, and then places his hand on the doorframe.
“Please go,” Regina says.
“I’m here to see you,” Robin repeats.
“You already said that.”
“Regina, Marian and I are done. I came here to tell you that.” The hand from the doorway now lingers close to her. She knows he wants to touch her. “I came here to tell you a lot of things, actually. If you’ll only let me inside.”
No one has ever left anyone for Regina. No one ever put Regina first, and that thought quells any hope inside her. He’ll change his mind when he’s five minutes into the foyer and realize that he doesn’t want evil, he wants his wife, the mother to his child.
“I don’t—I can’t,” Regina says helplessly.
His eyes darken. “I don’t understand. Do you—feel differently now?”
“I killed Marian. In that other timeline.” She shrugs. “I need you to go, Robin.”
“I know.” He bites his lip, and she wants to brush a thumb against that lip, kiss the worry away. “I also know you. The Regina who buys Roland ice cream. The one who cried in the garden when she lost Henry. The one who protects Snow again and again. The one who told me the truth about her first love and her fears.” He coughs, maybe from the cold, maybe from the emotion that has twisted around his word. “I told you, it’s all about timing. The person you are now and the one I am…I think we’re right for each other.”
She closes her eyes.
He isn’t one to push her when he knows she can’t be pushed, so he steps away from the door.
“You’re a riddle, Regina. They ought to call you Madame Riddle. But I’m here, all right? I’m waiting.”
She watches him walk away, a dark figure in a swirl of snow.
*
Regina’s house is all Robin, Robin, Robin these days. He laid in the bed once, made coffee in the kitchen once, spread his arm over the couch once. His last visit disturbs Regina, makes her think about mistakes and regrets. This is the regret, letting him walk away, but she also thinks that if he came back, she’d push again.
She has only known a few men, and no one has stayed.
Daniel was her first love and sometimes she wonders—if Cora hadn’t killed him, would he have left anyway? How much blackness was in her soul from the beginning?
“Come over,” Snow says on the phone, and Regina goes, because she house is killing her and Henry is there anyway.
There’s dinner on the table, but Regina eats only a little bit.
“Hold Neal,” Snow urges, and that’s the only thing Regina can do, the only balm to her soul is that she saved this child. This child that truly doesn’t have darkness inside him.
Regina brushes her fingers against the baby’s nose and he coos at her and she smiles. When she looks up, she realizes that David and Snow are staring at her, happiness coloring their faces gold. She scowls, but there’s nothing behind it, because she’s holding their precious baby and they trust her and Snow and her have given up the fighting. For once, Regina feels like the better person Henry keeps calling her.
She kisses her son goodnight and heads back home.
Except she doesn’t go home, she takes that warmth and she lets it take her to where she knows Robin is, wandering the woods near where they read Rumplestiltskin’s letter. She still doesn’t understand how she knows where he is, but it’s magic probably, it’s probably that damn tattoo.
She watches him for long minutes from behind a tree, and then whispers his name.
It’s that stupid happiness from Snow’s house that makes her do it, but she places a hand on his cheek when he looks up and sees her. She leans in, and she kisses him gently.
It’s a quiet kiss, like two butterflies meeting on the same flower, and when she parts from him, he’s staring at her.
She starts to cry, because she knows that she wants him back. She wants them all. She wants the life that she had for an hour or two, with Henry and Roland and Snow and Robin. She wants to circle back to before.
“Goodbye,” she says, because how can she put her heart on the line like that again?
*
She likes the stillness of Zelena’s house these days, the days after the kiss, and it’s there where she sees her first glimpse of a light braid and a hand spilling ice.
Regina races out the door, her feet flying and slipping over snow. She forgets the door of Zelena’s house (it’s totally ajar), and cleaning the china, and brushing the dust out of the drapes. She loves her sister, in that strange, sad, lost way, but this is the girl they’ve been searching for.
“Wait!” she calls, and the figure turns, her lips quivering. “Wait!”
She’s preparing a fireball, but the girl stops in her tracks, and there’s a look on her face that takes Regina back, back, back to when she was marrying Leopold. When she was stepping down the aisle, and she knew that it was all over, that this man would also bed her and chain her to a life of duty, would take away girlhood and make her a sad, hateful queen. It’s familiar and the fireball disintegrates into her hand, and Regina stands in front of the ice girl with a wry smile.
She speaks to the girl as she spoke to Roland the first time she met him (it’s becoming a pattern, letting herself love more than hate, and she thinks all of Storybrooke might be proud of her, but that frightens her too).
“Hello,” Regina extends a hand. “I’m Regina.”
“My name is Elsa,” the girl says, and her voice is sweet like Roland’s was.
“Where are you from, Elsa?”
“Arendelle.”
“I’ve never heard of Arendelle. It must be far from here.”
Elsa draws her cloak around her shoulders. “I’m looking for my sister. Her name is Anna.”
Sisters. Regina thinks of Zelena, dead.
But she thinks too long, and the girl is gone, running, and Regina can’t bear to use magic on the girl who could be her.
*
Two days later, Regina belongs to a search party for Elsa. The town can’t freeze any longer, but no one is going to hunt her, not after Regina stood up and loudly proclaimed that they just can’t, that the girl is only looking for her sister. Charming repeats this to the entire group, his eyes lingering on Grumpy and Whale and Rumplestiltskin. He reminds them to be back by 5 in the evening (when it reaches unbearable temperatures), claps his hands, and lets them go.
Regina takes off on a path by herself, trying to focus her magic into some kind of locating spell. It’s Robin who distracts her, grabbing her hand.
“What the hell?” she snaps at him.
“I needed to talk to you.”
“We’re looking for Elsa, we don’t have time to talk.”
She can already feel that feeling that only Robin has given to her (the one where she’s sure the atoms of her body are collapsing into each other because of all the warmth). She has always been able to feel his presence, and now he’s close, and she wants him, but she’s sure she shouldn’t do what she’s done before (kiss him senseless) because those are the mistakes that led her to this breakdown.
Regina pulls herself out of his grip, but he runs along her side until he’s in front of her.
“You kissed me, Regina. You told me no, then you kissed me, and then you left. I,” there’s a pause, tired and anxious, “I just don’t understand.”
“Well, to be honest, I don’t either.”
“What does that mean?”
She throws her hands up. “Do you think I know how to love anyone, Robin? Daniel’s heart was ripped out before I got the chance to even try properly. Leopold wanted to be in my bed, and he bruised me and tried to break me. And then there was everyone in between him and you, and those were distractions and pretenses. I don’t know how to do this. And Marian is back, and you have a son who can’t be hurt—”
“Marian is back, but I’ve already settled that!”
They’re both panting now, and his hands are on her face, he’s stroking her cheek in that gentle way that has always pulled her and coaxed her to open up.
“I’m sorry, Regina, I’m sorry. About all of it. Daniel, Leopold, and what seeing Marian must have done to you. But she and I…I’m not the Robin she knew. She told me that almost five minutes after seeing me. And all I could think about was you, the entire time after the initial shock.”
There are tears, tears that she’d rather hold back, but can’t with that stupid, idiotic finger swiping a soft path across her face.
“You didn’t come for me. Not for the longest time.”
He sighs.
“Duty is a terrible factor, Regina. She was my wife, and I thought I should stay. But she knew and I knew that it wasn’t right.” He laughs. “And then I would come see you and I was too afraid to knock on the door. A few times you weren’t in. I saw you once after we spoke, and you looked so beautiful and strong, and I figured you probably didn’t want me any longer either. But I had to hear that from you, because my heart couldn’t take it and that’s why I finally came to your door.”
She’s shaking, and then she hears the shouts, and she’s running because this is a whole town’s safety, it’s Henry’s safety, and Roland’s safety, and Snow’s safety, and Neal’s safety, and Robin’s safety, and she has to know what’s happened.
It’s Elsa.
Elsa, who is terrified by the crowd of people trying to reach her. They’ve circled her, and it’s a bad idea, because the ice is already forming in her hands, probably not even of her own accord (her face is pale and scared).
Regina pushes through, screaming the girl’s named, trying to calm her. It’s not working, Regina can tell, and Henry, Henry, Henry, there will be no more ice for you, and Regina rushes forward and grabs Elsa’s hands.
“I have you,” Regina says. “I’ll be your sister. I’ll help you. Just please, breathe.”
It’s all she would’ve wanted someone to tell her on the nights that Leopold bruised her neck in large ugly fingerprints. When Rumplestiltskin taught her the darkest magic and she was unsure. When she killed her father for the sake of a curse.
The ice flows straight through her, and she knows only the cold.
*
She wakes up and she can’t tell why. She doesn’t understand the heat, and she’s pulling at the layers, and someone’s hands are stopping her.
“It’s still cold out,” someone, Robin, whispers into her ear, and she can hear the tears in his voice.
“What happened?”
Her mouth tastes like cardboard; her limbs feel heavy.
“You were gone,” he says, and then the tears are falling, and God, they’ve cried so much in the past hour, what has happened? “You were ice.”
She understands then what has happened, why he’s so close to her, his eyes intent.
A kiss.
She clutches at him, and he pulls her in tighter.
“Robin,” she says, “a kiss can only wake someone up if the two truly love each other.”
He only nods, burying his face into her shoulder.
It isn’t a happy ending, not yet, but the circles in her head stop spinning. She’s here, with him, and he loves her and somewhere there’s Henry and a family and the winter will stop, and that is enough for her, to not be going around and around again, writing and rewriting the same story.