Chapter Text
Regina didn’t sleep well last night.
Maybe she had a little too much of the wine Peter and Benni brought to the dinner party, or maybe doing the dishes was exceptionally hard this time, since the thunderstorm caused a temporary power cut, breaking down her dishwasher.
When she finally put the last dish on the drainer, the thunderstorm was finally starting to lose its power. As she was wiping her hands on the towel, Charlotte's wedding invitation on the kitchen table caught her eye. She made a mental note to respond while she was preparing for bed. She didn't want to admit since she was always inclined to be "the polite host" but she got tired tonight. She tucked herself in bed, pulled the covers to her chin and closed her eyes, expecting a deep sleep.
For a couple of minutes she listened to the sound of light rain, pattering against the windows to ease her fall into sleep but... no success. She had to make a conscious effort to relax her body, by keeping her eyes closed and taking deep slow breaths.
There at the verge of unconsciousness, thoughts started to surface…This night...The thunderstorm…Black out…Hannah’s words at the table… Yeah, what the hell was that?
“Infinite darkness” Hannah described her dream: “No wanting, No tomorrow, No today.” Regina has been thinking about those words all night. As she has been falling into her own darkness, she hears a calm voice calling for her:
“What’s that?” she asks to the empty void as she takes a blind step into one direction. She realizes she is wearing her favorite sweater, from years ago. A pale green one with embroidered pink roses on its front. Then she stares at her smaller then usual hands. She tilts her head to look closer and a strand of fuzzy, curly hair falls in front of her eyes. She tucks her hair back and looks across the darkness.
“Regina” the voice calls again. When she turns her face towards its direction, she realizes a hand touching her left arm. It is firm but gentle. She can not see who is touching, but the warmness of it radiates all around her body. The voice speaks again: “Everything is okay.”
Her heart starts to race as she repeats these words out loud, with a question mark at the end: “Everything’s okay!? Who are you!?” She impatiently waits for an answer as she reaches with her other arm, towards to spot where the hand rests, but the warmness it radiates is already dissolving into air, lifting up small fibres of her sweater with it. Then she feels the rise of electricity all over her body, right before a loud…
Clap of thunder echoed around, made her jump. She sat up on her bed. She was panting. After she managed to take control of her breath, she put on her robe and went to the kitchen to have a glass of water.
What the hell was that?
As she was going back to the bedroom, down the hallway, she catches her own image on the mirror. She stopped to look at herself. Her face. It was sad. She was sad. But why? There was no reason. She was happy. Everything was okay. Tonight, she didn’t even answer her own question at the dinner table, because she didn’t wish anything to change, even the world had ended today. She would prefer everything to stay forever the same.
Her face puckered up, her lips quivered. She bit her lips. It was a habit she developed as a last ditch effort to hold back her tears. However her trick didn’t work this time and a persistent teardrop let itself fall on her right cheek.
It was all happening too fast. She lost her father, got the full responsibility of the hotel, became the sole caregiver of her mother, all of her friends either got married or in a significant relationship. People were having kids. It felt like in one way or another, every body was moving on with their lives except her. But she was happy with her life. She just didn’t want others to move on so fast.
Then she touched the spot, the hand in her dream rested on. It was as if she wanted to sense the warmness inside her again. How long has been since she has been touched like this? She had her boyfriends, one time she was about to marry but she called it off. Did she love him? Well…Let’s say, she was observant enough to understand that she wasn’t loved that much either.
She shook her head to dismiss these thoughts but they kept coming. She had a great love inside her to give to someone and yet sometimes it felt like all this love is wasted. She wondered what would have happened if she had taken a different path in her life? Would she have encountered that someone in her dream, if she had a different past in which she dared to take a step into the darkness?
She sighed deeply. For now she was left with the pain of the wasted love she carried with herself all her life. She knew that tomorrow, she will probably feel better. She couldn’t help herself but remember the words that the voice said in her dream. It made her smile a little. She opened her mouth to repeat them out loud in front of the mirror. It was as if another Regina was encouraging her from another world:
“Everything is okay”