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Entry tags:
Henry's Mother
Title: Henry's Mother
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Characters/Pairing: Regina, also mentions Henry, Cora, and Henry Senior
Rating: PG-13/T
Challenge/Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
onceuponaland RL-C2: Mother-child vs. Father-child (If you join, tell them Kat Lee of Team Regina sent you!)
Word Count: 1,618
Warnings: Mild SPOILERS
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their rightful owners, not the author.
She steps into the crypt, feeling more alone than she has in a long while. She's been lonely for a long time now, but it's made worse on this special day. She never celebrated this day before Henry came into her life, but from the moment he first understood the holiday, hugged her, and gave her her very first handmade card, she has loved all things to do with Mother's Day. He's made every holiday special for her until she had to let him go last year. She doesn't remember the holidays since then, and this is the first since he's returned into her life.
He's back, and yet he doesn't know her. He looks at her through eyes so full of mistrust that just to look back at him hurts. She wants to tell him, but yet, she can't. It isn't simply that Emma is standing in her way. She could easily take him to the side and tell him everything without her knowing until it was too late, but he wouldn't believe her.
This Henry, this child who is still her son but yet at the same time is a stranger, doesn't believe in magic. The Henry who first made Emma believe in all the things they knew to be true doesn't believe in Fairies or Princes and Princesses or even happy endings. Regina wonders if he's ever even read a fairy tale in his whole life. This boy is far too hooked on video games to have spent the hours that he used to spend looking at one book reading any books.
She's wondered about his education for that very reason, but that isn't important right now. Besides, the boy is still as smart as he ever was as her child -- perhaps not in the same ways, but still certainly beyond his years. He already knows things Emma wishes he didn't, and Regina knows he suspects far more. She'd like to tell him, but she doesn't even know how to begin.
She's schemed over it for hours since he's been back. She's thought of using her magic in front of him, of conjuring something, anything, out of thin air, but to see a woman he doesn't know wield magic when he doesn't believe in it will only frighten the child. He's too uncomfortable around her as it is; she couldn't bear to see him actually be afraid of her.
As she walks through the familiar crypt, her mind goes back to other holidays, to better days, to the times before he felt he had to know his birth mother, and yet again, the mighty Queen questions herself. Was she truly a good mother to Henry, the mother he deserved? If he loved her as much as he seemed to back then, why did he have to find Emma? Why did he have to bring the Savior to them?
The truth is so painful that it cuts deeper than any knife or other manmade weapon possibly could. No matter how hard she tried to be a good mother, no matter what she did for him or gave to him, she was still the evil Queen in his eyes. She was still evil then, she admits to no one but herself. She was still wicked and cruel and would have easily and gladly hurt any of the people she now considers her allies, but for Henry, she changed. Henry's love for her made her want to be a better person to keep that love, to keep her child, the most important treasure she's ever had, but yet in trying to be good, she had to let him go.
Her head hangs. She sinks down against a wall. This place reeks of death, darkness, and despair, but she doesn't care. In fact, she finds it quite fitting. She's lost her son, maybe forever. The only reason she's still carrying on this tirade of trying to be good and fight her sister is because she knows Zelena will go after Henry the very first moment she begins to suspect how important he is to her. She doesn't have her heart yet, but if she learns that Henry is her son, she'll take him and have a weapon that she can use against Regina far more easily.
Regina isn't concerned about what her sister might do to her, not really. She no longer cares what happens to her. She hasn't wanted to live since she lost Henry; she still doesn't. However, if Zelena takes Henry to use against her, there's no telling the amount of harm she'll do her child, and the one thing Regina's been ready to die for years now to protect is her son. He's everything to her still, even without knowing her to be his mother, and the only truly important thing she has left to cherish.
Regina looks around her through her tears. She tried so hard to be a good mother, to earn and keep his love, and yet she lost him. But still, she tried. "That's more than I can say for you, eh, mother?" Her voice is a hoarse whisper from the tears strangling it, but yet, still her words echo in this room of death. They come back to her several times, making her think more and wonder.
Her father tried to be a good father to her, but he never stood up to her mother. If he had, Cora would have destroyed him for he had no magic of his own. He was a smart man, she supposed, to find a way to live with the woman who was so mad, power hungry, and also powerful in her own way. She never owned her father's heart, but one thought from her could have killed him as easily as she had killed Daniel. Perhaps, Regina tells herself again for the first time since she'd been a girl, perhaps that was the reason why he didn't stand up for her, why he never tried to fight her mother, so that he could live and be with her, so she could have at least one parent who wanted to be there for her.
She hangs her head, her tears changing course, as shame overtakes her. She killed him. She killed her own daddy so that she could enact the first curse and bring them all here. She killed him so that she could finally have he revenge against Snow. She should have seen that he was more important. She should have seen that he loved her. But she didn't.
It isn't until this very day, as she cries her heart out alone, that she realizes just how much her father did love her. He had to have known, or at least guessed, that he was the most important thing to her. She remembers the look in his eyes when she killed him: He had been shocked, but he'd also accepted it, accepted her act and motives, accepted that his only daughter was killing him. And, even then, there'd been no sign of hatred toward her in his eyes.
Regina closes her own eyes as she weeps uncontrollably. The doors concealing the hearts and ashes alike rattle as her dark powers threaten to kick in, but she keeps them in check. She won't go down that road again, she promises. She'll never make Henry look at her in that way. She'll never again be the woman of whom he has to be afraid.
But is it too late? she wonders fearfully. How can she save him when she is beyond saving herself? How can she ever get her child back when there's no potion or magic left enough in this land to make him remember her? She was evil, and for that, she paid the ultimate price. It wasn't killing her father; it was losing her son.
She's heard and so many lines about parenting over her years. Some of them come back to her now. A woman is never complete until she has a child of her own. A mother is reborn when she gives birth. A child is every mother's bundle of joy. You never learn to really love until you have children. None of these were true in her mother's case. Cora never loved -- she never wanted to --, but Regina did and still does.
The shaking stops. Her powers calm. She focuses, for several minutes, on her breathing until it, too, is regulated and her tears have at least ceased. "You're not going to win, Mother," she says to the empty room so full of spirits she can feel but not see. "I won't let you. I'll never be you."
She rises with the elegant grace that she, as a naturally born Queen, possesses and heads out to face the day and all the horrors it possesses, the worst of which, she knows, will be Henry looks right at her and doesn't see his mother. She won't be like Cora. She'll never again let darkness or power rule her. She will keep love as her guiding force, and one day, some way, she will make Henry remember and love her again.
She remembers Rumpelstiltskin's words as she leaves her family crypt. Villains don't get happy endings, but by all the powers, but good and evil, that have ever touched this land, she is tired of being a villainess. She will be the villain no more. For one boy, she will be the hero, and when that precious child again looks at her with eyes shining full of love and joy, she knows all the heartache and misery will be worth it to again and forever be Henry's mother.
The End
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Characters/Pairing: Regina, also mentions Henry, Cora, and Henry Senior
Rating: PG-13/T
Challenge/Prompt:
onceuponaland RL-C2: Mother-child vs. Father-child (If you join, tell them Kat Lee of Team Regina sent you!)Word Count: 1,618
Warnings: Mild SPOILERS
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters belong to their rightful owners, not the author.
She steps into the crypt, feeling more alone than she has in a long while. She's been lonely for a long time now, but it's made worse on this special day. She never celebrated this day before Henry came into her life, but from the moment he first understood the holiday, hugged her, and gave her her very first handmade card, she has loved all things to do with Mother's Day. He's made every holiday special for her until she had to let him go last year. She doesn't remember the holidays since then, and this is the first since he's returned into her life.
He's back, and yet he doesn't know her. He looks at her through eyes so full of mistrust that just to look back at him hurts. She wants to tell him, but yet, she can't. It isn't simply that Emma is standing in her way. She could easily take him to the side and tell him everything without her knowing until it was too late, but he wouldn't believe her.
This Henry, this child who is still her son but yet at the same time is a stranger, doesn't believe in magic. The Henry who first made Emma believe in all the things they knew to be true doesn't believe in Fairies or Princes and Princesses or even happy endings. Regina wonders if he's ever even read a fairy tale in his whole life. This boy is far too hooked on video games to have spent the hours that he used to spend looking at one book reading any books.
She's wondered about his education for that very reason, but that isn't important right now. Besides, the boy is still as smart as he ever was as her child -- perhaps not in the same ways, but still certainly beyond his years. He already knows things Emma wishes he didn't, and Regina knows he suspects far more. She'd like to tell him, but she doesn't even know how to begin.
She's schemed over it for hours since he's been back. She's thought of using her magic in front of him, of conjuring something, anything, out of thin air, but to see a woman he doesn't know wield magic when he doesn't believe in it will only frighten the child. He's too uncomfortable around her as it is; she couldn't bear to see him actually be afraid of her.
As she walks through the familiar crypt, her mind goes back to other holidays, to better days, to the times before he felt he had to know his birth mother, and yet again, the mighty Queen questions herself. Was she truly a good mother to Henry, the mother he deserved? If he loved her as much as he seemed to back then, why did he have to find Emma? Why did he have to bring the Savior to them?
The truth is so painful that it cuts deeper than any knife or other manmade weapon possibly could. No matter how hard she tried to be a good mother, no matter what she did for him or gave to him, she was still the evil Queen in his eyes. She was still evil then, she admits to no one but herself. She was still wicked and cruel and would have easily and gladly hurt any of the people she now considers her allies, but for Henry, she changed. Henry's love for her made her want to be a better person to keep that love, to keep her child, the most important treasure she's ever had, but yet in trying to be good, she had to let him go.
Her head hangs. She sinks down against a wall. This place reeks of death, darkness, and despair, but she doesn't care. In fact, she finds it quite fitting. She's lost her son, maybe forever. The only reason she's still carrying on this tirade of trying to be good and fight her sister is because she knows Zelena will go after Henry the very first moment she begins to suspect how important he is to her. She doesn't have her heart yet, but if she learns that Henry is her son, she'll take him and have a weapon that she can use against Regina far more easily.
Regina isn't concerned about what her sister might do to her, not really. She no longer cares what happens to her. She hasn't wanted to live since she lost Henry; she still doesn't. However, if Zelena takes Henry to use against her, there's no telling the amount of harm she'll do her child, and the one thing Regina's been ready to die for years now to protect is her son. He's everything to her still, even without knowing her to be his mother, and the only truly important thing she has left to cherish.
Regina looks around her through her tears. She tried so hard to be a good mother, to earn and keep his love, and yet she lost him. But still, she tried. "That's more than I can say for you, eh, mother?" Her voice is a hoarse whisper from the tears strangling it, but yet, still her words echo in this room of death. They come back to her several times, making her think more and wonder.
Her father tried to be a good father to her, but he never stood up to her mother. If he had, Cora would have destroyed him for he had no magic of his own. He was a smart man, she supposed, to find a way to live with the woman who was so mad, power hungry, and also powerful in her own way. She never owned her father's heart, but one thought from her could have killed him as easily as she had killed Daniel. Perhaps, Regina tells herself again for the first time since she'd been a girl, perhaps that was the reason why he didn't stand up for her, why he never tried to fight her mother, so that he could live and be with her, so she could have at least one parent who wanted to be there for her.
She hangs her head, her tears changing course, as shame overtakes her. She killed him. She killed her own daddy so that she could enact the first curse and bring them all here. She killed him so that she could finally have he revenge against Snow. She should have seen that he was more important. She should have seen that he loved her. But she didn't.
It isn't until this very day, as she cries her heart out alone, that she realizes just how much her father did love her. He had to have known, or at least guessed, that he was the most important thing to her. She remembers the look in his eyes when she killed him: He had been shocked, but he'd also accepted it, accepted her act and motives, accepted that his only daughter was killing him. And, even then, there'd been no sign of hatred toward her in his eyes.
Regina closes her own eyes as she weeps uncontrollably. The doors concealing the hearts and ashes alike rattle as her dark powers threaten to kick in, but she keeps them in check. She won't go down that road again, she promises. She'll never make Henry look at her in that way. She'll never again be the woman of whom he has to be afraid.
But is it too late? she wonders fearfully. How can she save him when she is beyond saving herself? How can she ever get her child back when there's no potion or magic left enough in this land to make him remember her? She was evil, and for that, she paid the ultimate price. It wasn't killing her father; it was losing her son.
She's heard and so many lines about parenting over her years. Some of them come back to her now. A woman is never complete until she has a child of her own. A mother is reborn when she gives birth. A child is every mother's bundle of joy. You never learn to really love until you have children. None of these were true in her mother's case. Cora never loved -- she never wanted to --, but Regina did and still does.
The shaking stops. Her powers calm. She focuses, for several minutes, on her breathing until it, too, is regulated and her tears have at least ceased. "You're not going to win, Mother," she says to the empty room so full of spirits she can feel but not see. "I won't let you. I'll never be you."
She rises with the elegant grace that she, as a naturally born Queen, possesses and heads out to face the day and all the horrors it possesses, the worst of which, she knows, will be Henry looks right at her and doesn't see his mother. She won't be like Cora. She'll never again let darkness or power rule her. She will keep love as her guiding force, and one day, some way, she will make Henry remember and love her again.
She remembers Rumpelstiltskin's words as she leaves her family crypt. Villains don't get happy endings, but by all the powers, but good and evil, that have ever touched this land, she is tired of being a villainess. She will be the villain no more. For one boy, she will be the hero, and when that precious child again looks at her with eyes shining full of love and joy, she knows all the heartache and misery will be worth it to again and forever be Henry's mother.
The End