st_oriedqueen | Entries tagged with regina mills

In her office, Regina pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. It'd been months and they still hadn't worked out the second stage of Bo's Dawning trials. Molly hadn't said anything, but she didn't need to. Regina knew her well enough to see the strain in her face. She and Sam were getting worn down by Bo's needs, and by having their third involved with someone else. Dyson tried not to put any pressure on her, but he was worried, too. She'd been staying up too late, working too much, and not making enough progress.

Her mind drifted again to the invasion of the undead they'd suffered. They got in somehow, which meant there was a way out. If they could get out, the Fae magic could find Bo the way it was supposed to. And she could get home to Henry. With Dyson and Snow.

Needing a break anyway, she pulled out her journal and sent a message to Sam. I need a map of the spot you chased the golem to. Then she cast her wardrobing spell to dress herself for a ride.

--
* Pink, What About Us?

In the room in the conference center they'd appropriated to work on Bo's Dawning, Regina stood staring at the wooden arch. Venom all but dripped from her non-existent fangs, and her hands curled at her sides like claws. She ran the transform spell through her mind again, cast it, and watched the sickly green energy pop and crackle around the top curve. It spread as far as the supports and then just plain fizzled out.

No point looking for anyone to test it. It hadn't taken.

"Grrr-argh!" Snarling like a beast, she spun away. Fire leaped to the fingertips of both hands, and with another loud snarl, she flung twin fireballs the length of the conference hall. They hit, and caught, encasing the far wall in a sheet of vicious flame--

That burned angrily for thirty seconds before the fireproofing that Sam and Molly had rigged after the third time she almost torched the entire building put it out.

As evening fell over the Beara Peninsula, Ireland, Regina dismounted the gorgeous, dapple grey Irish hunter she'd spent the better part of three days riding. She ran the stirrups up on the saddle, loosened the girth, and then lifted the reins over the mare's head.

While she walked the mare, she pulled out her cell-phone. It had been three days since she had spoken to Dyson, although she'd caught sight of his wolf a few times, and she missed him. She sent a quick text to let him know she was back.

At the stables. Need a bath, but then I'm all yours.

When Regina left Snow, she didn't chance walking anywhere with that casket. Or running into anyone in her state of mind. If she were asked, there were exactly two people who were safe from her in her current mood and herself was not one of them.

She'd spoken to one, and now teleported herself directly to the room of the other. He wasn't there, and ordinarily she would wait in her own. She could not, not now, not with Graham's heart in her hands and Daniel's ghost there to ask questions, point fingers, heap shame.

Instead, she sat as she had when Snow found her, with her arms around her knees, at the very head of his bed, as though she tried to push herself through the headboard and the wall. The box and its precious contents sat at the very far end of the bed, secure, but it could get no farther from her. Neither did she let her gaze leave it. Not once.

"Well," Regina said, arms outstretched as she turned in a circle to show off the 'new look' she'd given her room. "What do you think?"

It wouldn't last. Nothing in the Inn did. Not redecoration. Not beneficial friendships. Not daughters with no interest in sex.

For such a small place, with so little of interest, it had a remarkable impermanence and a high rate of change. She supposed that came with the territory. It being an Inn, the sort of place most people spent a night or three at most. The Inn itself insisted on staying the same, but it did so by virtue of changing anything that altered it too much.

An oxymoron, like a love affair without love.

Of course she hadn't talked about it, Dyson ending things. She hadn't even talked about it (much) when she went to Molly, eyes black with pain, and spent the night. Molly didn't need her to talk to know she needed something else to keep her on the light side of the line.

Snow knew, because Snow did. The same way Regina knew something was changing in Snow. But neither of them talked, because neither knew how. So she made a new room in browns and creams, the colors of the wide-open plains instead of the red that Snow despised. A new room with new rules.

Maybe they'd give talking a try.

Several very neat handwritten flyers with tear-off strips at the bottom appear in places people tend to congregate. They read as follows.

Wanted:

* mechanically minded individual
* with knowledge of metalworking
* and firearms

To assist with a personal project.

Additional requirements:

* discretion
* timeliness
* immediate availability

Contact: Regina Mills, Rm 195, ext 195, or management office

Her daughter running the stables meant Regina knew the horses from head to hock and beyond. She knew their temperaments, their quirks, their hearts... and it also meant that there was no one but Snow or the cowboy to bother her if she happened to slip out to the stables in the middle of the night.

Tonight, the moon had come up full and huge, and her memories likewise. Stolen kisses with Daniel, secret assignations with Mal or Tinkerbell, the clock in the tower stuck at 8:15 with the moon behind it, Neverland nights trying to find Henry, moonlit walks with Robin, and incongruously also moonlit rides with Graham and the wolf pack trying to find Snow. In an effort to banish them, she'd gone to the stall of her favorite, a pinto half-Arabian mare named Compass Rose who went by the barn name of Grace, with a grooming basket and carrots. The peaceful night, punctuated by the munching of hay, the whisk of Grace's tail or the soft whuffle when her muzzle looted Regina's pockets for treats, called to something in Regina, a deep, nameless yearning that ached and ached and ached.

At length, grooming the mare couldn't staunch the flow of grief, and Regina gave in to that yearning. She slipped a hackamore over Grace's head, transmuted her clothes to riding breeches and a loose-fitting top, and led the mare out of the barn. It had been half a century since the last time, but Regina leaped up to her bare back as nimbly as a rodeo acrobat, murmured praise to Grace and together they escaped into the night.

Every muscle in Regina's body ached, but somehow she felt more at peace than she had since she arrived. Maybe there was something to this "working out" business. If nothing else, it was something to do with her early mornings when sleep fled and the prospect of paperwork made her want to weep. It was something to do with her late nights, when her bed was empty and her dreams would turn unkind.

If nothing else, it was something to do that hurt no one and required her to interact with no one. The only person she could hurt on an "elliptical" was herself.

And afterward, the hot tub and the sauna offered comfort, solace, a little of the warmth of the embrace she'd lost. This, she genuinely looked forward to, and she felt strangely serene as she entered the shadowy sauna (she preferred the darkness to the harsh, unnatural light; it was kinder to her tired eyes). Once the door closed, she untucked the towel around her breasts and spread it on the bench, and then went and lay facedown on it. As the tension in her back and hips eased, she sighed contentedly, and let her mind start to drift.

"You have got to be kidding me," Regina muttered under her breath as she peered through the door she'd just opened. After a dumbfounded, annoyed moment, she asked Snow, "Are they all like this?" No wonder Snow hadn't wanted to go back to her room.

She could march back down to the lobby and demand another room, but she doubted she'd get one, and she was more interested in what Snow would tell her. Like where Robin and Roland were and whether Henry had arrived with them, or anyone else she knew. She hadn't asked yet, in case they were hiding or organizing a resistance or because they might not be here and she didn't want to cry in public.

Sighing, she squared her shoulders and gestured Snow into the red monstrosity in "Tack Room." "If the red is too much...we can just go for a walk."

Although she'd used magic openly to protect Snow, Regina glanced over her shoulder several times to be sure no one would be entering the vending area behind her. She didn't have appropriate coins, didn't want to go to get them, didn't want to go down to the bar or call someone to come up, but she did want to get her daughter a root beer, and she'd prefer not to begin her stay at the Inn with security rousting her for stealing a couple of cans of soda.

Really, she did want to get the root beer. Taking care of Snow in the small ways she'd let her was something Regina had missed, dearly, when Snow disappeared from Gotham. But she'd also hit the wall where the weight of what she'd lost pressed in on her. Rather than have Snow feel she wasn't enough for Regina, Regina took herself and her grief over Roland and Robin (and Rebekah and Atticus and little Rowan and Endor and Enchanted Shores and the Co-op and and and) for a walk from Room 195 (she refused to call it the Tack Room) to the soda and ice machines at the other end of the hall.

So maybe it was the few tears she'd allowed to escape that she didn't want security to see as much as the magic. No one else needed to know that. A Queen doesn't let her people see her cry, Regina, her mother's voice scolded from the distance of more than fifty years and at least three worlds. And much as she wanted to tell that voice off -- again -- Regina absolutely did force herself to stem the flow of grief after she "summoned" four cans of root beer from the machine (now that she could envision where they were, she wouldn't have to leave the room to do it). And when she left the vending area, she looked every ounce a Queen, only very slightly tearstained, and focused intently on the project of repressing her emotions on her walk back to her room.