Finding You Always

Heartless, Pt 2

Chapter 142: Heartless, Pt 2

Rose and Fandral watched the girls play at the playground that afternoon. They had offered to take Summer with them so the girls could play and hopefully keep them from realizing the true gravity of what was facing them. Fandral could feel the distress rolling off his wife in waves and reached over to gently squeeze her hand.

"I can't believe he is doing this...how has it come to this?" she wondered.

"I don't know, my love. I do not envy David possibly having to explain any of this to little Summer. I don't know what I would do if I had to explain the same to our little Carina," he mentioned. She squeezed his hand and put her arms around him, as she leaned against him.

Summer jumped off the swing and trekked over to the castle shaped playground. She was about to step up onto the platform, when she noticed something shiny in the sand below. She picked it up and Carina peered at it with her.

"Oh pretty...what is that?" she asked. Summer shrugged.

"I don't know...but I can ask my Nana later. If it has magic, she can tell," Summer said, as she put it safely in her pocket and they went back to playing.

It didn't take long for them to recognize the direction they were going and he allowed himself a small smile when they soon stood below the Toll Bridge.

"I guess we should have known it would be somewhere near here," he mentioned, as he held her hand and looked over at her. But he frowned, as he saw the despondent look on her face.

"Hey..." he said, as gently cupped her beautiful face in his hands and she looked up at him with watery eyes.

"No one is taking you from me...from us, least of all that sick psychopath. This will work," he promised. She closed her eyes and relished it when he pulled her flush against him, enveloping her against his chest like a protective shell that she never wanted to leave. He lay his head atop hers, as Regina turned away to give them a few moments. Her mind was still working overtime, trying to think of other ways to diffuse Jekyll's plan if this didn't work. The thought of losing Snow terrified her too, especially to someone so frightening that planned to do horrifying things to her.

She hated admitting that there was a time when she would have eagerly handed her step-daughter over to someone like Jekyll to be rid of her. She would have relished Snow's suffering and she hated that about herself. Separating from her other half had forced her to revisit a lot of the memories from that dark time in her life. She was wrestling a lot with that these days, especially with all the ramifications that her actions were now having on her family. Things she had done thirty years ago had come back to haunt them in a way she hoped they never would. The Count of Monte Cristo had only been the beginning.

Now the dream magic she had been foolishly playing around with that been the stepping stone to allow Jekyll to invade Snow's mind and nearly assault her. As much as Snow would refute it, Regina knew she had partial responsibility for the broken look on her step-daughter's face. If she could have, she would have destroyed her other half for helping Jekyll do this. But she couldn't...that was too easy, because the Queen was her darkness and she could never truly be rid of her.

Snow looked up at him with trepidation in her eyes.

"We have to be prepared though if it doesn't work," she reminded. But he shook his head.

"I will not lose you to him...I won't let him do this!" he hissed, as she caressed his face.

"You know that I can't let everyone die if there's something I can do to stop it," she said, choking back sobs.