❝ play with fire and
you'll get burned. ❞
･.｡.:*･ she never knew what it meant to be
happy or to be loved. while he spent more
than a lifetime travelling the world and exploring
the world, she spent hers being trapped and
to...
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Alternate Reality *tw: mentions of abuse, self harm, psychological torture and attempted suicide
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
SHE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK. He asked if she trusted him and she did but she was starting to wonder if she made a mistake by trusting him. He knew what Zelena wanted and kept it hidden and it almost cost Henry his life. She didn't know what else he could've kept hidden but she was tired of the secrets.
Zelda tried to keep herself occupied reading a book at Belle's shop and it did help to take her mind off the recent events. She read a lot during her time in Boston and then her therapist told her that reading a lot could be a form of dissociation and was something she did as a coping mechanism from everything she was going through. When Zelda first heard that, she just brushed it off. And if reading was her coping mechanism, then maybe it wasn't such a bad thing because any fictional reality that can only exist in the pages of a book would've been so much better than the reality she was forced to live in. It even made her wonder if there was an alternate reality where she was happy. Maybe a reality where her birth parents kept her and she never had to endure years of Agatha's abuse and decades of Peter Pan's psychological torture. A reality where she was loved and wanted.
She hated that she even thought about it for a second but she started to think that Zelena wanting to go back in time was understandable. Obviously doing it at the expense of four innocent people was wrong but Zelda felt like if she had a chance to change her past, she probably would've done it too. Knowing everything she went through for almost two centuries, she would've loved to go back in time and change that. She would've grown up with her birth parents and never would've had to experience so much pain. She would've had a mother who actually loved her and a father who felt just the same. She never would've felt lonely enough to be lured to Neverland and she would've had the life she wanted and the life she deserved. She hated to think such a thought but maybe she and Zelena weren't entirely different, although Zelda would never want to rob the lives of four people who had nothing to do with the way her own life turned out. Zelena blamed Regina for the way her life turned out but Zelda could never blame other people for what she went through, especially people who weren't even there when it all happened.
"What are you thinking?" Belle asked and Zelda sighed as she ran her fingers through her hair.
"This may be a terrible thought and I hate that I even thought about it. But I don't think me and Zelena are too different," Zelda said as she looked at Belle who just scoffed.
"You and that witch are nothing alike," she replied.
"But we do have something in common. We were abandoned by our birth parents and we longed for a life we could never have. Zelena simply found a way to change that and to be honest, if I was able to go back in time and change what happened so I could have a better life, I would've done it. I'm not saying that what she's doing is right because she still hurt and killed a lot of people. I'm just saying that I get where she's coming from," Zelda said as she looked down at the open book, avoiding Belle's gaze.
