She's My Daughter

The Truth...well part of it

Selena POV

I sat curled up on the sofa watching Gossip Girl, my head resting on a pillow and my legs curled beneath me. Regina sat on the other side of the sofa reading, or so she says (I've caught her staring at the screen before she's hastily looked back at her book when she sees me smirking at her). However, she looked very nervous. I kept trying to ask her why but she just shrugged it off and told me she had a lot of work to do. Just as the episode finished and Regina had set down a mug of steaming hot chocolate in front of me, she cleared her throat and turned off the TV.
"I have something to tell you." She announced, her voice trembling. I immediately knew she was going to send me back. Send me back to that wretched prison they call a care home.
"You're sending me back, aren't you?" I said quietly.
"Sending you- No! No, of course not!" She cried. I shook my head. She was lying.
"It's okay. I'm used to it." I shrugged, trying to act like I didn't care.
"Selena-" She began.
"I must have done something wrong. What have I done? Was it the shower incident? Do you just not want me anymore?" I asked, beginning to tear up but also beginning to feel the tickles of anger.
"No, Selena, it's nothing like that." She said as tears streamed down her face. "Really, it isn't. I will never send you back to that dump. Never."
"Really?" I asked anxiously.
"Really." She smiled through her tears.
I grinned in relief. "Then what is it?"
"First I have a question." She said, turning to look at me so we were both facing each other cross legged on the sofa.
"Yeah?"
"Are you happy here?"
I stared at her. Wasn't it obvious? "Of course I am!" I laughed.
"No seriously, Selena. Are you happy?" She said seriously.
"Yes." I said quietly. "I am. This is the first place where I've felt like I...like I belong." I blushed at the words. I was so not emotional about these things. She smiled then. A smile that made her whole face shine with happiness.
"Good. Then I think it's time to tell you."
"If you're gonna tell me this is all a dream or something, I will not be impressed." I joked.
"Not quite." She laughed. Then she took a deep breath and held my hands in hers.
"Selena, I'm your mother."

*****

I stared at her. This couldn't be real. It couldn't.
"So that's how you managed to get me here." I mumbled. It's strange how the brain works, isn't it? Making me think of such an incredibly irrelevant comment to make in response to the life-changing statement that had just passed Regina's lips.
"What?" She frowned.
"That's how you got me here. Legally, I mean." I explained.
"Oh. Yes, that's why I have legal claims to you." She responded, confusion still evident on her face.
"I was going to ask you." I muttered. "I wonder what you'd say. Just another lie I suppose." I said, anger creeping into my voice.
"Selena-" She started, her eyes beginning to water.
"Save it." I snapped, and with that I jerked my hands out of her grip and stalked out of the room, my heart a hell of a lot heavier than it had been when I'd entered it.

Regina POV

I sat numb on the sofa, my mind and heart still racing. I threw my head back against the sofa and groaned. I knew it would be hard but I didn't know it would be this hard. Although this did just feel like the calm before the storm. What was I meant to do now? Go to her? Give her space? We were going to have to talk about this, she knew we were. She would ask me why I didn't come and find her. Why I had even abandoned her in the first place. Tears spilled down my cheeks just at the thought. But what was I meant to tell her? That she was the daughter of the Evil Queen from the fairytale Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin had cast her away? Oh, and not forgetting the ever so lovely help from the Queen of Hearts. She would think I was so damn mental that she'd probably run away. And I was not going to lose her. No way.

Selena POV

I  sat cross legged on my bed, half crying and half fuming. Why was I so angry? So upset? Anyone in their right minds would be overwhelmed with happiness if they had just found their birth mother and yet here I was, crying quietly as I simultaneously beat up a pillow. But I knew why I was so conflicted. I had just found the woman who had abandoned me. The woman who had left me in a stable when I was literally a newborn. The woman who hadn't bothered looking for me for sixteen years. What had I done wrong? Why had she even left me if she wanted me so badly now? I let out a sob and fell face down onto my bed, my tears soaking the abused pillow. Through my sobs, however, I heard a soft knocking sound coming from the door. Regina. She wanted to speak to me. I glared at the pillow almost as if I was blaming it and then chucked it at the door, hoping she would get the message.
"Selena?" She said softly. I didn't reply. She obviously didn't get the hint. Or she was just ignoring it. The thought almost made me crack a smile. Almost.
"Selena, I'm coming in." She announced and then she pushed open the door and walked in, her determined face falling as she saw my tear streaked one.
"Oh, sweetheart." She said sadly as she hurried towards me and pulled me into her arms. I tried to pull away from her, to twist myself out of her grasp, but she was too strong. Eventually I gave in and collapsed onto her shoulder, tears still streaming down my face.
"Selena." She said quietly. "Selena, let me explain."
I nodded and pulled away, wiping tears away from my face as I did so and noticing she was doing the same.
"I think you'd better." I agreed. I was almost angry at myself for being less angry than I felt I should have been but I pushed the feeling away, knowing I had to keep a clear mind if I was going to be able to hear her out.
"First things first, I didn't leave you." She began.
"You didn't leave me?" I said incredulously. "So abandoning me in a stable when I was a baby wasn't leaving me?" I cried, anger coursing through my veins. So much for keeping a clear mind.
"Selena, calm down!"
"No, I will not calm down!" I shouted as I leapt to my feet. "How can you tell me you didn't leave me? For sixteen years you left me, Regina! I had no idea who I was or where I came from for sixteen years. I still don't! All I knew was that my mother and father didn't want me. That I obviously wasn't good enough for them, just like those girls at school constantly reminded me-" I yelled, my voice breaking as I remembered the torture they had put me through.
"Selena-" Regina started, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"No. Let me finish." I demanded. She just stared at me, her brown eyes glistening with tears.
"For sixteen years I had no idea what I had done wrong. I kept battling that one question, the question that haunted me all the bloody time: why would anyone want to give me up? What had I done that was so bad that my own mother had abandoned me? And living with that, living with the knowledge that you will never be loved because your own mother couldn't love you is not an easy thing, Regina. It's not an easy thing at all." I finished, tears pouring down my face now. She just looked at me, pain etched in every line of her face, sadness filling every tear that dropped from her eyes, guilt protruding with every breath she took.
"I'm so sorry." She whispered, tears spilling onto my pillow as she looked down at her feet.
"Just tell me why." I said curtly, sitting back down.
"Okay. But it's a lot to take in."
"I'm ready." I said, determined to know the truth. She smiled weakly at me.
"I know you are. But we need to do this properly. Can you let me do that? Please?" She asked. I stared at her. She wanted me to give her even more time? Was sixteen bloody years not enough? Despite my fury, I found myself nodding almost involuntarily.
"Thank you." She said relieved. "Now let me tell you the gist of it." She looked at me almost as if waiting for my approval and when I didn't say anything, she carried on.
"What I meant to say was that I didn't leave you voluntarily. I was forced to give you up. And I don't mean peer pressure, I mean you were forcefully pried from my hands minutes after you had been born and sent away to a place I didn't find out until much later."
I wanted to interrupt, to ask so many questions but my immediate happiness at her words and how she hadn't wanted to leave me were beginning to push out the anger and so I decided to just keep listening, not trusting myself to speak just yet.
"So anyway, you were taken from me and not once, not once, did I give up on you. I searched land after land for you but I couldn't find you. Couldn't even find a trace of you. And so, after another long period of time, I found myself a new life in Storybrooke. But I didn't stop looking for you. I looked for you for so long, but the hole in my heart just deepened with every day that I was without you. And so I adopted Henry, hoping that by caring for him, I would be able to pay back some of the guilt I felt for not being able to raise you. And then, about a week before I came to you at school, Emma found the article that said a baby had been found in a stable in Maine and I knew immediately that it was you. So the next week, I jumped on a plane and came to visit you at school and, well, you know the rest." She summed up. Her eyes met mine then and I knew she was searching for a sign of forgiveness, trust, anything. And I believed her. I didn't know why, but I did.
"Okay." I muttered, trying to form logical sentences even though my brain still seemed slightly behind schedule, what with this new advancement taking up nearly every cell in my being to comprehend. "I believe you."
Her face spilt into a huge beam then, her eyes crinkling and her white teeth sparkling. "Thank you." She whispered.
"But I want to know more." I interrupted. "I want to know who took me away from you and I want to know why. I want to know how Emma could find me but you couldn't. I want to know what happened to my father-"
"He's dead." Regina said quietly. I stared at her, my mouth frozen open.
"He's-he's dead?"
"Yes. And I will explain that to you when the time is right too."
"But I want to know-" I began.
"I know you do, honey. But please, just let me do this the right way." She begged.
"As long as it's not another sixteen years." I said, not sure myself whether I was being serious or joking.
"Definitely not sixteen years." Regina smiled. "How about within the next week?"
"How about tomorrow?" I bargained. She laughed.
"Okay. Tomorrow." She nodded, almost as if she was convincing herself.
I smiled. I had just found my mother and she had been looking for me my whole life. I wasn't alone anymore. I looked up and met Regina's eyes.
"I'm sorry for exploding on you." I mumbled.
"You do not need to apologise!" She exclaimed. "Although you may want to remember this moment as it is highly unlikely that I will ever say that again." I laughed.
"Selena?" She asked, her face getting all serious again.
"Yeah?"
"I may not have wanted to leave you, but that doesn't excuse the fact that you grew up without a mother. Without someone to care for you. I am so sorry for that." She said, her voice cracking with sorrow and her eyes filling with tears once again.
"Regina-" I began.
"No, let me finish." She said, echoing my words from earlier on.
I nodded.
"I should have done whatever it took to keep you. But I was so weak, so sad, so hurt. But that shouldn't have been an excuse. I should have put up more of a fight."
She looked at me then, her brown eyes boring into mine.
"Selena, I am so sorry. Please, please forgive me." She begged, her voice full of guilt and pain. I looked at her. I looked at her tear filled eyes which carried so much guilt and grief. I knew then that I would forgive her. That I always would have.
"I forgive you." I said quietly. She laughed with relief and pulled me in for a hug, my head resting on her shoulder and her arms wrapped tightly around me, her hands rubbing my back soothingly. I don't know how much later it was, but soon I had been taken by the gentle clutches of sleep as I lay safe in my mother's arms.