To the Hearts Content

Weak

Weak

0o0

She could still feel the ghost of his thin scaly fingers gripping her delicate neck, the moistness of his cool breath against her cheek, and the words penetrating her ear, her heart, her soul.

The heart of the thing you love most, he had told her.

Regina marched around the forest in anger, she refused to go home to her father, to the thing she loved most, she refused to go to the castle and kill him. She can't.

She won't.

As dark as she was, her father was the only thing she had left, she couldn't kill him, not for something as meek as a curse. His life was far too precious. He didn't deserve this, didn't deserve a daughter that was as dark as her, he deserved to be happy and not watching Regina turned more and more into the woman he despised by her excessive use of magic. He was a kind and gentle man, a loving father who had taught her so much, her mother had already ruined him; he didn't deserve to die at her hand.

He deserves better.

Regina sat on a log in the forest and shut her eyes tightly, she knew what she was and she knew that there were powers far greater than her at play, she knew more than people – especially Rumpelstiltskin – gave her credit for, and this curse; it was a point of no return.

Maleficent's words rang in her ears; a hole in her heart. Would it really change much about her if she had yet another hole in her battered dark little heart? Probably. Yet deep in her soul she knew there was no turning back for her, she had lost so much and gained so little, she had suffered at the hand of faith and had been battered and bruised by love.

Was there anything left for her?

She wondered for a moment if she had anyone else to consider, but with an ache in her soul and in her womb she remembered that she lost all.

There was nothing left for her.

And her father, kind as he was, had never truly done his duty as a father, he had let her suffer and the hand of her mother, let her lose the things she cared about and let her be taken by a man even older than himself. Her father was of a kind soul, but he had no spine.

She still couldn't stomach killing him.

Out of all the people she had murdered by a feeble wave of her hand, twitch of the nose, raise of an eyebrow, there was nothing stopping her from killing her father.

Yet there was.

He was her father, this man that had held her during her nightmares, who had consulted her when her children were lost, the man that had been there for her when she was losing herself in the power. He was scared, she could tell, of her, yet he still stood by her side and held her hand when she was at whit's end.

Regina swallowed hard and stood in a flourish of robes and material, having pitied herself for long enough, the Queen returns back to her castle, the familiar grip of her smoke surrounds and shifts her somewhere else, she appears in the hall to her room, and the mirror appeared alongside her.

"Did you find something, Your Majesty?" he asked quickly, smoke was still dissipating around her.

"Yes," she said, "I need you to find out if my father ever had a true love," she said blankly as she walked to her chamber.