Lithium (Once Upon a Time)

Chapter Nineteen: The strange case of Regina Mills

Storybrooke, 21st December, 2012...

Emma: Doctor Glass stared at me, piercing his eyes. I was sure he asked me something, before staring at me, with a serious look. Yet, I didn't recall what was it.

Nonetheless, I was more worried to deal with Regina's situation and get the doctor to take me to her.

"Very well. If this is your choice, then, okay. I'll take you to her." Doctor Glass took me and Henry to Regina, reluctantly.

The corridors of the psych award were just awful. There was a lady with a very weird looking hairstyle and a white clothing, she had strong face figures and a mighty look.

Doctor Glass asked that lady the keys to the cell, while Henry grabbed my hand, sweating from the palm of his hand.

"Follow me." Glass said and took us through the corridor.

In that awful place, there was a very tall man with long black hair and a frightening look. He looked so pale, that I almost took him for a ghost. He had a mop in his hands, was cleaning the floor, while his eyes jointed the grayness of the floor. He looked tired, and his mind clearly wasn't attached to his body and soul.

That place looked like a parallel universe inside Storybrooke itself. It was crazy!

I wonder what the people inside those cells were! I wonder who they were before the dark curse! Maybe they were so frightening and dangerous, that Regina herself placed them in the asylum, so they couldn't hurt anyone!

"Here it is." Glass whispered, opening the door, immediately after.

I gasped, execrably and my hands shook as the door opened wide and I gazed upon an inked hair woman with feisty eyes and a mad look covering her beautiful majestic expression.

"Oh my God..." I whispered, holding Henry's hand, strongly. "Regina..."

She looked at me in disdain, as if sparks of anger flew from her look. Her hair was long, which was uncommon, and was wrapped around in a lower ponytail. She had a gray dress and no makeup which highlighted the dread look and the thick black shadows under her fainted look.

Henry couldn't speak. He was breathless, as he stared to his once almighty adoptive mother.

"Well, well...Look who it is....Emma Swan..." She gasped my name, in a very angry tone. Her head was a mess. The shocks she was receiving for a year turned her already disturbed personality upside down. There were flacks of anger mixed with the fragile essence of young Regina and the tenacy and raw darkness of the Evil Queen.

I stepped inside the cell, Glass was there the all time. The tall man seemed to be my only one that made me feel safe in that tiny cubiculum.

"Hello, Regina. We came here to rescue you." I said, with my teeth shacking.

"Rescue me? It's a bit late, isn't it?" She asked, very sassy and angry, as her eyes stretched and almost cut mine into a million pieces of broken emerald glass.

"My parents were hoping the therapy would get you back to your older self. They were wrong. So, we came to free you. You deserve a second chance and I'm ready to forgive you, especially for our son's sake. Yet, you need to promise me we will be both a part of Henry's life, and, unfortunately, I must have the bigger part. You can't also hurt anyone in town and live your days in peace with us."

"Wow...The apple didn't fall far from the tree. You're just like your mother, all bossy and with the idea of being all good. The truth is that you're all worse than me and cling to an ideal of heroism! You're all hypocrites. Let me tell you something, miss Swan. I am still the may...queen! And I certainly don't take orders from you!" She screamed, making her point. She reminded me so much of the first time she threatened me, promising she would destroy my happiness if it were the last thing she did.

"I'm giving you more than a choice, after everything you did to us. Please, accept it, or live the rest of your days in jail."

"So we're just moving from one prison into another?" She sarcastically asked.

"You are if you don't accept the terms of my deal."

"It's not a deal when one part wins so much and the other too little. You know what...For 365 days, I yearned for the day that you'd come back to rescue me, that you'd see I should have a chance to at least have a small part in the life of my son! The one you tossed away but I raised! Yet you didn't come. And for all this time I suffered, as electric shocks pierced my brain! All hope slipped away...Like the wind blowing leaves of a tree. Your mother blames me for being cruel and punish her, but when I look at things...She is darker than I ever was. She locked me in an asylum, submitted me to all this torture while I merely wiped her memories and even gave her a PhD in elementary school teaching! I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm the villain in this little tale, anymore."

"You're running away from the point." I said, assertively. She was throwing things at me and my family when I was only trying to help her, to free her! "I'm going to tell you this one more time...Do you want to come with us or live the rest of your days in a jail?"

Regina stood silent. She looked briefly at Henry, whose forest green eyes covered in small tears, as he remained silent and focused.

"Oh...Henry..."She whispered, as the tiny light lost in the immense ocean of darkness that tainted her endless heart covered her eyes, with sparkly tears. Henry was more than the son we shared, he was the remaining light that she had, the only chance she could take to find peace and love.

She wrapped around her son's body, and I internally chocked with that action, yet I let her do it. I should do better for both of them.

"I missed you so much..." She whispered in his ear, as the little kid said the same and shacked from fear.

She grabbed his body strongly and then stared at me.

"Fine! I'll take your deal." She said.

"Okay, nice." I said, returning her answer with a fainted smile.

The three of us left the building. A new chapter of our lives would begin, but this one would be it's most exquisite and complicated yet, at the same time. Because now, Regina and I not only shared a son, but a complicated cosmic battle which began in another life and stretched throughout the ages. It was more than Henry that we shared, we shared destiny, the kind of destiny that brought me to break her curse, the one that made her responsible for me to grow up alone, and God knows what it could do next now that Regina's story and mine would play out in a Storybrooke with magic where two worlds collide but only one dangerous and twisted fate connects the odds!