So Basically This Is Amazing? And One Of The Best Things I've Read Literally Ever? And How The Hell Does

So basically this is amazing? And one of the best things I've read literally ever? And how the hell does it only have 6 notes because it's a masterpiece?

Once Upon A Time: The Wolf, the Widow, and the Bookworm

Summary: Set during the Missing Year, this is a headcanon depository for Regina and her relationships with Ruby, Granny, and Belle.

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i. Ruby

Once upon a time, there was a wolf and a queen, a queen and a wolf.

Theirs is a strange story, one caught and perhaps forever suspended between hate and love, middling at some sort of respect that never extends past a cursory nod or a muttered greeting. The wolf treads around the black train of the Queen with only a little less than a growl, but it’s something. It’s progress. The Queen refrains from regarding the wolf with the condemnation ingrained in her royal bones, and it’s something. It’s discipline. Theirs is a strange story, one caught and perhaps forever suspended between hate and love, middling at some sort of reluctant respect.

The wolf is on patrol duty one night, is watching the shadows of her cloak skim and lengthen on the cobblestone, when their paths collide and align with a certain fragility of ease. A nod between them goes a long ways to communicate tentative trust, and together, they encircle the perimeter warily, shoulders brushing more often than not. The wolf slinks, even as she stands upright—you can take the girl out of the animal, but you can’t take the animal out of the girl—and the Queen saunters, her tall heels clicking reliably against the stone path. Regina is still decked in her armor, has dark shadows lining her eyes where thick makeup is not. She had told Snow earlier that the Queen was not looking too good, is pale, is slowly breaking under the tight layers of corset, and she hadn’t been wrong. In the moonlight, silvery and cold, she looks tired, looks too old to be so young.

“I can handle this if you’d like to head up to your chambers, Regina.” There is an edge at the beginning; it softens, resembles something almost akin to concern at the end. “There weren’t any monkeys last night. Probably won’t be any tonight either.”

The Queen immediately stiffens, perceives the suggestion as a question of her endurance. She bristles. Ruby is acute enough in her senses to see the exact moment that her lips thin and her nostrils flare. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she snaps in return, and silence falls once more.

It isn’t until their shift ends, and they are about to part ways, that Ruby speaks again, this time more bluntly than before because apparently it’s the only dialect that Regina speaks in. She shrugs tired fingers through long hair, throws a casual glance her sullen companion’s way.

“I wouldn’t let Snow find out that you’re bordering on sleep exhaustion if I were you. She’d kill you, and then mother you.”

Regina throws her head back at the one, bites out a short laugh that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. (Those lovely items, by the way, dark brown and so rich, are tight around the edges, constricted with sharp injury. You could almost cut yourself on the glare.)

“That may be true, but you’ve been up as well. I hardly suppose you and your mutt brains can see the double standard here.”

Smart aleck, but so is Ruby. She grins wildly, wolfishly, her canines biting into the bottom of her lip.

“Yeah, but she’s not obsessed with me now, is she?”

ii. Granny

Once upon a time, there was a widow and a little girl who masqueraded as a woman, as a queen.

All truth being told, there isn’t much to tell besides the fact that Widow Lucas had lost a husband to the wolf that lives within her, and a daughter and son-in-law to a storm (the rickety bridge over a gaping chasm didn’t help matters either). These outcomes have defined her, have settled in her very being alongside all of the arthritis. She is protective. She cares. She is a mother who has lost her child, too, and this particular brand of empathy has the potential to mend and repair even the most tenuous of relationships. It watches Regina’s hands encircle her stomach at the thought of eating. It observes the way she steals into the kitchen for sustenance long after everyone else has eaten, and even then, only grabs a piece of bread or two out of what vaguely resembles self-restraint. It is the sole reason she places a bowl of thick porridge in front of the Queen’s pointed nose and tells her to, “Eat.”

“I’m not particularly hungry, but thank you for not asking before you appropriated my space.”

Funny, but she’s hardly in the mood.

Granny draws gnarled hands to her hips, glares at this little girl, this queen, this mother with the look that had unfailingly bullied Ruby into wearing her red cloak. Round spectacles slip down the bridge of her crooked nose. “What you did at the town line was good and all, but you lost your son in the same roll. You’re sad, child. You somehow think slowly killing yourself is the best way to solve that, but it’s not. I know that better than you do, so eat before I call your royal guard.”

By royal guard, she’s referring to Snow and David, of course; they’re two tables over and cooing at each other rather disgustingly. (Though it’s a different story from this bittersweet one, imagine all the pet names David can conjure with that besotted head of his, and settle for the unlikeliest one. He considers babe and dear too generic for the affection he holds for his wife, but at what cost? God save the Queen.) Regina lowers her head quietly, submissively, and it isn’t a look that suits this woman who prides herself on being larger than life. Long tresses of downy hair pool around her neck to form a shield between her and the rest of the world. Tall fingers have clenched themselves in strands to hide the trembling that Granny can still see.

“I miss him,” she simply says. If there weren’t people around, perhaps she would have shed a tear, but there are, and love is weakness, foolish girl, she had once been told. She counts to ten to compose herself.

One.

Henry’s laugh had always crinkled around his mouth and nose.

Two.

Her little boy had cried at the town line, and she couldn’t do a thing about it. She kissed his forehead, straightened his scarf, and wondered if he knew just how much she loved him.

She would die for him. She would die at his hand if it made him happy.

Three.

You heard Mr. Gold. Villains don’t get happy endings.

Granny’s eyes soften. She lowers her hand to the Queen’s quite still shoulder, squeezes tightly. “If he knew, if he remembered all that you have done, he would be missing you, too.”

She leaves after that, has to attend to those hapless slackers in the kitchen, but out of the corner of her eye, just as she is about to leave the dining hall, she watches with some satisfaction as Regina picks up her spoon.

It’s a step.

iii. Belle

Once upon a time, there was a bookworm (that they called Beauty to lessen her intellect) and a queen (that they called evil to soothe their own consciences).

These two have shared chapters before. If you’re curious about the start, it wouldn’t hurt to peruse them, but here in this lost year, the bookworm has only recently watched her soulmate stab himself with the thing he loved most, and the Queen is still reeling from that time she let her little prince go to save the entire town. They’re both a bit broken, both vulnerable to nights where lying on the cold floor is more acceptable than accepting the comfort of a bed. When that practice becomes out of date though, they take to wandering the castle halls.

Belle haunts the library, walks ghostly fingers down the spines of rusted tomes to ease her anxious spirit. Regina sits on the bench underneath her beloved apple tree, observes the star strewn sky through the rustling leaves and the spidering branches. Sometimes, she’ll cry because she’s human, and she thinks no one is around to see. Their habits won’t intersect until the conditions are just right.

It is a cold, autumnal night—too cold for any sane person to sit outside in the garden. Even Regina has to call it quits after a session of her hair being abused by the wind. She re-enters the castle windswept and utterly unamused; her lips are pressed into a thin line. Belle sits on the floor in front of her fireplace, knees drawn to her chest. She pokes dying embers with a stick, watches absently as fire roars up into the grate. It is a cold, autumnal night when she considers these curling flames after a long while of nothingness, and wonders if resurrection is a possibility. She doesn’t change out of her nightgown; she simply leaves. The library is calling.

The conditions are perfect; the stars have aligned. They find themselves face-to-face in an empty corridor between their respective haunts. A breeze steals its way into the silence. The bookworm and the Queen shiver where they stand.

“Belle,” Regina says.

“Regina,” Belle replies, and then blurts out, before she can help herself because believe it or not, she’s more impulsive than people tend to realize, “Do you think Rumple could still be alive?”

She hates herself for it, wishes she had a little more self-control. When an answer isn’t immediately forthcoming, she shakes her head, continues on towards the library. Lank strands of tangled hair—she hasn’t really taken care of herself in awhile—form a curtain around her face. “Forget it,” she mutters as she passes. “I’m being stupid. Goodnight.”

A hand catches her arm before she can make it too far, the tips of sharp fingers digging into her skin, black polish adorning each nail. Belle stares at them blankly; it takes her a moment to compute what she is seeing, what she is feeling. The Queen, notorious in this story for her isolation of being, is reaching out, is regarding her with dark eyes. They have always been dark, she thinks, but never has she seen them burn with such hellish pain. They have always been dark, she thinks, but on this night, she swears she can see the demons that swirl within them. It frightens the bookworm. It pulls her in. Regina lets go.

“If I knew one thing about Rumplestiltskin, and I know many things, it’s that he always had a plan. I think you should go to his mansion. Maybe you’ll find something there.”

“I thought about it. I did. I’m just—”

“—scared,” she finishes for her. “You don’t want to be disappointed if you can avoid it.“

“How did you know?”

A bitter smile tugs at Regina’s lips; she sees a flash of gleaming teeth, catches a memory or two dancing across her knowing eyes. They have always been dark, she thinks, but tonight, they are edged with velvet in the places misery has not yet thought to touch. The bookworm etches this into her memory, catalogues it for a more useful time. “Experience.”

She slowly nods, blinks, pushes her hair back to where it belongs. “Goodnight, Regina.”

“Goodnight, Bookworm.“ There is a short pause and then a murmur she only barely catches. It staggers her when she does though, widens her eyes, and before she can get out a word in reply, the Queen is already sweeping off in a different direction, high heels clicking reliably against the stone floor.

“I’m sorry,” she had said.

She wasn’t talking about Rumplestiltskin.

—

Once upon a time, there was a queen and a wolf, a widow, and a bookworm.

There isn’t a happily ever after, not quite yet, but it’s a far cry from a tragedy. Give it a few years though, and as stories seem to go, anything can happen. These things certainly did.