strangetrip | [For Vax] On Crop Day

To say Vax had 'cultivated the farm' would have been too generous, he thought. More like, 'Regina pointed at where to dig, to plant, to haul, to water, and so it was done.' His time spent in Joanna's garden had taught him one or two things he could use here, but only just. It was sure better than his being idle and bored, and there was satisfaction in coming back every week and seeing it a little bigger, a little greener, a little brighter overall.

"You," the scruffy half-elf in the plain, rugged clothes told her as he wiped his dirty hands off on them, "look well pleased with yourself." He smiled at her content expression. "I mean, you should. It just so happens that today, you do." Which was saying something, given how tightly she usually regimented herself.

Edited 2017-06-23 21:04 (UTC)

"With the work," Regina corrected him mildly, and lowered her gaze from the setting sun to meet his. Sweet boys, both Piotr and Vax, and both with a touch of darkness in them. Not so much as her, and not so much they couldn't be pleased with themselves.

She couldn't, not for more than a moment, here or there. If she started feeling pleased, she could slip, start feeling as though it were enough. It wasn't and couldn't ever be.

"And you and Piotr. Thank you for the help." It was a little formal, but not stiff. She liked Vax well enough that she didn't need the extra distance. But she still wasn't especially good at "friends."

"You're welcome. Least we could do, considering. Though I think we know which of us has done most of the heavy lifting," he pointed out with a light tone.

Vax thought again of the note she'd left, as he looked at her. Regina was an odd one. As soon as he thought she might be too controlled to let anyone close, she'd decide she was on schedule to make a thoughtful gesture. "Thank you as well for the note you left on my door."

"Just because you don't have super-strength doesn't mean you're not valuable," Regina replied, almost automatically, and flashed on a conversation with Henry in which the subject had been magic, adamantine claws and purple shorts. Sometimes pretending she didn't know Kitty and Piotr were stories, like her, provoked painful memories, so she smiled weakly and said, "Mom-mode. Sorry about that."

As for what to say about the note, she wasn't sure, so she went with the truth. "In Gotham, I was reunited with someone I loved--" Loved, past tense? Robin. I'm sorry. Her voice thickened with grief then as she continued. "And I remember how it felt." It had been different with Snow. A shorter time period, active intention to find her and go to her. But it had still been wonderful. "I've been hoping for that for you since your birthday. Love like that..." Regina shook her head. "You're welcome."

Mom-mode, for sure. The love, the loss, the longing - Vax hadn't thought to take Regina's frequently brisk and imperious manner as much more than someone used to being a landed noble before, and it was probably that, in part. But he was starting to think it could also very well be part of how she filled the hole in her heart where her own family had once been. Percy tended to handle stress and sorrow in a similar way, burying himself in plans and schematics to keep the demons at bay.

"You'll have to meet her," Vax'ildan told Regina with shameless pride, in the sense that she was one you wanted to meet rather than how they were corralled together (but that, too). "If you'd like to go for a drink - a drink, not the entire bar - I could tell you about her a little."

He really had no idea if she'd take him up on it. Vax himself wasn't often eager to go telling tales, so used to their lifestyle demanding a certain low level of paranoia and secrecy as a means of survival. But this place...was so very different. These people were different. And he had the sense that maybe hearing about someone else's family now and then could remind them all that it was okay to work through the shit feelings, to cling to the good ones, to come to terms with all of this a bit more openly.

To her chagrin, Regina heard herself saying, "Yes, let's. A drink sounds good," even while some part of her railed, lacerating her mind with scathing sarcasm on the subject of willingly sitting through someone else's family stories. It was worth than baby pictures and updates about little Bessie, Billy, and Junior, since she'd be expected, now, to get to know the girl, when all she'd intended was to show a little kindness in the form of noblesse oblige.

And yet.

And yet there was another part of her that yearned for the feeling of acceptance she'd just begun to have with Robin, Swan and Hook, the Charmings, her friends in Gotham. The part of her that still clung to the memories of the scent of Roland's freshly washed hair against her cheek or Robin's rough and ready forgiveness knew that being taken into any sort of confidence, even one as mild as stories about a woman she could meet for herself was a step toward having that again.

No matter how much it hurt to have it ripped away, Regina was and always had been helpless against any mark of affection. She felt drawn, like a moth to a flame.

Vax was perceptive enough to sense some conflict even in her ready answer. To be fair, they were all of them mixed up and held against their will in one way or another already. So he didn't try and stop her from going, once she'd agreed. Though once they'd walked into the bar to find a seat and Kitty had kindly set to getting drinks for them, he took a moment to study Regina's face more thoughtfully.

"You don't look like this is your idea of a good time," Vax pointed out, but gently. "...Is it pretty shitty to listen to me go on about my sister when you can't have all of your own family here?"

It wasn't defensive or put-off, at all. He truly didn't want to make anyone's heart bleed the worse. But she'd clearly wanted to make an effort, what with the note, so he'd thought to try and meet her halfway. "I should be asking you about yours. I just...didn't know if you'd want to talk about them."

"No." Regina shook her head minutely, then lowered her gaze to where her fingertips smoothed the edges of the frilled paper cocktail napkin (another mysterious regular delivery) against the tabletop. "'Shitty' is the wrong word. Awkward is better. Some people have the knack of smiling, asking the right questions, making people feel like what they're saying is important. It's not a skill required of a queen."

She sighed then pinched her shoulders forward in a small shrug. "I'm learning to appreciate other peoples' happiness. I just do it best from a distance." Glancing up again, she gave him a wry, self-knowing smile. "Et voila, note."

It was both true and not. She assumed she'd learn to appreciate 'baby pictures' if she took the time to practice. At the moment, she didn't unless the baby in question was hers, or perhaps the god-child Swan and Hook would eventually have given her.

"Ah," Vax regarded her regal awkwardness with the candidness of his own. "Et violin - if you let me sister-brag, I will positively gush 'other people's happiness' in your general direction. You might want a tarp or something. And once you have a drink at hand, you can use it as a shield if need be." He offered her a self-effacing smile. "If it so happens you want to add something of your own - we could always agree to one more round. But if this turns out completely terrible, you're well within rights to tell me 'no' next time I ask if you'd like a drink. ...Does that sound like a deal?"

Regina stifled a pained laugh, but the amusement did show in her eyes. It probably spoke her agreement more than words could. But she replied, "Operation Rainbow is a go," in a vaguely wistful tone. "My son, Henry," she offered by way of explanation and then elaborated, "He named his quests like military missions." Because he'd always been her knight in shining armor.

Blinking back the sudden gut punch-wrought tears, she nodded. "More sharing or no, I'm going to need that second round."

He hadn't expected to see wetness in her eyes. But then, she probably hadn't been planning to talk about her son, either. And that told him enough about why she might not want to talk about her own family.

Vax reached across the tabletop, folding his gloved hand over hers for a long moment to give it a soft squeeze. "Operation Rainbow," he tried. "...I like it. Maybe we'll have Operation Unicorn next time." He hadn't meant anything by it, other than what else went with rainbows than unicorns? It ended up reminding him of Gilmore, though, and that was sad in its own way.

"My sister and I," he started, giving her hand back again so that he could reach one ear to tug at the pointy tip, "we are half-elves. Which, where we come from, means we're not quite accepted as either. But humans usually aren't nearly the assholes that the elves are about reminding us how we're different."

Although the touch startled her, Regina didn't flinch visibly. She didn't mind Vax touching her, but she'd thought the last time it was just because he was drunk. And she was also almost positive he didn't remember it. Henry would approve of Operation Unicorn, so she nodded while he was speaking.

"I'd gathered you were at least part elf." Not that there were any in her part of the Enchanted Forest, but she'd read many of the same stories as everyone else, including her own. "Were you raised by the humans or the elves?"

"Our human mother raised us for the youngest years," Vax explained, though he didn't embroider all of the details into it. "Then we lived a short while with our elven father." Until they tried to go back home, and found their home was no more.

"That didn't work out," he said plainly, and put together with what he'd just said about acceptance, she might guess as to why. "We were adolescents when we set out on our own."

"So you only had each other," came Regina's response. The understanding was largely intellectual, since she'd had no one after Daniel. What would be like to actually love your sister, instead of want to kill her on sight? She honestly could only begin to imagine.

"Have you ever been apart as long as you were before she arrived?" It was a perfectly normal, perfectly logical question, but asking it felt entirely surreal. Not because she cared (and she did, a little), but because she didn't know how to have this conversation but she was somehow doing it anyway.

His throat tightened around the answer, a little, though it was so much the better for being able to remind himself that Vex was here now. And that he would do everything in his power to keep her close to him.

"Never," Vax explained quietly. "A day or two, at most. And by agreement, with planning. Not... Months. And not like this," he told the surface of the table rather than Regina herself.

His hand and the rest of him out of convenient reach for motherly patting, Regina saved herself the awkwardness of last time and gave him a sympathetic, knowing look. But her mind flashed back on Hansel and Gretel, how they'd clung to each other when she asked for their help. Now, as then, she saw the weakness and vulnerability of such a close connection; now, unlike then, she also knew the strength and support and love in it.

"She's here now," Regina reminded him gently, sure he was doing the same, but knowing it for the most useful thing she could say at the moment. She remembered too well the powerlessness of being back in the Enchanted Forest without Henry, thinking she'd never see him again, knowing he didn't remember her at all, and how hollow she'd felt inside.

"She is," he agreed, drawing a smile both relieved yet wistful. "And Vex'ahlia has always been-" The things that I haven't. "Charming and clever. Hopeful and good. I don't like to think about who I would have been without her."

Not then, as youths with no one but each other. And now now, either.

Edited 2017-07-05 15:40 (UTC)

"Love can make a person do terrible things," Regina replied, her voice rich with knowledge, certainty, and history. She could never say she regretted what she'd done, because it had brought her Henry, and Snow, and Roland. But she did hate that she'd hurt so many people out of thwarted love.

His smile strained around the edges, the quality of it, the fine lines around his eyes and mouth changing.

"I know," he said after a long beat. "Not...what you meant, probably," Vax admitted. "But I was different, as a younger man. The only person I knew how to love for a long time was my sister. ...I don't like that person I used to be anymore."

"I'd say you're hardly old enough for that kind of regret," she told him, tone mild, and somehow at once amused and deeply tired. "But I'd already made a mess of my life by the time I was your age."

And because Vax was almost certainly too polite to ask, she said, "I stopped counting when I hit sixty."

Vax was barely polite, but he had lived his whole life with Vex, who had taught him to know better than to ask unless he especially wanted to be hit.

"I would say you're pulling one over on me, but I've seen stranger things," he retorted.

"I don't doubt it." In most of the stories, elves were long-lived. She was probably not the first woman he'd met whose age didn't match her appearance.

Regina's shoulders came down a notch and some of the tension bled out of her neck. So far, she hadn't shoved her foot down her throat and Vax hadn't made her feel threatened or angry. And wasn't it pathetic that she measured conversational success in those terms?

Vax wasn't thinking about what made their chat successful or not, so much as just having the chat. Though he did let a long beat pass, expression going thoughtful. He often said more in his silences than the often ridiculous words stuck between them.

"I was a... Very angry, flippant youth," he tried to explain a bit more, though the words nearly stuck fast, like a weathered old door that didn't want to budge from its frame. "And I thought that it was either them or us. That made my decisions easier, to think of them that way. But when I stopped to reflect on what I'd done later, when I reconsidered that maybe being a selfish asshole wasn't the best way to live - there are mistakes you make, actions you take, that can't ever be undone."

Regina all but choked on the bitterness of hearing herself mirrored by one far too young to have done nearly the damage she had, even if he had done similarly. She gave a rough, painfully self-knowing laugh and fixed him with her gaze--only slightly softer than the one that had made guards, courtiers, and peasants piss themselves.

"I believe the appropriate expression here is 'preaching to the choir'."

She looked like a noble matriarch, not a murderess. Except... Something in her eyes and in her voice was at odds with the motherly concern she'd shown before. Barbs and rough edges surfaced from the should-be richness of her laughter, and a bit of a chill went down his spine.

Vax looked back up at her, his own dark eyes haunted and tired well beyond his years where hers flashed hard and sharp as steel. If he'd once been flippant and angry, he radiated a tangible sadness now.

"Maybe," he supposed quietly, "that's why I'm telling you." He wasn't sure, honestly, why he had started down this road with Regina. He didn't talk about that time of his life anymore, not unless he felt there was a need. There were things that even Vex'ahlia didn't know.

Edited 2017-07-15 20:01 (UTC)

"Like calls to like," Regina confirmed and pressed her lips tightly together again to stop the inadvertent tremble at the thought of coming close enough to that core of herself to touch it. "I wasn't just angry and misguided. I was Evil, capital E, very nearly unredeemable."

She expelled the tension in her chest with a slow exhale and then lifted her glass to sip from it. "My mother ripped my boyfriend's heart from his chest to teach me that power conquered love. She forced me to marry the man she'd once loved after killing his queen. Once, I might have told you that everything I did, I did for Daniel, but the truth is, I did it for me. I did it to make everyone else suffer as much as I was suffering from my lost love."

Vax wasn't sure if he believed she'd been truly Evil, by virtue of that fact that here she was now, obviously redeemable - concerned and matronly and clearly working to better their queer home for all, for whatever she might have been. And that was what made Evil wasn't it? The bone-deep intent to hurt others?

...But then, maybe it was thinking of it as black or white or gray that was trouble. People changed and struggled over time, and they weren't so simple as only three (or even nine?) set ways to be.

He watched Regina thoughtfully. "What changed for you? What made you think they shouldn't all suffer?"

There were a lot of ways to answer that question, Regina reflected, and all of them true. After all, she hadn't needed to hurt them in Storybrooke, once they'd had their memories and loves and lives torn away. Or at least, not continue hurting them. But she'd gone back to it easily enough when Miss Swan showed up to try to take Henry away. And having Henry had been the beginning, but it wasn't until much later that it had been conscious and began to stick.

On balance, she decided, in this instance at least the right answer was, "Almost losing my son."

Across from her, Vax nodded slowly. "...My sister, for me," he admitted.

In a way, it had always been about Vex. They'd still been children when they'd struck out on their own, and he'd started putting the dagger techniques they'd taught him in Syngorn to use as self-defense. Then it turned out he was really very good with his daggers, and he'd started slitting purses. There was a lot more coin in slitting throats for hire, and once he'd started in on that, people left them well enough alone either by reputation or by proof of skill.

But he'd given it up for Vex, too. The way she looked at him, the sound of her voice when she insisted he was taking things too far. He didn't always agree with her, especially not at first, but he'd never risk pushing her away.

He'd given himself over to the Raven Queen for Vex, too, when he'd almost lost her in a different way.

"I had to wonder, when I'd got here, if I was going to see her again. And if not... What had been the point of everything?" Not to say Vax would've gone back and done things different, because he wouldn't have. But it hadn't left him much in the way of hope for the future.

That, Regina understood. Although, she never wondered what the point of this was. She was paying for the harm she'd done and whether or not she would ever see her boys and Robin again, she had no doubts about what she needed to do. Still, when she'd lost Henry the first time, given him up to protect him and Emma, she remembered how devastated she'd been.

"Which everything?" The killing or the not-killing, her question implied. "A life without disasters is a life without excuses. The point or me was to learn to face pain without taking vengeance."

[For Vax] On Crop Day

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