[For Vax] On Crop Day

[st_oriedqueen]

Hands on her hips, Regina surveyed the farm she, Vax and Piotr had cultivated. To the men, it probably seemed as though she scrutinized it for imperfection in the harvesting, but in truth, she was enjoying a fleeting moment of satisfaction in having done something good. Two things good -- preparing for crisis, and putting others needs ahead of her own. Perhaps four if one considered allowing Vax and Piotr to help her, but Regina didn't.

She tipped her face up to the setting sun, and for just a minute indulged in the sheer pleasure of being alive. How often in her life had she done that?

Comments

[st_oriedqueen]

"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."

[st_abby]

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?"

[st_oriedqueen]

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."

[st_abby]

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.

[st_oriedqueen]

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."