strangetrip | [GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. - Vicki Harrison

"You're sure?" Regina already knew the answer but demanding that Sam tell her what she already knew satisfied something petty in her. Or maybe just something hurt that hoped he'd have a different answer than her locator spell had already provided.

"Yeah." Sam half-rolled his eyes at her as he leaned across the pink bar counter to grab bottles of beer from the Silver Bar ice bin -- probably the results of Rebekah's last work-effort at the Inn -- for himself and his newly arrived companion.

Briefly, Regina considered burning a hole in the seat of his jeans, but it wouldn't bring Rebekah or any of the absent ones back. Instead, she took refuge in straightening her A-line and walking around the stylish counter Sam lay across like he was surfing the waves of grief. She took down a bottle of pointlessly pricey champagne, and then found the precise cut-crystal glasses Rebekah and Miss Fisher had preferred for their afternoon indulgences. She poured herself a glass and one for the person who dared her openly bitter expression.

"So who all are we missing?" they both said at once, glared at each other and sighed. They both knew the answers, in their own way and for their own reasons. And neither of them wanted to say.

Rebekah Mikaelson. Henry Winchester. Jack Robinson. Phryne Fisher. Dorothy Williams. Angua von Uberwald. Jaime Vegas. Harry Dresden. Lydia Martin. Raleigh Becket. Yasmeen. Joanna Beauchamp. Constance Bonacieux D'Artagnan. Lindsey McDonald.

"Grief is like the ocean," Sam clearly quoted from some fucking where, and Regina tuned him out until he added, "All we can do is learn to swim. Rebekah told me that."

Now Regina rolled her eyes; they weren't friends. "Shut up, Sam."

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He didn't run back to the inn after talking to Snow, but he didn't take his time either, and once there he went looking until he finally located Regina in the Silver Bar.

He didn't approach, just followed her with his eyes trying to determine how she was, and waiting for her to notice him.

Even now, it never took long for Regina to sense Dyson's presence nearby. The weight of the air changed. She turned from the conversation she wasn't really having with Kitty anyway, and let her gaze rest on him, look him over, see that he was still here and reasonably well.

Since the day she'd stopped raging about him breaking things off, she'd spent much of her magical study time focused on a single problem--his. Not because she wanted him back, although she did. But because she couldn't bring Graham back and she couldn't keep Dyson here, but she could, just maybe, give Dyson something more important than the love he didn't want from her. Something that she could live with when he, also, disappeared.

All of that was in her eyes now, at least, for someone like Dyson who knew how to look. To see beyond the prideful stiffening of her shoulders and lift of her chin as she blinked slowly and turned her gaze away. She wanted him so badly, even just to talk for a few minutes, but she was too proud and too afraid (still, even after Robin) to ask.

She didn't throw him across the room again, so that was something.

He caught her eyes when she looked back at him, glanced at the door to the kitchen then looked back at her meaningfully before turning to go into the kitchen.

Subtle as it was, the kitchen had history between them. It was enough to be an invitation, to let her know that he wasn't going to refuse to talk to her, if nothing else. She declined to let herself want it to be more than that, and moved, regally, after him into the kitchen.

Once there, she located him, placed herself opposite with her hands behind her on the steel prep counter, and leaned into them -- so she didn't reach for him. "Wolf," she acknowledged and meant to be curt, but the relief he was still here softened it a great deal.

"Highness," he leaned against the opposite counter, he wasn't resisting the urge to reach for her, but he was struck with a desire to be able to do something. To feel more. And that was why he'd walked away from her the first time.

"I saw Snow, out a ways. She told me we lost some people. Wanted to check in." So she knew he was still here, so she knew she wasn't alone even f he couldn't do more.

"Thank you," she answered tightly, but very politely. He hadn't had to do even that much.

But once it was said, Regina found that the grief she'd been holding back over Rebekah and Yasmeen and Raleigh, and the ache of longing that went with seeing him again left her otherwise speechless. Her lips trembled slightly with the strain of not saying anything, even though she didn't know any words to say.

In some ways, she and her daughter were far more alike than people supposed, and her hands curled into fists as that same primal scream began deep in her belly and rose--only to be stopped by clenched teeth and a gaze that said far far too much.

"Don't," he said softly. "You don't have to hide it."

Not from him, not when he knew and was here because he knew. He wanted to pull her into his arms, for her, maybe for himself. But he didn't, wasn't sure she'd want him to, and wasn't sure it was a good idea however much he might want it.

"Never let them see a weakness," Regina spat bitterly. "A Queen never lets her people see her cry." It was clear she'd begun quoting her mother from the hauteur in her voice and in her posture.

It faded after a moment to, "I do. The world is too small...the people...I owe them. You don't understand." The magic burned in her belly and raced hot up her spine. It would be easy. So easy to burn him to a crisp. Burn this entire place down. Lash out...

"I can't. There's nowhere to put it." Gods how she wanted him. But she couldn't beg, wouldn't, not when he'd already said no.

"I'm not one of your people." He reminded her, she could rage or cry or do anything else she needed to do.

She needed a friend, not subjects.

"I'm your friend, or I'd like to be if we can. But I'm not a subject. Neither are the others, and they might need to cry as well."

But he was. They all were. Maybe not in the same way they had been in Storybrooke, but she needed them to be. She had amends to make that depended on her taking care of them and putting them before her own needs.

Still, he was offering and she was too weak to resist. Today. When Rebekah was gone and Yasmeen who would have braced her spine was gone.

Her hands came up to cover her face and she nodded while she took a tentative step forward. The words he said didn't matter. Just his presence.

That step was all it took, he released the edge of the counter behind him, took a step of his own and embraced her without a word.

Her hands stayed over her face at first when she pressed up against him. This...this comfort was still unfamiliar, especially from a 'friend'. She didn't know what that meant now, when before it meant sex but it didn't anymore.

But the warmth of his body, she knew too well to stay aloof from it, and eventually, she unbent enough to wrap her arms around him. There should have been tears, she should have been punching him for hurting her so much, but there was only shuddering breaths and relief.

They hadn't started out as friends though that had grown from their sexual relationship and despite the fact that he'd hurt her, and he knew this would likely cause her more hurt later he wrapped her closer and just let her lean against him.

"Damn it, wolf," she swore softly after several minutes with her face pressed to his neck. She didn't mean to say it, but the words slipped out anyway: "I've missed you."

"You shouldn't," he murmured, but he didn't release her.

In dubious proof of her growing as a person, Regina declined to either pitch a fit or cry. Instead, she sighed and lifted her head to meet his gaze. "And yet, I do. I can't stop caring about you just because you think it would be safer for me, and more to the point, I don't want to."

"You should," he said in an echo but with a half smile as he looked down at her. "You deserve more than I can give you, even if you don't think so."

What she actually deserved was nearer execution than the love of a good man, but the people who had the right to impose that sentence had declined to.

"It won't be the first time I've shared my bed with someone who couldn't share my feelings," she said, matter-of-factly. If she let herself feel anything about Graham, any composure she had left would be shattered. "But if it's hurting you, then I'll contain my caring to awkwardly affectionate friendship."

It did hurt him, not being able to feel more. But beyond that, "You shouldn't accept less than you deserve. Whatever you've done before."

He did this. Always. Hammered away at her reserve until she broke. Her lips pressed so tightly together they trembled.

"The Evil Queen wasn't just a moniker. I was evil. I was a villain." Even if her freedom and her happiness were all she'd ever truly wanted. "I may fight that darkness every day, Dyson, but I don't deserve a happy ending."

"My friend Trick would say that people can be redeemed if they want to be. That's all it takes. Wanting it." That was what trick had done for Dyson, made him want to be a better man, make him want to serve something bigger than himself again.

Sighing, Regina brought her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and pinched it against the pressure building there. This wasn't the conversation she wanted to be having and the one she needed to have scared her so badly she wanted to vomit.

Without quite looking at him, she began it, "You know my story," so that she could cut to the heart of it. Heart. Of course. "The Huntsman was famed for his ruthlessness, but Snow White suborned him. He gave me a stag's heart in place of hers. For his failure, I took... I took his heart." Now she looked beyond him, not daring to meet his gaze. "I held it, and him in service, until he regained it by chance. When I captured my stepdaughter and her friend, he offered me his heart again in exchange for their lives."

She rolled her tongue behind her teeth, exhaled heavily, and forced herself to continue. If he was going to hate her, he might as well have all of the reasons to hate her. "For decades, he served by his choice and shared my bed. I came to believe that he cared and he used that to temper some of my worst impulses. Then he met someone who challenged his loyalty again. Snow White's daughter. He betrayed me with her, and I killed him for it."

There. That was done. Her heart beat frantically in her chest, ironically like a caged bird desperate to escape. Much like Graham would've felt if he could feel.

"I have very few regrets, but Graham... Graham is the largest of them."

"Regretting it is the first step to forgiving yourself for it." His tone held no judgement or contempt. He knew who, or what she had been. "If we're going to compare lists of people we've killed we're going to be here a long time."

"Making amends is the second step." Regina pursed her lips, surprised but not displeased that he seemed unwilling to judge her for it. It was something she'd grown to appreciate about him.

There would be no better time to make this offer than now, and she owed it, if not to him then to Graham. "I can help you feel again. If you'll let me."

"I feel," he said, though he knew that wasn't exactly what she meant. Kenzie had called it an emptiness where his love had been, but he could still feel friendship, loyalty, anger, sadness the whole gamut of emotions except one.

"And what the Norn takes she keeps."

[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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