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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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."

"Semantics." Regina dismissed his 'I feel' with a gesture very like the one she used to banish something she'd summoned. "And the Norn didn't take what I would give you."

It wouldn't be easy, convincing him to let her give it to him. Regina knew him well enough to anticipate that. But when it came to his stubbornness versus her need to make amends, she knew which would win. She knew which had to. "At least hear me out."

She didn't have any amends to make to him. But that was beside the point. He stepped back to lean against the counter again and looked at her.

"Okay, talk."

Now that the moment had come, all she could see was Charming on the floor, dying, and her stepdaughter's heart in her hands. All she could think was how, in that moment, she finally had it in her power to separate them for all eternity and she'd wanted nothing more than to give Snow back what she'd given up.

Gaze lowered, she caught her bottom lip in her teeth. She considered explaining both how literal and how metaphorical magic could be in her world, but it didn't matter. "In the end, it's very simple." Use my heart for both of us. "I can give you half of my heart. Literally. It holds enough passion for us both."

He frowned at her, he didn't ask how she could do that - he was sure she could.

"I know what it's like to be without," he said finally, after a long silence. "It leaves a space... an emptiness. You can't give me half of your own heart and not lose something, no matter how much you think you have."

"Dyson."

Regina stepped across the space between them again. She couldn't do this from even five feet away.

"When I don't have my heart, I can still feel. Just not fully. It isn't the same as what the Norn did to you. But giving you half of it will let you feel love again." Even if not for her.

"The Norn didn't do anything to me. She took what I offered." He just hadn't known what he was offering, and hadn't asked. Hadn't known what it would mean.

He didn't speak for a long moment but his expression clearly said there was more to be said.

"You deserve to feel fully. Everyone does."

"Technically it was a deal, and magic always comes with a price, but she took advantage of your need to help someone you love, your compassion, and your goodness."

She reached up to place her hand over his heart.

"We had to re-cast my curse to protect ourselves. And when we needed to cast it a third time, I had nothing left to sacrifice, nothing left that I loved. My stepdaughter had to cast the curse by taking her husband's heart. As he lay breathing his last, she begged me to take half her heart and give it to him. We didn't know if it could be done. But she was willing to risk everything rather than lose him.

"It worked, Dyson. It saved him. Because her heart was big enough for both of them. Neither of them feels any less intensely than they ever did." Possibly because True Love had played a hand in it, but they couldn't know, she and Dyson, if there was True Love, or love at all, unless she took the risk.

"I don't have her heart or her compassion. But my sister powered an impossible spell based on the resilience of my heart. Even if I can't feel fully for a little while, I'll recover." And if she didn't, it wasn't irreversible.

She looked up into his eyes and let him see the certainty, the willingness, and the beginnings of love there. "It's worth the risk. You are." Even if he never loved her, it would be worth it, if it worked.

He didn't argue, he hadn't been taken advantage of - he knew the Norn, knew how tricky she was and still he'd agreed without clarifying what she was asking for.

He listened though, shaking his head slightly and placing a hand over where hers rested on his chest with a sigh. He didn't think it was worth any risk, the possibility that she might end up like him. And what if one of them disappeared like the people half the inn were mourning. How would that work?

"I..." he didn't say no. He was intrigued enough that he didn't reject the idea. "Let me think about it? Give me some time? And you can think about it too because I don't want to do it and have you regret it."

When his hand covered hers, she braced for the no, gaze shuttering to hide the pain of rejection. She needed this, but if she forced it, then she was no better than when she'd taken her father's heart to fuel the curse.

Her eyes flashed open, startlement painting itself across her features at what he did say. She felt a smile starting, sweet, genuine, and brilliant. "Yes. As much as you need."

He didn't smile back, but he wasn't frowning either as he nodded once.

"I should let you get back to calming the masses."

"Not yet."

She slipped her arms around his waist again and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

"I still need you to calm me." It was, perhaps, the truest thing she'd ever told him. And yet, still, she couldn't force out the single word please?

She didn't have to say please, just ask for what she needed - so he wrapped his arms around her again and just breathed.

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[GP] All we can do is learn to swim

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