Holy water cannot help you now

A thousand armies couldn't keep me out

When Snow White hands over her mother's heart, Regina cups it in her palms and marvels as it beats strong against her fingers, each woosh a whispered apology, each pulse a promise of things to come. Thump thump thump.

And with each beat Regina believes in love, in forgiveness in second chances, in happy endings.

On the drive into town, she cradles the heart against her own and thinks that perhaps two jaded souls may find peace together. Together, as they should have been from the beginning, had fate been kind.

But fate was not kind, and fate is unkind still.

True love lost, a father sacrificed, a mother stolen, and with her the last chance for redemption. Seven devils push and pull at the shreds of the girl that remains, and she has come much too far and grown far too weary to put up a fight.

Mother's body is so heavy in her arms, heavier even than Daddy's death on her conscience, heavier still than Daniel's absence on her heart.

Regina had loved her mother. Regina loves her mother still.

But mother hadn't known how to love very well. Loving is a hard thing to do when one has no heart. But mother had wanted to love her. Mother had tried to love her, albeit in all the wrong ways. Mother could have loved Regina, for both what she was and what she'd become, and who she might still be.

But Mother is gone. Mother is gone and Regina is alone. She is alone in a town full of people who would pay any price to see her hang. She is alone with a flake of snow who detests her, a son who despises her, a savior who might have defended her once, but who will defend her no more.

"Regina, stop!" screams the petulant child on the runaway horse.

She clutches mother closer to her, forty years of hatred burning in her eyes, burning in her very soul. "You did this," growls a voice that is not quite Regina, not quite the queen, and Snow, good, kind, honorable Snow just stands there with sad eyes and a guilty conscience. Once, Regina might have looked at this woman and seen beauty, but now all she can see are bloodstained hands that will be loved by the people and the prince all the same and it makes her sick.

This woman, this girl, this insufferable child, has taken everything from her. "I didn't want you to lose your mother, like I've lost mine," she'd said, after she had taken Daniel away, and Regina had believed her. But now she's gone and taken mother too, and there is no one left to love Regina, no one left for Regina to love.

Snow White knows what it is to lose, but Snow White does not know loss. Snow White does not know what it is to watch her lover's heart turn to dust and be carried off with the changing winds. Snow White does not know what it is to wake up every morning and wish that she hadn't. Snow White does not know what it is be utterly and completely adrift, sans love, sans hope.

But she will.

Snow White has always been a good student, and Regina a willing teacher. She will learn, as Regina has learned, that love is transitory. Love is fleeting. Love is here one day and gone up in flames the next.

Love is weakness.

And Regina has no weakness anymore.

Holy water cannot help you now

See, I've come to burn your kingdom down