Chapter Text
CW: Implied/alluded Sexual Assault.
A lonesome deer was nervously picking through the woods when there was a burst of sound and a flare of bright white appeared, and from it, a human walked. It did not stick around to see the woman stalk from the purple smoke with a twisted expression on her dark features. Her long dark hair cascading over her shoulders, the diamantes on her clothing glittered in the faint starlight, and she lifted a hand, fire burning above it and she released it into the sky with a shout of rage.
The act of anger seemed to have calmed her though, for she let out a large, weary sigh and lowered her hand, and with it, smoke curled around her and removed the clothing and harsh make up.
Instead, she changed into a black jacket with golden buckles and red embroidery at the sleeves and collar. It fell down her body to her thighs, where black pants split into gleaming knee-high leather boots.
Her makeup had softened too, the dark lines around her eyes were thin making her look younger, and her lipstick was muted.
She swore violently, and whatever creatures that remained in the forest from her arrival took the time to huddle in their dens. Danger always lurked in the forest, but this invader was the most dangerous of all.
Setting off at a blitzing pace, uncaring of whom might hear her-but such was the hubris of predators not on the hunt- she stalked through the forest, muttering to herself, whipping branches out of her face. She only paused when her ankle caught a tree root in the underbrush and gave up with a loud sigh.
With a flick of her fingers, a ball of bright light was thrown into the air above her and she used it to glance around.
She was in a forest, obviously, but with her calming breaths she was able to listen to it come alive around her. Now that she wasn’t scaring everything off with her stomping, she could hear faint murmurs of trees, the whisper of the wind through leaves, the babbling of a brook.
Guided by the light she walked a slight incline, and the undergrowth and trees bowed out of her way, forming an uninterrupted path down towards the river. It was a small river, a few meters wide and not very deep, with stones in and around it. A natural clearing had formed on the other side, with trees at its back but sloping down to the river with a few large boulders and a sandy beach, and she eyed it a moment before vanishing in purple smoke.
She appeared in the small clearing and the ball of light soared across the river to her outstretched hand before she lifted her fingers in a beaconing gesture and it floated up above her. She let out a sigh and flicked her fingers.
Stones rustled in the embrace of the sand and rose before gliding through the sky to fall at her feet, sand falling from their movement like raindrops. The woman raised a finger and made a slight circular movement, and small sticks and branches came soaring out of the woods behind her, settling in a triangular shape over the firepit she’d created. A second twitch of her finger and a tree within the wood was felled, breaking into sizable chunks as though a hatchet had been taken to it. Had anyone been present to see it, they’d have surely run. It wasn’t everyday someone felled a tree, removed it of its branches and diced the log within a few seconds.
The woman let out a sigh, weary, and began to sit, a chunk of wood soaring from the pile and resting beneath her.
She glanced upwards and the bright ball of light slowly lowered until it rested over the flameless firepit, and when it met the fuel, it caught alight. The glow in the clearing was amber and gold, rather than bright blue and she settled back with a sigh, gazing into the crackling flames.
The night was chilly, and she drew her clothing around her before huffing and rolling her eyes, a flick of her fingers and a long travel cloak settled over her shoulders.
She had been foolish, unprepared and she was both thankful and disappointed in her hesitation. She had been prepared to kill Queen Snow and her Prince Charming, she’d held their Hearts in her hand and squeezed until she could feel them cracking. She had wanted to do it. Some part of her always did. They were glowing red and bright, mocking Regina with their lack of darkness when she knew that even they had committed what the world of Storybrooke would consider to be unforgivable crimes. Regina wasn’t the only monster in the family, true she had more teeth than most, but she wasn’t alone. She just… surpassed them, as she did in all things, which was something she now regretted.
Emma had been helpless-no, she wasn’t Emma, not as Regina knew her, she was Princess Emma. Coddled and weak and flowery, the thought of catching her singing in the woods collecting flowers promoted an eyeroll. Snow’s perfect Princess, the girl she had always wanted. She nearly snorted.
Emma was not Princess Emma, thankfully. Emma was brave and strong and stupidly stubborn with her parents’ cockroach abilities to get out of any dangerous situation alive, she even had their resolute shield against any perceived wrong. Her crimes fell from her like water against glass because the Saviour could do no wrong. Princess Emma was… weak, and pathetic, and meek, a typical Princess if there ever was one. Snow, at least, had grown a backbone while she’d been in exile, and Regina was kind of proud of that.
Princess Snow had been….well, just like Princess Emma was, but Bandit Snow had grown into a woman to be proud of, even if her endless optimism and self-righteousness was grating.
Regina let out a wary exhale. Princess Emma hadn’t been at fault, her son, their son, Henry, had been.
He wasn’t like her Henry, but he was a Henry, so Regina loved him all the same, and she had been unbearably proud as she watched him get knighted before she interrupted the ceremony. He had worked hard for his position, or she assumed he had and hadn’t just been given a knighthood because he was their Prince and Heir, and she wanted him to have his moment of victory before she tore his life apart.
Taking Snow and Charming had been ridiculously easy, and she felt sorry for their complacency. Emma’s world must have been frightfully boring and peaceful.
She was curious as to how David and Snow had banished her the first time- if she was still alive in this world- and couldn’t help but shake her head at their idiocy disguised as mercy. Regina killed her enemies, lest they return, and it was clearly a lesson Snow hadn’t learnt yet.
She had tried, it was true, but had always been persuaded that killing the Evil Queen was against her best interests, and, well, Snow always had Snow’s best interests at heart.
Regina had been willing to kill her and Charming in front of Princess Emma, anything to awaken the dormant Saviour there, but she couldn’t do it in front of Henry. Never in front of Henry, even if he wasn’t the boy she had loved and raised since he was a baby. Henry had saved her life, when she adopted him, for it hadn’t been the first time she’d considered ending it all, but after nearly two decades of living in a sleepwalking town, Regina had grown…bored and complacent. Henry had brought her back to life, and then Emma, when she descended on Storybrooke with the grace of a tornado and the same damage in her wake, had done the same.
Faced with murdering the false Snow and Charming in front of her baby boy, who had been terrified but determined, she had fled. Henry had never looked at her like she was a monster- not even when he had found out she was the Evil Queen because the book, that fucking book, had glossed over those details. Children aren’t meant to know the horrors of the world, the monsters out there, and Regina had kept him safe from them, vowing to be the scariest thing he had ever seen if the creatures under his bed or in his wardrobe even looked at him funny. Of course, Henry had merely giggled, cuddled her, and fallen asleep, not knowing the true monster who raised and cared for him.
“Monsters couldn’t love,” was a quote she’d seen somewhere and she scoffed at the ridiculousness of it. In Regina’s experience, the greatest monsters were monsters because of love. They could love, she did and she was given the title Evil for a reason, but that didn’t make her less of a monster.
Still, she was trying to do better, be better, to be the woman she wanted to be, and that meant not killing Wish versions of the people she knew. Though this Snow and Charming weren’t her Snow and Charming. They had been through a lot, and their bond had grown because of it. She’d die for them if she had to, and not just out of misplaced, well deserved, guilt. She had come to care for them, to love them, and she would die keeping them safe if that was what the situation called for.
She sighed again.
Oh, how the tables had turned, if only her past self could see her now, could see how far from the dark path she had walked.
No doubt Henry had come with guards to rescue his mother and grandparents from the Evil Queen’s clutches. Regina had known Emma would come so she had lowered the defences around the castle and hadn’t put them back up again, not that she would go back while the Charming’s were there. Though she did doubt they would stay long, her castle was as imposing as she remembered it, even if it was crumbling to pieces, and it wouldn’t have any good memories for the two royals.
No, she’d give them until the morning to leave and then she’d return and plan her next move from somewhere safe.
Decision made, and resigned to spending the night out in the woods, which she absolutely hated doing unless it was on her terms, she peered into the fire, suddenly tired.
The orange glow was mesmerising, always had been, and it was perhaps where her affinity for fireballs came from, though she also had seen her mother throw them around, so maybe it was inherited.
She wasn’t certain of how long she’d been staring into the flames when she heard a purposeful crack of a branch.
Her eyes lifted ever so slightly to flick around her, noting nothing out of the ordinary, before they returned to the fire. But she wasn’t so foolish as to be out alone in the middle of the forest. She had cast her magic out in a ring around the little clearing she’d made herself home in, and she had felt the four.. no five, people that had emerged from the forest, waited a moment, and then spread out.
Were she anyone else she might feel as though she were being hunted, but these people didn’t know that she was the most dangerous thing in the forest right now, and she almost felt sorry for them.
“A bit unsafe for a woman to be traveling alone in these parts,” said a male voice, and she would have been surprised by his arrival had she not already been aware of it. Even without her magic she had always known when she was being watched, had always known when she was being hunted, and her skin crawled with memory, her mood plummeting.
Still, she turned around to face the man, and two of his friends.
The fire at her back was warm, and the air in front of her was much cooler for having been in front of the flame for so long.
The three men were… Thugs, for lack of a better term. Regina was accustomed to dangerous men, but she kept hers in strict uniform with codes, rules and payment for their services. She also could tell the difference between a peasant and a merchant by sight alone, and she knew that these men were not farmers, not by a long shot.
To begin, they were out in the woods at night, and there were five of them. Farmers worked from dawn till dusk in often thankless work, so they slept when the sun went down if they could. The only reason a farmer would be in the forest would be to poach, to run an errand, or some other business, and they wouldn’t be traveling with four other companions.
The next thing, and perhaps the most obvious, was their standard of dress. Farmers couldn’t afford much more than a padded gambeson for battle, yet these men were in leather, mail, and the man speaking to her had plate armour.
They also carried weapons…. Weapons for battle, not for hunting in the woods…. Though, as Regina’s eyes darted between the three, and then to her sides where two more were approaching, perhaps they were hunting… only their prey was human.
“Indeed,” she said, and rose fluidly to her feet, manners ingrained since birth, and she was reluctant to be seated when these men got closer. She could and would handle herself, but that didn’t mean she wanted them to loom over her.
“Which is why I have built a fire to keep the… animals… at bay,” she said delicately, showing her teeth. Did they recognise her, she wondered?
It had been over thirty years since the Evil Queen had been defeated, and Regina doubted Snow had her likeness up in the halls of the palace, though if these men had ever seen a palace she’d be surprised. But Emma had recognised her, and Regina should have asked how that had happened because she didn’t think that Snow would keep portraits of her around… And she hadn’t looked like the Evil Queen when she first emerged from the woods.
It made sense for the dwarves to recognise her, and she hadn’t been surprised that they had run, though they wouldn’t have gotten far if she had wanted them to stay, but Princess Emma…. and then Regina had the thought that maybe Snow told her daughter stories about her… The thought nearly made her smile. Of course, the Evil Queen was probably used to keep the young Princess in bed at night, lest she wander the castle and get snatched.
The leader of the men nodded slowly, getting even closer and his eyes didn’t hide their appreciation as they ran over her form, and Regina nearly rolled her eyes.
He didn’t recognise her. This might be… fun…
“Lots of dangerous animals around,” he agreed, though shared a grin with his companions, showing very poor dental hygiene.
As they drew closer, she saw they all had poor hygiene in general, and though Regina knew the peasantry didn’t bathe as often as the nobility, these men were taking that to the extreme. Their body odour was ripe, their hair and beards tangled and dirty, and their clothing was in poor repair. Even their armour needed dents removed and rust polished out.
Internally Regina sneered, her knights would have been lashed had they ever let their equipment get half as bad as this. Evil she may have been, but Regina ran a tight ship when she was Queen, and her army was well funded, well-stocked, and well trained. She had taken pride in her forces, and she had led them into battle, not sent them in to die for her… Though she had done that on occasion too.
Still, her blood was starting to rouse to attention, a familiar thrill of a fight running through her veins.
“Boss,” one of the men spoke from the darkness, and there was hesitance to his tone, but he was quickly silenced and lowered his head obediently.
She was almost surrounded now. Three men in front of her, one on either side, and the river at her back. If she tried to run, she wouldn’t get far, but she wasn’t the prey in this scenario….. She was the predator.
“Bears,” she agreed, eyes flicking over the men, who were grinning in that way that men did, and she felt sick for what they had done to others, because predators didn’t strike once, and then felt satisfaction for what she was going to do to them.
“Wolves,” she added and they were close now and their leers would have concerned her, but she wasn’t a girl anymore, and she wouldn’t be touched against her will.
“Aye, lass. Wolves and bears and mountain lions,” the leader agreed and came even closer.
“What’s a girl like you doing alone in the woods? Maybe we should stay and… keep you company…” he ran his eyes along her body again and Regina tilted her head.
“I can assure you, gentlemen,” she said, and it was probably the politest anyone had ever been to them, for they grinned and looked at each other. She could see movement as one or two undid their belts and anger flared, white-hot in her body. She wasn’t afraid for herself, no, she could kill these men with a snap of her fingers, but she was angry for the others they had done this to.
“I am not in any danger,” she showed them her teeth, and around her the woods had fallen silent. Animals had a unique sense of danger, of when a predator walked among them. Humans had duller senses, and these men hadn’t realised they had signed their own death warrant the moment they’d come into her space with hostile intentions. She could read it in their eyes, in their body language, how they surrounded her and got into her personal space.
“Aren’t you?” The man breathed, and was right in front of her, leering down into her face.
Regina cocked a hip and lifted a brow, waiting for him, daring him to touch her.
Magic tingled through her blood, waiting to be summoned.
“These woods have lots of dangerous… predators in them,” and he was lifting a hand to her face.
Regina blocked it with ease and his eyes flashed but she tilted her head and sneered at him.
“And I am the most dangerous one…. Some might even call me…. Evil ,” she hissed and then snapped her fingers. The stunned expression on the man’s face as she stood up to him, challenged him in front of his men, quickly flickered as fire reached out to loom over Regina.
Flame lurched from the pit behind her and snaked across the grass to surround all of the men and they were terrified now, their scents sharp and acidic as Regina grinned.
With cries of alarm, they beat away the flames getting close to them, and horror was in their eyes as Regina took a slow, predatory step closer.
“Now boys,” she cooed, malice in every line of her body and layering her words. “Is that any way to treat a lady?”
They were backing away from her flames, looking at the fire and her and back again.
“Witch!”
Regina grinned, she was no simple hedge witch. She was the Evil Queen, reformed, but still, and she could destroy these men with ease, and it looks like her infamy had spread through the years, because they had turned ashen under their grime.
Their confidence had evaporated when faced with her strength, and she knew it wouldn’t be long until they started to beg… and she would relish it. She’d been in a foul mood since she teleported from her castle, and this would make her feel better.
“Let’s get out of here,” one of them yelled and the others seemed to agree, for they stepped back and then turned to run.
“Oh, leaving so soon?” She asked them with the sweetness of a cat about to pounce and twitched her fingers.
Vines emerged from the ground and wrapped around their limbs, while tree branches bowed to grab their arms and hold them in the air.
It only took a dozen seconds until they were all dangling from the sky, bound by wrist and ankle with branches and vine.
They feared her now. Their weapons had been useless, their strength and size negated, and now they were at her mercy.
She felt powerful as she stepped up to look at them closer, calling fire from the firepit to come and rest upon her hand.
“What ever shall I do with you?” She wondered as she looked at them with faux puzzlement, tossing the fireball in her hand like it was a ball.
The gleam of it was reflected in their wide eyes and they were thrashing uselessly against her restraints, babbling almost incoherently to be released.
“Hm,” she said and tapped her chin thoughtfully.
“Your intentions were undoubtedly impure,” she cooed, speaking to them as though addressing a naughty toddler who had done something they shouldn’t have, and knew it. Now all she had to do was decide on their punishment.
Killing them would be easy, too easy. Men like this deserved to suffer and she just might have the perfect idea.
She twitched her fingers again, and a branch descended over each thug’s mouth, silencing them, and their muffled shouts were like music to her ears as she turned and walked back to the fire.
She’d get answers from them tomorrow when they were more cooperative. Typically, a night hanging from your ankles and wrists in the dungeons would turn even the most uncooperative soul compliant, and though she didn’t have a dungeon, hanging from a tree for the night ought to ensure their easy compliance.
For now, she was tired again, but not because of the magic she’d used. No, she was cold, hungry- which prompted her to summon some food from Snow White’s kitchen, and she chewed at the bread tasteless as she looked into the fire- and she was missing Henry.
She was a long way from home, maybe the furthest she had ever been, and she had no one on her side. She let out a little sigh and summoned a bedroll and sleeping bag.
It didn’t look like it was going to rain, but she cast a dome over her little campsite and lay down, gazing at the stars. The magical barrier would keep the rain off her, and alert her of any further unwanted visitors.
Gazing up at the stars, for once so familiar to her, she finally fell into a restless sleep.