OUAT/VD: The Truth Is Out There

Ch.18: The Stable Boy

*Flashback*

It was a beautiful day, as young Regina road a brown thoroughbred, her father watching and praising her, when she got all the jumps correct.

She rode her horse over to her father and dismounted.

"That's beautiful, sweetheart," he praised her, and they hugged.

She kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, daddy."

"Beautiful?" her mother questioned, having been watching them from afar, and now approached them. She chuckled. "I'd hardly call that beautiful."

Regina petted the horse. "So, you don't like it, mother."

"You ride like a man. A lady should be graceful. You should use a saddle."

Regina chuckled. "I was just having fun."

"You're getting a little too old for fun. Who's gonna wanna marry you when you act like a hoglet?"

Her father intervened.

"Please, leave her alone."

Her mother looked at him.

"Stop coddling her. She's becoming an old maid. All the other girls her age were married." She sighed. "I had such high hopes."

The stable boy intervened.

"M'lady, perhaps this saddle—," he began, but Regina cut him off.

"I'm done riding for the day," Regina said, as she walked away with her horse at her side. She stopped in front of him with the horse. "And don't ever interrupt my riding ever again." She then let him take the horse to the stables. When the stable boy had gone, Regina sighed and then looked at her mother. "Why do you always have to criticize me?"

"I'm not criticizing you. I'm helping you," her mother assured her.

Regina began to walk away, and her mother turned around to watch her, before saying, "Don't you walk away from me!" Then she used magic to stop her.

"Mother! You know I don't like it when you use magic."

"And I don't like insolence. I'll stop using magic, when you start being an obedient daughter."

"Why can't I just be myself?" Regina questioned her.

"Oh, because you can be so much more. If you'll just let me help you."

"I don't care about status. I just want to be—," Regina began, but her mother used more magic on her.

"Cora, please," her father pleaded with Regina's mother.

Regina finally gave in and told her, "I'll be good."

Cora stopped her magic.

"Excellent. That's all I wanted to hear."

Regina ran off to the stables after what Cora had done, where the stable hand was still tending to the horse.

She approached him.

"Daniel? I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"That's alright. You'll just have to find some way to make it up to me."

A moment later, they were kissing.

A few nights later though, Cora found out and killed him in front of her, because she thought that she was doing what was best for Regina, and because of the fact that Regina and Daniel were going to run away together and get married. She didn't want that for Regina. She wanted Regina to be queen like she was.

*Present*

It was a beautiful day, as Regina stood in front of the window in her room, the ring in hand, in remembrance of Daniel. Even after all those years of becoming what she was now, and had been for a long time, she still loved him. When Cora had told her that love was weakness and that it would fade with time, she came to realize that her mother was wrong. Her love for him, even after all the evil she'd done, hadn't faded. She was just as much in love with him as she had been when he'd been alive.