Ficlet: All Is Said and Done (1/1)

I've gotta say, I've missed being able to do little things like this. Being able to think of something silly like writing a ficlet for the premiere of Once Upon a Time and actually doing it. Oh, inspiration, please never leave me again.

Title: All Is Said and Done
Summary: Regina didn't know where she was running. She just knew that she had to run. She had to find somewhere to hide.
Word Count: 910 by Works' count.
Spoilers: Takes place during 1x22, "A Land Without Magic."
Characters: Regina Mills, with mentions of Henry, Snow, Emma, and Gold.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for safety. Possible trigger warning.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. It's not my fault they created characters that are so much fun to play around with, but I'll return them unharmed!
Author's Note: Happy premiere day! I thought I'd celebrate with a little ficlet. Title and lyrics in italics from "All Is Said and Done" by Vertical Horizon. Enjoy!

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Oh, are you tired of running for your life,

When there’s no one left behind?

Just the chaos in your mind.

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Running in heels was a skill that, even after twenty-eight years, Regina Mills had not perfected. She had simply never seen the need. People ran from her, not the other way around. Now, though, she wished she’d practiced running in heels every once in a while.

She slowed just long enough to pull off her shoes. Much better.

Regina didn’t know where she was running. She just knew that she had to run. She had to find somewhere to hide. Everyone would be searching for her now. The citizens of Storybrooke would be forming a mob any minute now, one perhaps minus the pitchforks and lanterns, but a mob nonetheless. An angry mob out for vengeance, out for blood. Out for her blood.

For the first time in decades, she was scared. Really, truly, curl-up-under-the-covers-and-ride-out-the-storm frightened.

The stitch in her left side forced her to slow down and then stop completely. It took her a moment or two to realize she’d stopped in front of her house. The house she’d spent the first eighteen long years in alone. The house she’d spent the next ten years in with her son. A house, she thought with a pang of sadness, but not a home.

It used to be a home once. Or perhaps it never had been. She wasn’t sure anymore.

With a shaky breath, Regina headed up the walk and climbed the stairs to her front door. Her house was surely the first place everyone would look but … well, to be honest, she didn’t care. Let them come. She’d lost Henry. She’d lost, period. There was nothing left for her anyway.

Losing Henry was bad enough but losing him to Emma Swan, of all people, was devastating. How had Henry come to eat that turnover instead of Emma? What the hell had happened? Oh, gods, Regina had almost killed her own son. She had killed him. If not for Emma, that little boy would be dead right now.

Emma had saved him with true love’s kiss. On the one hand, Regina was forever grateful. On the other hand, she was absolutely disgusted.

She opened the front door, thinking of all the times Henry had slammed it on his way in or out. He’d never slammed the door in anger that she could recall, just in exuberance. Even still, she’d always spoken to him harshly, reminding him that she’d told him countless times to stop slamming the door.

What she wouldn’t give to hear him slam it right now.

She eased the door closed and leaned back against it, closing her eyes for a brief moment. She inhaled deeply. She could still smell a hint of the apple turnover in the air. The aroma she had not long ago equated with eternal victory now turned her stomach.

Somewhat on auto-pilot, she pushed herself away from the door and headed up the stairs, running her hand over the railing. It was only her imagination, she knew, but the railing still felt slightly warm from the last time Henry had grasped it.

When he ran down the stairs and out the door to go to her.

Up the stairs and down the hall she went. Without even realizing where she’d been headed, Regina found herself in Henry’s room. She ran her hand over the dresser, the top of the headboard, and finally his pillow. The pillow smelled like him. She picked it up and held it to her nose. She took a deep breath in and let the tears come.

She’d lost everything. With Henry gone and the curse broken, she’d lost her own chance at a happy ending. Goddamn Snow White and her family! What had Regina ever done to that woman to justify everything she and her child had taken from her? First Snow had taken Daniel and then her father. Then Emma had come along and had taken Graham and now Henry. Everyone she’d ever loved was gone now, ripped from her.

There was nothing left to fight for, and Regina had resigned herself to her fate. She would spend her last moments here, in her son’s room. Maybe being around his things would bring her a tiny bit of solace before the end.

As she set the pillow down, something out the window caught her eye. Something … abnormal. Something that shouldn’t be here, in this land.

Sniffling, she pushed herself to her feet and walked over to the window. She pushed the curtain aside and squinted. Was that … no. It couldn’t be. Could it?

Then it came into focus and she saw that it was. That sneaky little bastard. Gold had taken the egg from Emma, the egg that contained the one bit of magic he’d managed to smuggle into this land. She recalled the tone of his voice when she told him about giving up the rest of her magic to obtain the apple from the Enchanted Forest. Just like she had, he’d made magic from magic.

A grin curled onto her lips as she watched the cloud of pure magic writhe and rush forward, enveloping everything in its wake. She’d thought it was over. She’d thought she’d lost.

She was mistaken.

All was not said and done. Oh, no. It was just getting started.

Her grin grew wider. Let the battle begin.

Writing Challenge

A little while ago, a couple posters on a message board I frequent suggested a writing challenge. Well, actually, one poster jokingly suggested the plot go a certain way, other posters added to it, and a final poster suggested someone actually go write the fanfic because it sounded awesome. My original response was that I would try it myself save for the crippling case of writer's block I had going on.

But then, as it happened, the challenge got into my head. I started thinking of various ways to go about it but at first it was just flights of fancy. When I began dreaming about it at night, I decided it was time to start seriously thinking about trying to write it.

I had a couple of plot details to work out but I got one bit of inspiration from an earlier episode of the show and a final bit of inspiration out of the clear blue sky. So yesterday afternoon, I went out and bought a new notebook, some new pens, and set to work.

I decided to start on paper because, well, paper is my roots. I always used to start my stories in a notebook and do a bulk of the editing when I typed the story up later on. In more recent years, I've been writing strictly on the computer for a variety of reasons, not the least of which included the ease of transferring the file from home computer to work computer and back again. Plus, I type a lot faster than I handwrite, so it saved a lot of time.

But the big problem with writing on a computer, especially when you have writer's block, is that it's so freakin' easy to just backspace and/or delete if you don't like something. Then you get into a constant cycle of writing and deleting and writing and deleting and you never make any progress. Of course with a notebook, you can certainly white-out, but there's more of a thought process there than just, "Eh, I don't like this. *presses Delete*"

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening and almost all of today writing. It's not coming out as easily as it used to but it is coming out and I like it a lot better than anything I've written in the past year or so. And more importantly, I am having an absolute blast! It is indeed a challenge, but I'm having a ton of fun attempting to rise to it.

Perhaps this is what I really needed. Something completely new. Something to kickstart the creative juices again. I'll keep y'all posted!

Inspiration and Ideas

It's a question almost every author is asked at least once: "Where do you get your ideas?" And it's a loaded question, because there is no real answer. It's one of those things where you sit there and go, "You know, I don't even know!"

Inspiration is funny and fickle thing. I went through a period where I didn't get one little drop of inspiration at all ... for close to two years. It was terrible. And then after that, I went through a phase where I was getting inspiration from everything. Which was also kind of terrible because I can only write one thing at a time. Really, Inspiration, what gives?

Inspiration can come from anywhere. A song lyric (as with The Witch of November), road signs (I had an inkling of a story that never got off the ground about a dead end road that lived up to its name), conversations, funny things that happen throughout the day, plot points from TV shows and movies.

Now, I think of inspiration and ideas as two different things. Inspiration is the inkling of the idea. Inspiration is the glimmer of the plotline, the little moment of, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if ..." Turning the inspiration into an idea--something that you can possibly squeeze 50,000 words out of--is the hard part.

Okay, so your inspiration has evolved into an idea. Now what? Everyone is different. For me, I don't have a real process. I don't create flow charts, and I don't plan the story out from beginning to end. I just start writing and let the story flow. Yes, I've written myself into many a corner that way, but hey, I like a challenge.

Because sometimes the stories and the characters write themselves. I always thought people were kidding or being dramatic or whatever when they said that, but trust me, people, that shit is for real. For example, I wound up writing a small, barely-there romantic thread between my two protagonists in The Witch of November. They're eleven years old and thus in that "Boys/girls are icky but I think maybe I like like her/him" stage, so it's nothing too heavy-duty, but it's there.

I had no intention of writing any kind of romance at all between my two kids. It kind of just ... happened. And it ultimately wound up giving me the idea for my epilogue. Had I not let the story evolve in its own way, I wouldn't have my kickass ending!

Inspiration is all around. It's in the songs you hear and the movies you watch and in the funny thing that happened to your coworker on the way back from lunch. You just have to be open to it.