#Regina/Kathryn

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Bone Dry

Part of the Goth fic anthology.

Summary: Regina goes from ghost town to ghost town hunting down a coyote beast to avenge her dead Daniel whose ghost follows along.

It’s got some Kathryn/Regina. Little shoutout to @snowingfairytale for inspiring me to write for the pair.

Heatwaves ripple over a parched land, under a sun so sparingly golden. She can see his face in the mirage.

Sometimes he talks to her.

"Keep walking." He urges. "You're almost there." 

The scavengers, scrappy and scrawny devils, circle overhead, eyes skimming the sand for desert mice. Mice that they won't find here where the tumble weeds bounce. 

Desperation instills a spark of boldness, just enough that they consider picking the meat off of her bones. This far into her journey there isn't much to pick.

Regina half-walk, half-staggers over to the old water pump. Her mouth is as bone dry as the hissing, skittering sand. The heat makes her chest hurt while grains of sand burn her eyes. Rocinante isn't holding up much better. He follows along next to her, head hung. She hopes that she knows that she doesn't hold it against him, that he is too tired to carry her weight.

She wanders past the yellowing soul of a cattle, in which a rattlesnake has taken shelter. She envies its innovation. If this water pump is dry her own skull may well become another shelter for a rattlesnake. 

Sometimes she doesn't think that it would be so bad. She is already enduring the suffocating tightness in her chest. She is already enduring the bleeding cracks in her throat. She is already facing the scraps and scabs as merciless sand storms erode the skin upon her knuckles. She may as well have the bliss of death. 

She takes off her black gallon hat and fans herself with it.

On days like these she can feel Daniel again. He strokes her cheek, moves her hair out of her face--although that could be the work of the wind. "Keep on goin'" he tells her. "Keep on goin'." Just like he did when she'd lost their baby some years back. 

She reckons she don't mind it, her own mortality.

It brings her closer to Daniel than anything else does.

The closer she comes to death the easier it is to hear him, the more he talks to her. And he has been making conversation for several hours now, trying to comfort her as the sun reddens her sweat slicked skin. 

She, sapped of most energy, slumps to her knees.

Wind whistles through the skeletal remains of the old minetown, years past its use.

From somewhere within the village she can hear the creaky spinning of a wheel of an overturned wagon. The snake shakes it's rattle as she passes. Its eyes follow her to the pump. If she can just get a little bit…

If she is lucky, the miners would have vacated before drying up the reserve entirely.

She gives the handle a good pump. And when it begins to weep, so does she.

Daniel has led her here, he usually does when luck and intellect refuse to guide her. She likes to think that it is his way of thanking her for continuing to wear his ring and clutching that final letter he sent to her.

And for her vow to kill that coyote with the snow white fur.

She holds a beaten flask beneath its sputtering stream. She brings the flask to her lips and downs it with a fervent greed before refilling it. This is a task twice repeated before the water begins to run dry. She fills a second flask before it slows to just little drips. There is just enough for the horse.

She glances back at the rattlesnake.

 It won’t make a home of her skull today.

.oOo.

The smoldering metal of the railroad track throws sunlight back into the sky. Every now and then a blinding glint catches her eyes and she shields them with her hands. She follows alongside those broken rails until the navy of night begins to see the golds out.

She wanders until she reaches the outskirts of the dilapidated ghost town, to where the old train station rots, smoldering daily under the sun and in the sand. 

It isn't a place that she has been before and it isn't one that she will traverse again if she can help it.

But it is mighty familiar all the same and she knows that it is in the train station that she'd like to sleep. Rocinante is hesitant, he regards the decomposing building with the same skepticism as any other sensible creature.

Now and then the ghost trains whistle and rumble their way through. It keeps most other devils, demons, fiends, and barbed-booted bandits away. Everyone's afraid of a good ol ghost train. Everyone but her. Sometimes she fancies the idea of stealing one of those discolored tickets from the ticket booth and boarding one for herself. Let it spirit her away leaving nothing but that rumble-rattle like a stampede of iron cattle.

But she has a mission and it ain't through. She ain't gonna rest until that snow white coyote is fur and bones.

.oOo.

Nights are long, she sees those eyes between the cacti. They come in shades of devil red and he'll fire orange. They never come close but she can see them. They yip and yap under the stars. 

Regina draws a cigar from her pocket and lights it up. 

"You know I ain't like it when you do that." Daniel takes a seat next to her.

"You never did." She replies after exhaling that first drag. She takes her hat off and sets it in her lap. Really it isn't her hat, none of this is hers. Not the boots not the hat, not the lasso, nor the vest. Its all Daniel's. Only Rocinante is hers. She peers at the horse as he slinks away from the coyotes. Weren't she so short on ammo, she might shoot them all dead. She reaches into the pouch, hooked to her belt and feels for the bullet. Her special bullet. The one that Tiger Lily had handed her with a promise that it had all of the components and medicine man's blessings to kill her snow white coyote once and for all. "It won't get up if you put this between uts eyes, rip its heart out, and burn it while it still beats."

The coyotes yowl. "We'll get it Daniel…" she muses as she watches the smoke curl up to the stars. 

But Daniel is gone. 

"Looks like we ain't dying tonight, Rocinante." 

The horse whinnies and casts a doubtful look at the coyotes. They snarl and bare their teeth but the won't cross the tracks. 

She hears a metallic whistle off in the distance.

Lonely.

Mournful.

Desperate.

.oOo.

There is another letter in her pocket, resting there at her breast with Daniel's first love note. It keeps her company as she follows these coyote tracks into the entrance of a canyon. 

Is it her coyotes? She can't say for certain. She can't say why she is compelled to think that it is at all other than that those tracks have tracks of their own. Traces and residue, a ripple of death and desolation that radiates off of them.

Rocinante can smell it as surely as she can feel the sinister tingles in her bones.

Her pistol rests heavy at her hip, itching for the day it gets to fire her loathing and vengeance.

Tonight the pistol doesn't hum, it knows that it isn't its day. Rocinante snorts and Regina draws that second letter from its place. 

She needs to read it though she hates its words. The guilt that each slaps into her. 

Dearest love…

The woman always had such a flowery pretty way of speaking.

I suppose that I don't know where to begin. I thought to speak with you in person but settled for giving you booze on the house. 

I assure you that it was no friendly gesture,but a gesture of affection.

Have you loved before? 

I haven't seen you talk much to anyone.

Aloof and unapproachable. She supposes that she can understand why the woman would assume that she has always been that way. 

I'd like to talk to you sometime. Maybe occupy a space on your saddle one day. I've never rode a horse before. Father always said to avoid the cowboys.

He never mentioned a thing at all about cowgirls. 

Mischievous, clever woman.

When you're ready to stop being alone, I'll be at the saloon. I always am. My lunch is at high noon.

~ Kathryn 

And maybe things would be different were Regina capable of letting go. "Move on…" Kathryn always urged. But this is moving on…on and on and on. Onto the next ranch, ghost town,  and small town. Onwards until she can find the snow white coyote and put Daniel's unsettled spirit to rest. 

It'll be easier to lay with a new partner when her old one is gazing longingly. A spectral voyeur that laments and longs when the bed rocks. Phantom hands that caress her body where Kathryn's hands don't. 

She needs to put a faithful horse down once and for all. 

And then she can love again. She can go back to Kathryn and find a place in her bed, in her arms. Then she can have a home and a romance if the woman will still have her.

Likely she will return to Saddlebrook and find the woman settled down and cozy with some gentleman who'd struck lucky during the gold rush. A fellow like that ought to have a woman like Kathryn.

For now Regina will accept the desert and Rocinante as companions and the medicine man's bullet as her lover.

The moon is a thumbnail in the sky. For just a moment all is quiet. Moreover than the deadest of ghost towns. She pats Rocinante's neck and guides him into the canyon. 

Miles and miles back a train whistles, a water pump rusts, and a rattlesnake burrows into a cow skull.

[vidalswife]

Witches Are My Weakness

[rainbowstickersandunicorn]

Agatha All Along 1x01 || Once Upon a Time 1x02

[demonicbaby666]

Me? Having a type? Dunno what you mean.

[multifandominfj]

My babies deserve the world. 💔

[lilyflowerhere]

What if you were a BRUBETTE and a WITCH with MOMMY ISSUES and TRAUMATIC LIFE and you name ENDS WITH A... also you're GAY

[holyblanchett]

Ok.. can I just say as someone who has survived through so many years of queerbaiting with Swanqueen, rizzles and jemily. To finally have a ship that is canon and being represented properly. Like is this fr?? What do you mean this isn't in my head??

I legit trust Jac Schaeffer with my life. Mother has been keeping us FED since Wandavision.

[ladyadaine]

Why the FUCK is Agatha All Along good? I thought I was done with Marvel but then I can't resist lesbian witches. It's I'm a fish and Disney's using wlw as a worm to bait me Anyways, my obsession with Regina Mills is back so thanks to Kathryn Hahn for making me crazy about morally challenged older women wearing trench coats and being witches again

[cabinetofquriosities]

Agatha and Rio were so Mean Girl and Cool Alt Girl coded at the slumber party trial.

So basically the 80’s version of this

[parrillasource]

REGINA MILLS & KATHRYN NOLAN Once Upon a Time 1.13 'What Happened to Frederick?'

[potinspourtoujours]

And you know what, one thing that I never though I’ll see on Tumblr actually happened. How in the world did the Agatha and Rio ship get mixed with Emma Swan And Regina from OUAT. But the main thing is that these ships actually make sense together. Now I’ve seen everything😱

[vidalswife]

If you put me in a room with Emily Prentiss, Agatha Harkness, Regina Mills, Wanda Maximoff, and Rio Vidal.. I PROMISE YOU, everyone is leaving with a limp

[maximoffsgirl]

"they just wanted their child" type of character

[alicecullensupremacist]

All of the Agatha and Nicky backstory scenes were giving me majorrr Once Upon a Time vibes. Throwback to when I was way too emotionally invested in a different milf witch

[intothewickedwood]

Ouattober 2023 Day 4 - Betrayal

[viharistenno]

Sassy authoritative women compel me.