Authoress' Note: I originally intended this to be a three part vignette, but I've decided that it stands better on it's own as a single. I will use the other two parts in another story I'm writing.

Discipline

By Arianwen P.F. Everett

Discipline was a very misunderstood word. To most people it conjured up images of a child being punished for bad behavior, but punishment was the consequence of a lack of discipline, not its synonym. Punishment was an invitation for the recipient to learn and demonstrate discipline in the future. Abuse was random; punishment wasn't and always served a purpose. Regina Mills knew all this. Defining discipline, punishment, and abuse had been her life's one true accomplishment, and it was discipline that she craved because discipline gave order to the world.

Like most, it had taken her a long time to understand the value of discipline. Her mother had practiced abuse but had called it discipline, which is what had caused her confusion. Liberating herself from her mother's magic had taught her the true meaning of both. Discipline had been what had given Regina the power to fight through her mother's magic and push her through the portal. Cora's abuse was what had made her powerless all those years she'd lived under her mother's roof.

With this understanding had come another; love was only weakness when it wasn't mutual. Regina had genuinely loved Cora, but Cora had never loved her back, and that was why Regina had been weak. Daniel's love had given her the strength to stand up to her mother, and without their love, she could never have endured all that life had seen fit to put her through after his death. Discipline had been the means to her survival, but it was her faith in Daniel that gave her purpose and drive.

Knowing she couldn't even attempt to bring Daniel back until she was free of the woman whose hands had taken his life the first time, she'd found the discipline of action, set aside her foolish longing for her mother's love, and pushed. After that was done, she decided that returning Daniel to life would require both magic and significant material wealth and worldly power, so she'd disciplined herself to forego her revulsion at marrying the king and taking Rumplestiltskin up on his offer to teach her.

Unfortunately, a few months into both her marriage and her apprenticeship, she'd hit an impasse and a lack of discipline had clouded her vision. That last breath of idealism, that childhood belief in a good and just world, refused to release her heart and she couldn't bring herself to grip the heart of another, even a unicorn. She'd refused to become a monster like her mother and Rumplestiltskin had sent her away after chastising her on her desire to save her true love. The imp claimed that raising the dead was impossible, and had Jefferson not interceded at just that moment, Regina would have accepted her loss as permanent and happily bled herself in the bath that night, leaving Snow White to find her cold body the next morning when she woke and ran into her stepmother's rooms. The girl's trauma would have served as an adequate punishment when combined with a note left inside her miniature vanity, an explanation for the lesson Regina had intended to teach her stepdaughter with her final act, that broken promises could bring deadly consequences.

But suicide had not been her fate. Jefferson and his enigmatic Wizard / Doctor had restored her hope that Daniel might live again. The Doctor would never truly understand what he'd given her that day, nor would he likely care, but Regina had to acknowledge that it was though his failure that she'd learned patience. Short term discipline, the kind that could sustain her through her wedding vows and the nights her aged husband would come to her bed, had barely scratched the surface of her resolve.

Before The Doctor's first attempt at returning Daniel, she would clean herself as soon as Leopold left her room, order her maids to change the sheets, dress in the purest white nightgown, and make her way to the hidden chamber where she kept Daniel's body. Daniel had told her to be strong that night her mother had killed him, and she was trying, but what she'd had to endure in order to remain strong for him had begun to chip away at her soul.

The Doctor may have failed to bring her love back from the dead, but his gruesome art had rescued her from a dark, endless abyss of hopelessness and weakness. As she pressed her cheek against Daniel's still silent chest that night in The Doctor's tent, she came to understand that if she wanted to transcend death, there could be no limits. If the Dark One wouldn't or couldn't teach her how, then she'd have to go beyond him. She'd have to learn everything he could teach, without filtering it through her conscience or any moral consideration whatsoever, and once mastered, she couldn't allow guilt or regret to sway her from her course.

She would indeed take power and keep on taking power from everyone and everything until she was powerful enough to save Daniel. She would evolve beyond her mother, beyond Rumplestiltskin, beyond the bounds of any magic user in any realm, heck, even beyond whatever power The Doctor held if his claims were accurate and his abilities were even greater than magic. And whatever the price to herself or others, she would pay it. She would find the discipline to pay it or she would die trying, for as it was, she was effectively dead already. Daniel and Daniel alone could bring her back from this living death, save her from the evil she now knew she would have to bring to the world if she were to have him live again, but that's what people who loved each other did, they saved each other, they found each other, no matter the distance between them.