Once Upon a Time 1. I

**A brief table of contents:**

_• "Must be a day ending in y."_—domestic OQ [T]  
_• "Could you repeat that?"_—domestic OQ [M]  
_• "I'll never unsee that."_—domestic OQ with some angsty CS thrown in [T]  
_• "Please stay."_—missing year Enchanted Forest, pre-prequel to _Smirk_ [T]  
_• "Come on."_—domestic OQ with Henry/Roland shenanigans [T]  
_• "Are you fucking kidding me?"_—missing year Enchanted Forest [M]  
_• "Don't make it into a big deal."_—post-diner [T]

* * *

"_Must be a day ending in y."_

* * *

The air is chilly, the leaves pleasantly crisp underfoot as Regina tightens the scarf around her neck and tucks the ends into the collar of her thin wool coat. She feels a telltale lump in her throat every time she swallows and the nipping breeze does little to relieve the sheen of sweat coating her forehead.

"Goddamn it," she curses under her breath, and it comes out in a puffy fog, "not again."

On this day last year, her son had picked up some nasty virus from daycare and promptly passed it along to her. The year before that, she had taken an extended leave from her job to be a stay-at-home mom, and even then she'd somehow managed to contract some sort of something from him. (When it comes down to it, babies, as adorable as they are, can be quite the troublesome bunch of germ bags.) The upside to all this, though, is that while she takes care of him, she has someone else to take care of her.

The thought puts a spring in her step, carries her home faster than the cold ever could.

"Must be that time of year again," Robin says sympathetically, rubbing soothing circles into her back as soon as she's curled up on the sofa (coat and scarf in a heap on the floor), nestled into his warmth, and she's already burning up as it is but it somehow just feels _better_ this way.

She lets out an indignant little sneeze in response and he struggles to cover up his laugh, fails, and then laughs again when she glares balefully at him. He leans in to appease her with a kiss and she scoots back on the couch cushion with an adamant shake of her head.

"I'll get you sick," she warns, voice all husky for reasons that she wishes were entirely unrelated to how absolutely shitty her body feels at the moment.

"I thought queens didn't get sick," Robin teases her.

"You're not a queen," she retorts, and he smirks at that. "I'm not either," she amends, "or at least, I'm a mother first."

"And a wife only second?" Robin pouts. "On any other day I would find that to be a perfectly acceptable arrangement."

"We can do something tomorrow," she promises with a sigh before erupting into a dry coughing fit that has her shoulders heaving. "When I'm feeling better."

He chuckles, pulling her back to his side despite her feeble protestations. "No rush. We have all the time in the world to celebrate." But the baby monitor perched on the coffee table disagrees, choosing that moment to light up as it emits a shrill-sounding cry.

"I'll be right back," Robin whispers into her hair, and as he stands he swoops down to cradle her feverish face in his hands, press a lingering smile and a kiss to her sweaty forehead. "Happy anniversary, darling."

* * *

"_Could you repeat that?"_

* * *

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

She gives him the nastiest glare she can muster under the present circumstances (circumstances that have the hard planes of his body flush against the soft curves of hers). Digs a heel into his back as she jerks her hips up, and he drops his head into the crook of her neck with a groan.

Like hell is she going to let him think he has the upper hand in this.

"Oh, _I'm _sorry," she says, her tone all innocence but her eyes all fire, "what were _you_ saying?"

"Evil," he mutters, even as he withdraws from her and thrusts back in, filling her again, and now she's the one crying out, hands scrambling over his arms, sliding palms down his shoulder blades.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that," he says, breathless, though it doesn't keep the smirk from gracing his lips and she can hear it in his voice, feel it on her throat, as he presses his open mouth against her skin and sucks, hard. His hips lift and fall in a steady rhythm, rocking into her body, the natural contours of his cock sliding in and out with a friction so delicious it nearly blinds her. She sits up, palms on the bed and fisting into the comforter to brace herself, as she arches her back, inviting him to pepper hot, wet kisses over her breasts. He grips her hip to steady his movements, to change the angle of his thrusts, and when she releases a jumbled word mixed in with a heady moan, his hips grind to an inexplicable halt.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she growls, head shooting back up.

"Say it again," he gasps.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she repeats with a delicate arch of her eyebrow, and he shakes his head, resuming the roll of his hips but not with the force she craves, or the depth she needs for her release.

"Say it," he says again, warm hand on her back to bring her closer, scooting her to the edge of the bed where he stands. He threads his fingers into her hair, tilts her head to the side so he can press his tongue into the shell of her ear, and she writhes at the unexpected sensation. "Say it," he whispers, voice rough with desire, and the sound of it alone is nearly enough to send her over the edge, but not quite, she knows, and she needs it, needs him. All of him.

The word tumbles from her mouth. "_Please_."

Hand fisted into her hair now, he pulls out and slams back into her, a strangled groan escaping his lips as he takes her, all of her, and the euphoric trembling spreads from her belly, washes over until she's seeing stars. She feels his body go rigid, stilling inside of her and he gasps into her shoulder, palms leaving scorch marks across her back. As his breathing evens out, he mumbles something into her skin.

"I'm sorry," she says, still struggling to catch her own breath, "could you repeat that?"

He pulls away from her shoulder to lean his forehead against hers, looking flushed, spent and utterly mesmerized with her.

"I," he replies, planting a kiss to her temple, "love," another to the tip of her nose, "you," and then finally her lips, "Regina."

She cups his face between her hands, not daring to speak for a moment. Finally, her lips curve into a mischievous smile.

"Say it again."

* * *

"_I'll never unsee that."_

* * *

"Oh my God!" Emma backs straight into Killian's chest in her hurry to slam the door shut, muffling the startled gasps of surprise from within, the echoing clatter of broom handles and the embarrassed shuffling of ones caught in the act.

"Oh my God," she repeats, bringing a hand up to shield her eyes even though the memory is now burned into her retina. "I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee that."

"I'm not sure that I'd want to, love," Killian remarks, and she jabs an elbow into his stomach with a wrinkled nose and a poorly concealed sound of disgust.

"Could you be more gross?" she demands to know and is rewarded with a shameless shrug.

"Lighten up on them, Swan," he says cheerfully. "I'm sure they get precious few moments alone together now, what with the wee little one and all." His voice lowers an octave then. "Besides, it's not as though we weren't about to appropriate the janitor's closet for the exact same purpose."

She glares at him but concedes his point with her subsequent silence.

"Come on, love, back to the party," and he catches her wrist in his hook, gently, as he always is with her even when she's entirely the opposite to him, leading her through the swinging door. As soon as it opens she extracts her hand from his hold and brings it almost possessively to her chest, under the exaggerated pretense of readjusting her necklaces.

"Mom!" exclaims Henry when they reappear on the other side, "there you are. It's almost time to blow out the candles for Neal!" He cranes his neck around and she waits patiently for the puzzled look to cross his face. "Have you seen Mom?"

"Nope," says Emma a touch too energetically, swinging her arms around to clap her hands casually together, "nope, haven't seen her. Anywhere. With anyone."

"Oookay," Henry replies, giving her a weird look. "Well, I'm going to go look for her, she wouldn't want to miss—"

"I'll go!" Emma says brightly. "Find her. Over there. Where I'll start looking, that is." She gestures vaguely to the back of the diner, pointedly ignores the way Killian is side-eyeing her like she's completely lost her mind.

"You were just there," Henry frowns.

"Wasn't looking for her earlier," Emma answers honestly. And hopefully, when she does this time, Regina will be in a slightly less compromising position, and wearing slightly more layers of clothing, than she had been previously.

Killian is standing there with a ringed finger resting thoughtfully on his lips, probably to prevent them from opening and speaking and making her feel like an even bigger idiot than she does already, when his hand moves to direct her attention back to the door partitioning off the hotel from the diner.

Regina has emerged, head ducked under a curtain of hair to hide the otherwise unmistakable pink glow coloring her cheeks, palm pressed into her belly, and Robin follows closely thereafter, with his hand on her back and his mouth in her ear, whispering something that has a smile blossoming across her face before he's even finished. She turns her head up to respond in a low murmur and he laughs outright, the sound warm and loving to match the look in his eyes as they gaze down at her.

Emma catches Henry watching them, beaming openly. She feels Killian's stiff posture, can sense the listless way his hook dangles at his side, despite the good three feet of distance that she's put between them. ("I just hate making our business everyone else's too," she'd stuttered in explanation to him the last time he'd tried to take her hand in public, and though he'd backed obligingly off to give her space, she wishes he'd defy her, just this once, keeps pushing him away, just so he'll keep coming back to her.)

But Regina—of all people, Regina—weaves her fingers through her soulmate's hand, as the palm she had against her abdomen sneaks around to rub into his instead, and Henry can't contain himself any longer, bounds over to them with an enthusiastic "Where have you guys been?"

She's about as good as Emma at half-assing excuses, saying hastily, "Oh," and, "we were just looking for…extra sugar," with Robin smiling agreeably at her side.

"Right," says Henry, "I'll bet you were."

"Henry!" Regina admonishes at the same time Emma is bursting out, "kid!" but Killian chuckles and Robin hand is suddenly hiding a grin (men).

"What?" asks Henry defensively. "It's not like I don't know what you were up to. You did the same thing last year."

"Did we?" Robin finally speaks up, playfully rueful, and Regina doesn't even bother trying to make her glare look convincing (he rewards her for it with a kiss to her hair).

"Please," says Henry, making a show of crossing his arms. "The only difference now is that back then, it was _supposed _to be a secret. I'm not a kid anymore, you know." Emma almost swears he's puffing out his chest now. "Not when I have big brother duties to attend to."

"That you most certainly do," remarks Robin, and the two share a smile that has the one on Emma's face tightening just a bit.

"There you two are," calls Snow as she makes her way toward them, bouncing a raven-haired toddler on the side of her hip. David is a few steps behind her, making absurd faces and incoherent babbling sounds at the baby bundled up in his arms, and Roland brings up the rear, standing on his toes and tugging at David's pants as though it will grant him a better view of his baby brother.

"Thank you, for watching him," Regina says, and David responds with an "of course," looks ridiculously pleased as his godson's tiny little hand lifts up out of the blankets to make a grab at his nose.

Emma forces the chuckle that comes naturally to everyone else, and she resents the shooting pang of jealousy that finds its way to her heart.

"Careful," her mom says with a wink, but she's sending it Regina and Robin's way, "David may not be willing to give him back if you let him hold your son for too long."

"Can _I_ hold him?" Henry asks eagerly, and David looks to the queen and her thief for a permissive nod before transferring their son into Henry's arms. Roland immediately abandons his post by David to crane his neck upward at the baby, a task made much more manageable now that Henry is the one holding him. Robin and Regina huddle around the three boys, and when she lets out a happy sigh, his hand disentangles from hers to draw round her waist, pull her closer.

"Cake," says Neal then, looking expectantly at Snow from his perch at her hip.

"Cake," she agrees, and Emma says hurriedly, "I'll get Ruby, and the lighter," and disappears behind the counter.

She doesn't realize Killian has followed until he's wordlessly pouring out and handing her a drink, and she takes an immediate grateful gulp. Scotch.

"That was _our _broom closet," Emma grumps finally.

He doesn't reply at first, until she's looking up at him and then he says, slowly, as though choosing his words with great care, "Perhaps we shouldn't be ducking into closets anymore, love." And her mouth is open long enough for him to realize she has nothing to say, so he sets his jaw and walks away to rejoin Robin and Regina, their family, _her _family, leaving her standing there with an elbow on the bar, empty glass in her hand, alone.

* * *

"_Please stay."_

* * *

Robin happens upon her in the forest one day while hunting for game, trains an arrow at a scuffling sound he mistakes for deer, and then instantly drops it to his side when his line of vision falls upon Regina's murderous glare. He holds up a hand, an apology, a lack of intent to harm, but her dark eyes grow darker still as they narrow in suspicion and she turns away in silent dismissal.

In the few weeks they have known each other, she has already grown accustomed to his lightness of foot, the way he steals in and out of her presence before she has the chance to punish him for it (though he stays in her thoughts, uninvited, long after). So she waits several moments before bringing a hand up to wipe at her face, thinking he has gone.

(He hasn't, not yet, mesmerized by the way the regal lift of her shoulders seems to deflate before his eyes, and the way she carries the vulnerability of something broken though she still looks a queen.)

The next time he happens to barge in on a private moment she is far more exposed, and thus far less kind to him for it. Flames burst forth from her palm and flicker, soaring through the air until they extinguish themselves violently against a tree branch near his head, scattering sparks across the forest floor. By the time he's stamped out the last of them with the slightly charred toe of his boot, and lifted his gaze back up to find hers, she's the one who's gone.

But he can't bring himself to head back to camp just yet; there's something about the memory of her doubled over, hands clutched tight to her chest, that roots him to the spot—and, as Snow will tell him later, though the queen's aim is not equipped with the guaranteed precision of his bow and arrow, she hardly ever misses. She'd meant to throw him off, perhaps, but not to hurt him, and that more than anything has him convinced that though she seeks solace, she doesn't want to be left alone.

So he tracks her this time, and even the famed Evil Queen with all her magic can't evade his detection for long; not from a man who grew up in these woods, sees the trail her cloak left behind in nothing but a pile of leaves, knows where she has just rested her hand moments before on the tree trunk scratched bare of its bark. The evidence of her every wayward footstep, every pause to draw a ragged breath, lights his way, leads him down a path straight to her, but when he reaches the end of it, it's not Regina he finds, but her heart.

It's nestled and pulsing within the roots of a great oak tree, allowing her a moment of blissful reprieve that dulls the constant ache in her soul. Later she will call it temporary insanity that has him bending over, picking it up (and then guiding it back into her chest, before the insanity grips him further and he's pulling all of her to _him_); but for now, as he cradles her heart in his hands, handling it with more care than she's ever bothered with herself, and a gentleness that's absolutely foreign to her, she lets out a startled gasp from her perch on a fallen log, and their eyes meet through an open knot in the tree.

"Milady," he starts cautiously. "I'm sorry. If you wish to be alone…"

She shakes her head. Maybe it's the way he's still holding her heart close, as though it is something precious to him. Maybe it's the way he's entirely unfazed by the veins of blackness marring its surface, lacing through to its core like poison. Whatever it is, there's something about this man, this thief, that has her fists unclenching, free of fire this time, and her mouth finally opening up to say, "Please," with a deep shuddering breath, "stay."

* * *

"_Come on."_

* * *

"Come _on_, brudder," Roland insists in hushed tones. "We're going to be late!"

"Just a second," says Henry, returning the contents of the drawer to their proper place as quickly as he's rummaging through them. It's got to be here somewhere… "Don't forget to stand watch!"

Roland instantly straightens up and darts back to guard the doorway, pokes his head around the corner.

"Okay!" he shouts it in a whisper, and then the phrase Henry had taught him when they were in the initial planning stages of Operation Red Fox, "all clear!"

"Good," Henry replies, but the situation is anything but as he closes the drawer with more composure than he feels. He could've sworn Mom had put her ring there when it stopped fitting (her "sausage fingers," as she liked to refer to them, and Robin would grab one hand and press indignant little kisses all over her knuckles while she rubbed her protruding belly with the other, and Henry would only pretend to be grossed out while Roland made actual faces). What if he can't find it in time? What if Robin changes his mind?

His forehead falls into his hands with a frustrated sigh, and then he sees it, a glint of green in the carpet at the foot of her vanity, and he almost whoops with joy.

"Roland!" he shouts, in quite the opposite of a whisper, "Roland, I found it!"

"Yes!" says Roland, pumping his fist into the air (another thing Henry had considered essential to teach him).

Henry bends down, grabbing the ring and pocketing it into his Levi's. "Come on," and he's taking Roland's hand, "let's go."

They're hustling down the hallway toward the staircase when he catches the top of Mom's head bobbing into view as she makes her way up, and Henry skids to a halt on the hardwood floor with Roland colliding into his back.

"Hi," says Henry, hoping she doesn't notice how suspicious and out of breath he sounds, "Mom," he gulps down some more air as subtly as possible, "what's up?"

"What's up?" she echoes.

He grins innocently.

Her forehead wrinkles. "Where are you boys going in such a hurry?"

"Nothing," says Henry, "I mean, nowhere," at the same time that Roland pipes up, "to go help Papa!"

If Mom didn't have full view of their feet from where she's paused on the stairs, Henry would nudge Roland's.

"What does Papa need help with, honey?" she asks, smiling gently.

"To pick something out for your birthday," Henry puts in hastily. It's not entirely a lie, but also not truthful enough to spoil the surprise. "Whoops, guess our cover's blown. Ha, ha."

She looks skeptical but stands aside to let them pass by. When he's at eye-level with her he darts forward quickly to kiss her on the cheek, and then he's bounding down the stairs and out the door with Roland in tow, taking a sharp left when they've reached the end of the path underneath the apple tree, and then they're hurrying off in the direction of Gold's pawn shop.

.

.

.

Robin is waiting anxiously for them just inside the door as it tinkles closed behind them.

"Did you find it?" he asks, hands rubbing nervously together.

"Yep!" says Henry proudly, digging the ring out of his pocket and depositing it into Robin's sweaty palm.

"Don't be nervous," he tells him. "Mom will love it."

"If she doesn't," says Roland at his elbow, "it's okay. She still loves _us_."

Robin chuckles at that, ruffling his son's hair with great affection. "You're right about that, my boy. Okay. Let's…"

"Do this thing," supplies Henry with a nod. "Where's Mr. Gold?"

The man in question emerges from the back of his shop, clearing his throat as he comes to stand with hands folded over the counter. "You've brought it, I see."

"Are you sure this will work?" Henry asks him a tad aggressively as they approach and Robin hands his mom's ring over to Mr. Gold with maybe a little more trust and conviction than Henry would've done. Grandpa or no grandpa.

"My dear boy," the man says, examining the ring as Henry scowls at the endearment, "pixie dust…never lies."

"I don't see any pixie dust," Henry replies dubiously.

"No?" Mr. Gold holds the ring up to the light, rolling it slowly between his fingers. The emerald stone glimmers. "I wouldn't be so quick as to assume that." He turns to Robin then. "Now. The other ingredient, please."

Robin rolls his sleeve up and places the back of forearm against the glass, tattoo on full display. Henry watches apprehensively (poor Roland is stretching his body out to the max from his tip-toes to the hands gripping the edge of the counter) as Mr. Gold presses the ring against Robin's skin. It aligns within the grasp of the lion's outstretched claws, and as Henry stares, his grandfather muttering some Latin incantation under his breath, he could almost swear he sees the emerald give off an unnaturally bright glow, the claws twitch and move, but that can't be right, it has to be either a trick of the dim store lighting or Robin is flexing his arm, muscles causing the skin above them to undulate—

Roland gasps.

"Gods," Robin breathes as the lion leaps off his skin, clutching the ring between its paws.

Henry realizes then that Mr. Gold has stopped speaking. The magic has taken on a life of its own, the ring emitting its own dazzling green light as the gold melds with the lion, cantering across the glass in smaller and smaller circles even as it picks up speed. Suddenly there's a loud crack, a blazing explosion of viridescence that illuminates their stunned, gaping faces, and then just as abruptly as it started, it's over, and not one ring, but three, drop to the counter with a chiming jingle. Simple, thin rose gold, a wider set one that's a millimeter thicker, and another ring with an emerald cut diamond centered between two of a smaller size on either side.

"Congratulations," says Mr. Gold finally, while the other three are still at a loss of words. "Looks like some villains get a happy ending after all."

Henry finally finds his voice. "Not really," he says with a shrug, then a pointed look, a silent challenge. "My mom's not a villain."

.

.

.

He shouldn't be eavesdropping, he really shouldn't, but that doesn't stop him from hunkering down on the floor just shy of the open archway leading into the kitchen, one hand pressing a palm against the wall and the other lifting a finger up to his mouth in a silent reminder to Roland, who's crouched beside him with wide, anxious eyes that likely mirror his own.

He hears his mom gasp.

"Your—your tattoo," she stammers. "Where—" (And Henry winces to imagine all the conclusions she must be jumping to right now, that it was all a delusion, that Robin must've gotten rid of it as some way of denying their love, or something equally ridiculous, and his mother is just ridiculous that way but he knows she's still learning to be loved properly, and that Robin is the one teaching her how.)

There's a pause and Henry imagines Robin taking her hand, taking the time to kiss those knuckles before responding.

"What are you doing," his mom says suddenly, sounding alarmed, and Henry bounces on the balls of his feet in his effort to not peek, but he would bet his storybook that if he did, Robin would be on one knee now, reaching for the ring in his pocket.

"Robin," Mom exclaims, her voice sounding breathless and muffled now, "Robin, what—"

"I love you," he hears Robin say. "Regina. I love you. Please. Take this. Accept my hand. I—" But he doesn't get a chance to finish, as there's a loud scuffling and an _oomph_, the clatter of what Henry guesses to be various pieces of dishware and cutlery being displaced from the countertop, then the beautiful sound of his mother crying, and before he can help it he's launching himself up and through the archway to join them, Roland in close pursuit. His mom is sobbing into Robin's arms, and even without lifting his right to cradle the back of her head Henry knows what he won't see there, but in place of the lion is a ring on his mom's left hand now—and this one, he knows, she's never taking off.

* * *

"_Are you fucking kidding me?"_

* * *

She storms out of the castle and heads for the stables, needing to clear her head. This is absurd, she thinks, it simply will not do. She'll think of a way to detain him somehow, to keep him from coming with them—snap his bow in two when he's not looking, or—

"Regina." She hopes for a second that the voice is only in her head but then it calls to her louder, more insistently and suddenly a hand is grabbing her at the shoulder and spinning her around.

"What?" she snarls. "What do you want, thief?"

Robin looks completely unfazed as he asks her, "can you please explain to me how I seem to be the one solely responsible for the enormous stick lodged up your ass?"

Her jaw drops. "_Excuse_ me?"

"And why is it," he continues as though she hasn't spoken, "that you insist so adamantly on my absence from this mission?"

"You've got to be kidding," she scoffs. "I already made myself perfectly clear. Or are you as deaf as you are ignorant?"

He steps into her personal space and she denies herself the impulse to falter back, lifts her chin defiantly, determined not to show him how greatly affected she is by his sudden closeness.

"I believe you claimed I was not to be trusted," he tells her.

"Well I _don't_ trust you," she says mutinously.

"Is that it?" He frowns. "Or is it simply that you don't trust yourself when you're around me?"

"Oh, please," she hisses, jabbing a finger into his chest now, "get over yourself. I am perfectly capable of controlling myself. You think you're so irresistible?"

"To you?" He leans in a little too close for her comfort, the smell of forest filling her nostrils, a smell she'd let herself become addicted to in a moment—or several—of weakness (but no more), as his breath warms the skin exposed by the generous dip of her dress. "Yes. I rather do."

The finger she's using to keep him at arm's length retracts into a fist. "Need I remind you," she says coldly, "what happened the last time you let your large ego get in the way?" And her hand recoils for an instant before shooting out and catching him right in the stomach.

He lets out a startled grunt and falls to his knees, doubling over in pain. She crouches next to him, grabs fistfuls of his collar and yanks him close. He's biting his lip in a grimace. "That's what I thought," she says smugly. "You. Are. Not. Coming. With us."

"Like hell I'm not," he wheezes, clutching his ribcage as he struggles for an even breath, and she scowls, it's not like she hit him _that_ hard, and the wound that a friend-turned-monkey had left behind should've healed weeks ago. Although, come to think of it, it's been weeks since she's been in a…position…to examine it herself. Cold turkey, and all that.

She unceremoniously shoves him to the ground and yanks the hemline of his tunic out of his pants, stretching it up over his abdomen to reveal a very angry-looking bruise, mottled with an impressive palette of blue, green and purple.

"Idiot!" she snaps at him, hands stilling as they apply gentle pressure to his skin.

"I was hoping you wouldn't notice that," he winces, and she resists the urge to hit him again, electing instead to make him suffer in other ways as she tosses her skirts aside to straddle him at the waist, raising her palm centimeters above the injury. Light bursts forth, mending broken capillaries and returning the blood where it rightfully belongs.

"Mm," he sighs as the throbbing gives way to mild discomfort.

"This is why I don't trust you," she mutters, closing her hand into a fist once more. "I don't trust you not to get yourself hurt again."

Robin rewards her with a crooked grin, though it's weak and his eyes are fluttering, not from the pain this time but from the way she's inadvertently digging her hips into his. He wiggles experimentally and she glares at him, makes to stand, but her movements are halted by the sudden presence of his hands around her waist; she watches in morbid fascination as his abdomen tightens, pulling his upper body up to sit in a single fluid motion, and her palms automatically press into him to push him away, but her fingers are curling into his tunic as though to bring him closer, and _Are you fucking kidding me_, she groans inwardly, _not this again_.

"Do you honestly think," he's asking her conversationally now, a casual eye trained down on the involuntary flexing of her hands at his chest, "that _I_ would trust _you _not to do the same?" He brings an arm up to grip her shoulder right where he knows it's going to hurt and she cries out, wrenching away. "How exactly do you think I got injured in the first place?"

"Because you got in my way," she grouses, rubbing her shoulder (healing herself is the one thing he's harassed her about, and the one thing she's refused to do). "Even though I explicitly warned you not to."

"I must be as deaf as I am ignorant, then," he says gently, his hand coming up to dwarf her cheek, "for wanting to protect my queen."

Her retort dies into a stuttering breath, and her chest tightens as his gaze lifts back up to meet hers, his eyes a molten blue, and she's terrified of what she sees in them, so she does the first thing she can think of to shut them out.

She closes her eyes, and then closes what little space remains between them with a kiss to his throat, tongue slipping out to sample the sweat from his skin. His head tilts sideways with a groan, one hand pulsing on her hip as the other gently encircles her neck, then moves up to coast over her hair, pulled tight into a high ponytail, and fumbles at the clasp and pins holding it up. Silky waves tumble down over her shoulders, catching in the feathered collar of her dress and in his fingers as he threads them through, gripping, tugging the back of her head to separate her lips from his pulse point so he can finally kiss them.

She sighs into his mouth as she braces herself up with knees on the ground and hands splayed on either side of his neck, belly pressed to his ribcage, breasts to his collarbone. Whimpers when his tongue disentangles from hers to lavish attention to her heaving chest instead, and then his palm is coasting up her jeweled corset to settle into the dip of its plunging neckline. Gasps out when he gives a rough pull and the fabric tears straight down the middle, scattering beads and stones and gems over the grassy terrain.

"You'll pay for that later," she breathes, but instead of responding he tugs her closer, grinds his hips up into hers and she feels his erection pressing against her center through the soft cotton material of his pants.

"For that infernal thing?" Robin grunts finally. "Good riddance. The same goes for these, too." And he rips violently at her skirts, until she's naked and exposed to him in the front, and down below. His fingers find her slick folds and slip inside, thumb brushing roughly against her clit. She shudders, hand coming down to grasp him, feels him jerk into her touch, and his head falls back, eyes rolling, jaw slackening, a guttural sound escaping from deep within his throat. Her other hand finds the waistband of his pants and destroys them as quickly as he had her corset ("Fair's fair," she hums into his ear before catching it between her teeth).

She rides his fingers for a second longer and then brushes them impatiently away, aligning their hips and then sliding down onto him ("Gods," he groans, and it's the sexiest thing she's ever heard), to the hilt, and she has to bite her lip to keep from whimpering when he grasps her tight at her waist, lifts her up, and then surges back into her once more.

Grabbing his face in her hands, she meets his mouth with tongue and teeth, kissing him with all the desperation that she can't bear to express to him any other way, and he sighs, tries to take her slower but she bites down and the strangled moan that falls from his lips is positively electrifying. Her hips pivot and move over his cock, taking him in and out as he rises off the ground to meet her every time, fill her again, fill her till she's gasping, she feels the tension building in her stomach and it clenches, arching her back and the gasp of ecstasy tumbles out of her mouth as it parts from his, and she comes apart in his arms. He shudders as he reaches his own release, and even after, he's still moving inside her, slower and slower as the last quivers of pleasure ripple through their bodies, and then they're still.

He's panting heavily into her chest as she licks the sweat off his brow, tucks a wayward lock of his hair back into place. Presses a languid kiss to his forehead, as he finally shifts and moves a hand up from her hipbone to caress her spine. Shivers, stutters as his mouth finds its way to her breast, tongue dragging across her nipple, and she feels something inside her stir, how is this even possible, but she can feel desire coursing through his body again too, and he stiffens underneath her once more as she reaches down to take him into her hand.

"You're still not coming with us," she whispers to him later, much later, leg thrown over his, hand curled around his waist as she fingers where his bruise had been.

He does anyway.

* * *

"_Don't make it into a big deal."_

* * *

Snow calls her the next morning, claims it's urgent.

Regina is curled up in a ball of blankets by the fire when she makes the mistake of answering the phone—had hoped against all hope she knew she didn't deserve that it would be him, saying he'd made a mistake, that he'd been a fool to let her walk away from him.

She was the fool to think he'd be the one reaching for her now.

"Please, Regina," Snow repeats plaintively.

She grits her teeth, replies, "I'm busy," as calmly as she can manage. Busy refraining from ripping her heart out of her chest and leaving it in her father's tomb along with the rest of them, pulsing reminders of all the lives, all the happiness, she's singlehandedly destroyed.

"I thought you might say something along those lines," Snow replies, and the end of her sentence is punctuated by the chime of the doorbell, followed by a loud knock.

Regina stiffens under her blankets, feeling mutinous.

"So that's why we've decided to come to you instead," Snow continues, "and I know you're home so you have no excuse not to—"

Regina hangs up the phone and tosses it to the couch as she stands. She kicks the silver platter on the floor in her haste to get to the door and yell at Snow in person, sending wheels of day-old cheese careening across the carpet. (The bottle, empty save for the last dregs of wine at the bottom, still rests on its side near the foot of her bed upstairs where Robin had discarded it the day before, to free up his hands for running them all over her body instead.)

"Listen," she says abruptly as she throws open the door, "I'm not in the mood for your charming little pep talks or—oh."

It's not Snow standing there with a fist raised mid-knock, but Robin, and the sight of him alone feels like a punch in the gut, stumbles her backward. She sees his gaze move frantically over the wrinkled satin pajamas, the arm she has thrown over her chest to brace herself, the lines in her forehead, and her eyes, dark and hollow as they stare into his own.

"Regina," he says, and it rolls off his tongue with a comforting familiarity that she does not want from him, "may I come in?"

The hand she has at her shoulder grips till her knuckles whiten. "No," she says, more firmly than she feels, "no, you may not."

His mouth opens, but she doesn't think she can say no to him again if she hears him utter her name one more time, so she swings the door shut in his face. Clicks the lock back in place before she can change her mind (like that'll stop her if she does, or stop him from breaking it down if all that stood between them was a metal bolt, and not her heart, or his wife's).

She presses her palms to the door and feels it shudder as something thumps against it, imagines Robin resting his forehead there on the other side.

"Regina," he tries again, voice sounding muffled and broken, "please."

She leans her own forehead into the door, fingers trailing over the wood as though they can pass right through and reach out to him, grasp his arm through the thick sleeve of his coat, pull him to her, never let him go. Even though she can't see him, she can feel him, the door caught between their bodies thrums and she flattens her hand against it, dragging, as her eyes flutter closed. The ghost of his breath washes across the skin at the nape of her neck, sending delicious little tingles down her spine to meet the small of her back where the phantom touch of his hand is resting, and she arches against it, misses the real thing, misses _him_.

She's unaware of how much time has passed when she finally feels her resolve begin to weaken, crumble, and she's sorely tempted to open the door again and see if he's still standing there when there's another knock, softer this time.

"Regina?" calls a voice from the other side, and disappointment drags her heart down into the pit of her stomach.

"Are—are you alone?" Regina asks, hating how weak she sounds.

"No?" replies Snow with some confusion, and the treacherous hope that surges up into her chest is squelched back down as she continues, "I've brought someone who's eager to finally meet you."

What?

She opens the door to the sight of Snow's tentative smile, the cooing of the baby cradled in her arms. A furtive scan across the yard, to the apple tree and out onto the street beyond, tells her what she already knows—Robin has gone.

Her lungs feel tight, but then, "Oh," she breathes as Neal turns large eyes on her and stares, unblinking.

"I don't think you two were ever properly introduced," Snow beams, and Regina isn't sure which happens first, her reaching for him, or Snow handing him over, but suddenly her arms are full of baby blankets and Neal's hands fly up into the air, as though in celebration.

"My favorite baby reflex," Snow says, and they share a smile as only mothers can. The same instincts that helped Regina raise Henry take over once more as she rocks Neal gently in her arms, trailing a knuckle over his soft, plump cheeks.

"I want you to be his godmother," Snow says, pointblank.

Neal stills in her arms and looks almost questioningly up at Regina as she pauses in her rocking, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and then ire.

"Me?" she asks sharply. "I'm hardly godmother material. Why don't you ask Blue, or—"

"I'm not looking for a fairy godmother, Regina," Snow states calmly.

"So you're looking for an evil one?" she baits her.

Snow doesn't bite (she never does). "I think you and I both know what kind of a godmother you'd be." A pause, punctuated by an innocent look. "But if you have a reputation to maintain, it can be our little secret. Ours and his." She reaches over to tickle Neal in the tummy, then the palm, and he closes his tiny fist around her finger.

Regina finds it hard to swallow, can't fathom why it should be her of all people (_I couldn't imagine it any other way_, Snow will tell her later, though it will still take her twice as many laters to truly believe it)—"If this is some pity offer, because of what happened last—"

"It isn't," Snow cuts her off, with the same tinge of exasperation she'd used not a month ago to tell her that Robin _was_ coming with them to Rumple's castle, whether she liked it or not. "And I'd like to think we've come far enough for you to know that."

Regina feels an unbidden sliver of gratitude bleeding through into her dark, dark heart, lightening it again the way baby Henry had when she had first held him as her own. She can't bring herself to voice her answer out loud, but Snow doesn't need to hear it; she knows, and she can't stop smiling.

"Don't make it into a big deal," Regina mutters uncomfortably, but Snow beams, is opening her mouth to speak when there's a soft scuffling sound from behind them.

"Oh, is Henry home?" Snow asks, as Regina deposits Neal back into her embrace.

"No…" Regina turns, frowning. "He slept over and tried to get out of going to school this morning so he could stay with me. I threatened to not let him come back if he didn't…" she trails off as she makes her toward the kitchen, Snow and Neal following closely behind. She must have left a window open again, she thinks, there's always some manner of woodland critter trying to sneak into her cupboards for a pastry or two whenever she does, much to her aggravation (honestly, you'd think they took her for Snow White, not her evil stepmother).

She rounds the corner of the open archway and almost falls backwards from the force with which she slams into some large object unexpectedly blocking her way, but then arms shoot out to steady her, and his scent gives him away before she even recognizes the rise and fall of the chest pressed beneath her palms, the texture of the coat at her fingertips.

"_Robin_," she gasps, and she hears Snow mirror her sharp intake of breath from behind. "You broke into my _home_?"

"You wouldn't let me in the proper way," he argues as though this were the only other alternative, hands still gripping her shoulders.

She finally finds the wherewithal to twist away, ignores the pang she feels at the sudden loss of his warm touch. "Because I don't want you here."

"Only because you think I don't want to be," he thunders, looking incensed. "If you had simply listened to me last night when I tried to—"

"Listened to you?" she repeats. "I'm sorry if I couldn't hear you over the joy of your little family reunion." But that's not fair, she's not being fair to him, so she backtracks at the crestfallen look upon his face, says with far less venom now, "you have your family back. That's all you should want."

"So it's selfish of me to want you too?" His gaze burns into her with the intensity of a thousand midday suns. "Because believe me, Regina, I am not a selfish man," he takes a tentative step closer, "but that in no way lessens how badly I want—_need_—you to stay in my life."

"You can't have it both ways," she tells him, but that stupid hope comes bubbling to the surface again when he shakes his head, disagreeing.

"I made a mistake last night, Regina. I can't let you walk away from me like that again. I just—" He looks desperate now, as though the image of it still haunts him even as she stands there within arm's reach. "I _can't_."

"You have a wife, Robin."

"I had a wife," he corrects, "who died four years ago. The fact that she is back now does not return what my heart had lost, and it could never erase how I feel about—"

"Stop," she interrupts, despising the way the word trembles. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Why are you so determined to write off everyone's opinions but your own?" he demands. "Simply because you own my heart now does not entitle you to decide what it cares for or doesn't!"

She backs up at the heat of his words, registering briefly that Snow has at some point in the conversation made herself scarce. "I—" she begins, but doesn't quite know how to respond to—wait—_what_ did he just say?

"Let me guess," Robin sighs. "You don't believe me." He starts forward again and, miraculously, her feet stay firmly in place. He opens his arms, turns his hands palm-side up. "Well this is me, Regina. All of me. I'm a thief, but an honorable one. I've been breaking into homes to steal for others long before I fell in love with you, and I _promise _you that's the only thing that hasn't changed since."

"What are you stealing this time, then?" she asks tremulously, arms crossed over her chest to hide the frantic pace of her breathing.

"You, you ridiculous woman," he gasps, hands unshackling from the hesitation that had been holding him back as he lifts them up to her face, thumbs padding over her cheekbones when she doesn't pull away. "You. I'm stealing you. For myself." His admission comes out in a shudder. "I must be a selfish man after all."

Her laugh comes out in a sob, and she knows this is too good to be true but she lets it happen anyway, allows herself this moment before it's taken away from her, as everything always is, in the end. Lets him rest his forehead against hers, without a door between them this time, lets him tilt her chin toward his as his warm breath washes across her lips, and they open with a sigh as he leans down to a press a kiss to them.

.

.

.

Regina comes to with a start. She must've fallen back asleep after she strong-armed Henry into going to school. There's a dull ache in her neck from the awkward angle at which her head had buried into the crook of her elbow while she slept. The carpeted floor against her back has long since lost its comforting appeal, and the blankets are like a vice of sweat suffocating her body. She's struggling out of them, massaging her neck once her hand is free, when she remembers her dream, and the memory clenches around her heart until she's curled up and gasping from the pain, angry tears burning her eyes.

Of course, it had all been too good to be true.

She's fighting the tears back down when the phone beside her rings.

"Regina!" Snow's voice greets her when she picks up, bright and grating. "Regina, there's something important I have to talk to you about. I'd rather do it in person, I just wanted to make sure you were home before I left—"

But the words descend into a dull roar at Regina's ear with the sound of someone knocking at the door.

She dares to let herself hope again.


	2. II

**A/N:** OQ wedding day AU. Short and sweet. Here, have some cavities!

* * *

"_I won the bet."_

* * *

The wedding is small but intimate, simple but tasteful. Of course, if Regina had gotten her way about it, there wouldn't have been a wedding at all, only her and Robin, in a courthouse with nothing but a piece of paper and a witness to their vows.

"But think of the memories," Snow had tried, earning an altogether unimpressed look from Regina, until her one-time stepdaughter had effectively ended the discussion with a sly smile and an innocent "Fine—just think of Henry, then." Henry, who had been so suspiciously giddy for days after giving Robin his blessing, that Regina had more or less known what was coming before Robin had even knelt down on one knee, by the bench where he'd once told her that she was the one his heart had chosen (she still is).

So she'd thought of Henry.

And so now there is a wedding.

And because a wedding was the last thing Regina had wanted, the planning of it had fallen to Snow's eager hands. Rafters strung with twinkle lights and the center aisle lined with plush red velvet, rows of seats bookended by delicate wreaths of tea candles so that the whole thing will feel more like a ceremony than a town hall meeting. Calligraphy-penned place cards and table settings for the reception to follow. (Regina had adamantly refused a rehearsal dinner, and Snow had had to talk Ruby down from the steep, narrow ledge that would have been planning Regina a surprise bachelorette party.) Bridesmaids' dress fittings (off the shoulder for Snow, strapless for Emma) and all the flower arrangements.

Which is how Henry winds up walking his mother down the aisle with their arms linked at the elbow and a bouquet of snowbells and daffodils clutched in both of her hands.

Regina's feet are unsteady as they pass, work their way through a sea of faces she would've thought more likely to show up for her execution than her blessed union with a man. A man determined to stand by her till death do them part, with or without a piece of paper to prove it.

It's that man she looks to now, who's looking back at her from his place near the pulpit where Archie awaits them both. Looking slack-jawed and utterly smitten, with eyes bright and dancing to match his suit of midnight blue that glows black when the light flickers against it just right. She looks to him and her gaze does not waver, her step no longer falters.

And so she is too preoccupied to notice what fails to escape Henry's attention, from where he now stands sandwiched between Little John's bulk and Will Scarlet's lanky frame. Roland's shoulders bounce up and down beneath the gentle, calming pressure of Henry's hands, his soon-to-be stepbrother old enough to recognize something exciting is about to happen and to keep quiet about it, but young enough that he can't keep still.

So Roland bounces away as Henry surveys the crowd—a modest size, and with not a dry eye in sight. Someone is blowing his nose loudly, noisily (someone else is shushing him just as loudly, and everyone is doing their best to ignore them both). Even Mr. Gold is dabbing inconspicuously at his face with a handkerchief Belle has just handed him, her own face damp and glistening.

Archie's voice sounds just a little off kilter as he leads them through their promise to love each other in sickness as well as in health, and then his great sniff is drowned out by Will's hooting and Killian's hollering as Robin dips Regina down for a spectacular first kiss as man and wife, as thief and his queen.

.

.

.

Henry sidles into the corner booth, pressed suit pants squeaking against the cheap, shiny plastic of the seat beneath him and wrinkling in a way that would've had his mom's face doing the same. (But she's too busy looking beside herself at the onslaught of well-wishers accosting her and Robin by the bar, buying them drink after drink and saying a toast with each. So Henry scoots and wriggles to his heart's content, until the starchiness of his clothes has softened up and he can sit more comfortably in them.) And then he turns across the table to his other mom as she's lifting a mug of hot cocoa dashed with cinnamon halfway to her mouth and says, "All right. Pay up."

Emma's answering laugh is cut short by the look on his face. "Wait," she says incredulously, "you're serious."

"I won the bet," he persists, "on who would be the first to cry."

"It was your grandmother," she protests. "She was standing right next to me, sobbing through the whole thing. Everyone could see it. Everyone could _hear _it. So I'm pretty sure _I_ won the bet, kid."

"Nope," Henry says with an authoritative shake of his head. "You didn't see what I saw."

"And what did you see that I didn't?" she asks, half-amused, half-skeptical. "We were both standing up at the front." He's still looking at her expectantly, though, so she decides to humor him, puts a thoughtful finger to the chin she tilts sideways. "Wait, let me guess. Gold? No. Dad!" Henry levels her with a superior smile, bordering on a smirk as she throws out names left and right. "Ruby. Roland? Archie got pretty teary, but that was toward the end…Ohh, I know. It was Grumpy. I swear he had a leaking faucet for a nose. Granny looked pissed."

"You don't even remember who I bet on," realizes Henry with a frown, and she looks sheepish, makes a last-ditch attempt of _I don't know…Marian?_, because it doesn't sound so far-fetched; watching the man she loves marry the woman who'd once tried to have her killed seems worthy of a few tears. Still unlikely, though, given how much Henry's gloating about being right about it. Whomever _it _happens to be.

Sure enough, "Wrong again," he crows, then leans in conspiratorially over the table, apparently ready to put her out of her misery. Emma takes that as her cue to do the same, meeting him halfway with the smell of the hot cocoa she'd been forced to abandon wafting up between their noses.

He cups his hand around his mouth to direct the sound of his whisper away from the surrounding crowd. "It was Robin."

Emma sighs in defeat, because of course it was, and she remembers now, how he'd told her with such certainty weeks ago when they'd first bet on it. How she'd argued that Robin was a grown man, grown men just didn't cry as often, and no way in hell was he going to beat Mary Margaret of all people to it anyway. Not when she'd been there since Regina's first marriage (a marriage that had gone both sour and fatal); not when she felt such a personal responsibility to make this one every bit as successful as the other had most definitely not been. Her mom was pretty big on the whole idea of second chances.

But then again, Robin's a pretty sensitive guy, and clearly she'd been wrong to underestimate just how much. "You did say that, didn't you."

"Yup," Henry confirms. "He was the first one to cry. Just like I knew he'd be." He grins cheekily at her, and she wonders whether he'd gotten the whole sore winner thing from her or from Regina. "He did try the hardest to hide it, though."

Emma can't help but smirk at that. Apparently not hard enough to get past Henry. "Fine," she finally relents with a heavy shrug up and down of her shoulders, "I guess you win this one after all."

"Excellent," he enthuses, and her smirk turns to a smile. She slides her hot cocoa across the table for him to lift up and take a generous slurp, dotting his upper lip with whipped cream and cinnamon. She'll need to teach him how to strike a better bargain someday, she thinks fondly. But for now, he's happy with what he has and nothing more, because what he has is a new father he can look up to, a younger brother who can look up to him, and so she leaves it at that.

"So." Henry smacks the leftover cocoa from his lips, rests interlocked fists on the table as he prepares to negotiate his next set of terms. "Want to bet on who's going to catch the bouquet?"


	3. III

**A/N:** Enchanted Forest, missing year.

* * *

"_I do NOT snore!"_

* * *

He sleeps in the tent adjacent to hers, just a stone's throw away. He and his boy, the one with the mop of curls, soft at her fingertips as she reads him a story before bedtime approaches and his papa summons him back to his tent. The one with the dimples to die for, the dimples that Regina is convinced must've come from his mother, because the matching pair his father sports—well, they're far too infuriating, too irksome to be related to Roland's.

The boy whose presence softens the heartache her own son has left behind, so that on some days when she's suffocating, he makes it just a little easier to breathe. Makes her feel not quite so out of her element, so far away from her castle as she is, sleeping on the ground and in someone else's forest (let alone someone that she simply can't stand).

The boy who is now tugging gently on her hair, half of it pinned up and the rest loose and unraveled, as he urges her to continue the story she's just stopped telling mid-sentence.

"What's that sound?" she asks abruptly, finger paused right at the point where James is about to find that his giant peach is infested with loquacious, life-sized bugs.

"Papa," Roland responds right away. "Sleeping."

"He sleeps very loudly," she frowns, and the boy in her lap giggles his agreement. It's been a fair few weeks since they've come to this living arrangement, camped out in the last bit of forest that has yet to see a single winged beast or a vindictive green witch on a broom. Still, Robin and his Merry Men keep watch through the day, and come just beyond twilight he returns to tuck his boy safe into bed. Regina always wakes to his soft footfalls as they take him back out to patrol, and she'll toss and she'll turn until they bring him back in for the night.

She is, after all, a light sleeper; the barest brush of the autumn leaves, or a breezy wind at her tent, will drag her from her dreams. (That's what she tells herself, anyway.)

But she's never heard him snore like that before, and never quite this early.

"Can I sleep here tonight, Regina?" he begs her with wide brown doe eyes that she can never say no to (and she will learn her lesson later, that he his dimples are, indeed, not the only thing he's inherited from his father). "Pleeeease? I don't want to wake Papa."

Though it's probably more likely that his papa will keep the rest of them from sleeping at all, Regina gives her consent, soothes, "Of course you can, Roland," followed by a fond tap on the nose. He responds with a small whoop—the prospect of a sleepover at the Queen's is something his papa always vehemently shoots down ("My boy, what have I told you about bothering Her Majesty and overstaying your welcome," despite her unheard protests that he is no trouble at all). He claps a small hand over his mouth before Regina has a chance to shush him, although, truth be told, she suspects it'll take a lot more than that to raise the dead from their sleep.

So it's with Roland tucked and curled into her that she wakes with a start the next morning, when a stream of light and an anxious cry fill her tent as the flap is thrown wide open.

"Roland?" she hears in a voice all panic and dismay. "Oh, my boy. Thank the gods!"

"Papa?" comes a sleepy little sigh from her arms. "Papa…why are you yelling? Don't wake up Regina."

Robin drops to a crouch in front of them both, looking immensely relieved beyond belief. "You needn't worry about waking the Queen, your absolute fool of a father has already had the honor of doing so. Come here, my boy." And he tugs Roland out of Regina's embrace, hugs him within the green folds of his cloak. The boy snuggles up to his chest, smacks his lips once or twice as his eyelids begin to droop.

"He's always safe with me, you know," Regina says then, quietly, annoyed with how defensive she sounds.

Robin's gaze meets hers as he brings Roland closer. "I know," he tells her, and she can tell from his eyes that he means it. "Thank you, for looking after him. I don't know what I would've done had I not found him here." And the smile he gives her now, it warms her in places that have been so cold they'd gone numb, places that maybe, just maybe, she'll be able to feel again someday.

Roland is mumbling something, something Regina doesn't quite catch, that has Robin tilting his ear down close to his son's mouth.

"I do _not _snore," he says indignantly then, and she feels the beginnings of a laugh bubble up in her lungs.

"Do too," argues the miniature version of him (dimples and all, she supposes with a sigh). "Regina and I heard it last night."

"Rubbish," Robin is saying with a shake of his head as he stands, Roland finally starting to nod back off, and when he turns them toward the light sneaking in from outside, that's when she sees it and gives a gasp of surprise.

"What's wrong with your face?" she asks suddenly, and Robin looks appropriately taken aback.

"I beg your pardon, milady?"

"Your—nose," she clarifies. "It's…" Well, quite frankly, it looks broken. Skin mottled and an impressive shade of purple across the bridge, though thankfully not swollen or bent in at an odd angle. Her eyes narrow further as she takes in the rest of him, now that she can. His cloak is caked in mud where it drags down to the ground—that's no surprise. But his trousers bear fresh grass stains just above where boot meets knee, there's a tear in his sleeve that hadn't been there before, and–is that blood?

He looks chagrined, and she doesn't realize she'd uttered that last part out loud until he's answering her, hastily, "It's not mine."

"Am I supposed to find that reassuring?" she hisses, and he looks genuinely confused for a moment.

"I didn't realize Your Majesty cared," he says.

"I care about _Roland_," she reminds him testily. "And this?" She gestures up and down at the rather alarmingly banged up sight of him. "This is not something Roland would care for."

Robin hums in agreement, but then says, maddeningly, "I had my reasons."

"Reasons," Regina repeats. What the hell is wrong with this man?

"Let's just say I got into an altercation," he shrugs, earning an exasperated snort, to which he responds with one of those smirks she simply can't stand. "But all is right now. You ought to see how the other one fared."

"Was it a flying monkey?" she asks with some consternation, wondering why she wouldn't have been the first to be called if something had come up during nightly patrol.

"Not a flying one, no," he says vaguely, and she frowns, tries to question him further, but he'll have none of it now, bidding her good morning as he slips out of her tent, his boy now fast asleep in his arms.

Regina glowers through the rest of her day—a common enough occurrence, but she's radiating fury in waves today, to offset the crispness of the cool fall air, and people keep away from her even more so than usual (which is completely fine by her). One of the many Merry Men—it's hard to keep them straight, they're all so…similarly unkempt, with a generally homeless look about them—seems to share in her overall vexation, skulking and frowning by the campfire, periodically ladling the stew while nursing a split upper lip. His left eye is a brilliant palette of blues and greens to rival the state of Robin's nose, and she wonders if maybe they'd fought off the same creature together, but can't quite bring herself to ask.

She doesn't think anything more of it until later that evening, when she's said her goodnights to the Charmings and makes her way back to her tent. She'll have just enough time before Roland stops by, she's thinking—time to wash up and unwind her hair from the mess of curls she'd pinned it in to keep it out of her way during the day—when she hears voices arguing in the tent right next to hers.

"That's the last I want to hear of it," she recognizes Robin speaking in low, angry tones.

"But—Robin—"

"Enough," Robin cuts the other man off. "I trust Regina with my son. Which means I trust her with my life."

She stills outside her tent.

The other man is protesting, and then Robin is responding, in a clipped, fuming manner, words Regina can't quite make out, until—"I said that was quite enough. Unless you feel inclined to have more than a conversation about it? To rehash what we already discussed the night before, perhaps?"

Silence follows, Regina's heartbeat in her eardrums, and then the front of Robin's tent ripples and shifts as a figure steps out of it—the man from earlier, she realizes. His lip looks vastly improved from the morning, though she can't say the same for his eye, which he turns balefully her way before walking sulkily off.

It keeps her up long after Roland's come and gone, well into a night filled with the sounds of his papa's labored breathing as it clamors its way through a broken nose. All of a sudden Regina's not quite sure what to make of him anymore, this Robin with his dimples that he's most assuredly passed on to his son.


	4. IV

**A/N:** Enchanted Forest, missing year. I'm biased. Haha.

* * *

"_What did you expect to happen?"_

* * *

He tries not to protest, but it hurts like the dickens, what she's doing to his arm.

"Well," Regina says scathingly, cutting off both his gasp and his blood circulation as her hand tightens around the bandage, gives the ends a vicious tug. "What did you expect to happen?"

"I don't know," he responds, because honestly he hadn't thought it through at all, hadn't the faintest idea what would be in store the moment he did what he's just done.

She gives him a single look—pointed, without words, that tells him exactly what she thinks of his most recent display of untimely chivalry. The injuries he'd sustained, the lengths she'd just gone to repair what her magic couldn't.

Not to mention the way he'd just thanked her for it.

But he's not sorry, he thinks defiantly as she reexamines his wound, silent and seeming quite ill-tempered. Not if his actions have amounted to a bloody slash at his limbs rather than a fatal blow to her heart. A few simple nicks he can manage, and these hadn't even cut through to bone; but the thought of the Queen, lifeless in his arms as he carries her back to the castle, had been unbearable. Had filled him with such insensible panic that pure instinct had flung him forward and into harm's way, so he could shove her out of it.

He'd gotten fairly banged up for his efforts before the dagger he'd managed to unsheathe from his boot had exploded the monkey's jugular in a waterfall of red. So at first Robin couldn't be sure whether it was his blood or the animal's that drenched his clothes and caked his palms, hot and sticky and leaving the taste of metal in the air. Even after he'd registered the tattered remains of his tunic that Regina endeavored to remove (looking more and more livid with every fresh wound she encountered), he'd felt a certain element of pride that he'd acted so quickly on his feet.

Despite the fact that he can't really stand on them at the moment.

And despite the multiple warnings she'd given for him to stay behind, as she'd been quick to remind him the moment the beast's last breath had left his foul, fanged mouth: "How many times have I told you not to get in my way?"

"And how many times have I told you that woman wants you dead?" he'd countered with what he thought was a reasonable amount of indignation. However this personal vendetta between her and the wicked witch had come about, Regina's bold and brazen attitude had escalated to the point that, quite frankly, it frightened him how fearless she was.

(For the sake of her safety and his sanity, he's taken to following her, every time she marches out of the castle with that determined look in her eye. If she plans to embark on yet another deranged mission to lure in their simian foes and take them out one by one, then by the gods she will not do it alone.)

If he didn't know any better, and he likes to think that he does, he'd say she still had a death wish of her own to fulfill.

But of course if he were ever so bold as to even suggest such a thing, she'd simply roll her eyes as she had done then: "If I thought the witch wanted me dead," and she'd sniffed her disdain at having to explain such a basic concept to him, "do you really think I'd be living in my castle right now?"

Actually, yes, he does think that exactly, but he'd be loath to assume she'd also let the likes of Roland—or even the Charmings, though she'd never admit it—stay there if the danger were real. So he'd merely shrugged his shoulder, as much as the growing ache in his arm had allowed, and said, "Well at the very least, you can't deny the fact that she wants you to suffer."

"And you think you're helping right now?" she'd groused with an angry onceover at his fallen form, followed by a flash of white from her palm. The more superficial cuts had vanished, though the deeper gashes and gouges continued to ooze and ooze. She'd then resorted to ripping pieces of her dress apart, strips of rich red velvet winding round to staunch the worst of his wounds—a sizable tear near his bicep, another to match at his waist—and he'd been too distracted by the tantalizing flashes of bare thigh and creamy skin to really consider what she'd meant.

"I'm trying," he'd retorted, thinking that he'd give the whole thing its proper consideration later. When he wasn't feeling quite so out of sorts, lightheaded from both blood loss and the spark to his pulse as his gaze met hers.

"Exactly my point," she'd snarled, words clipped but her touch gentle and warm. "Because helping me? Not your problem."

"And that is exactly _my_ point," he'd argued, even though by that time his arm had been throbbing and blooming scarlet into his sleeve despite her ministrations. "Because as far as I'm concerned, it is my problem."

"_I'm _your problem?"

She was ridiculous, that woman.

"Believe it or not, your safety is of great concern to me."

(And she does believe it; she must, he thinks, though she may not understand it. He's seen the exasperation coloring her face every time another winged creature is struck down by yet another gold arrow before the fire's even fled her palm. Has witnessed the haunted look shadowing her eyes as they scour the trees to draw him out; but while the castle is her domain, the forest is his, and she never can differentiate figure from foliage for as long as he wishes to stay hidden, until now.)

He'd taken her silence as encouragement to continue, and so he had: "You're needed, Regina."

"Am I?" she'd asked, carefully bored but for the bitterness edging into her tone as she'd gone on, "My son doesn't even remember who I am. Who could possibly need me if he doesn't?"

"Snow White needs you," he'd declared with sudden fury. "Everyone back at the bloody castle needs you." Her trademark sneer had faltered as he'd added then, "My son needs you."

(He's caught her playfully fighting Roland over the last bit of honey to sop up their morning bread. Has been treated to the boy's very enthusiastic nightly retellings of whichever bedtime story Regina had regaled him with earlier that evening—"but shhhh, Papa, you're not supposed to know." Is of the belief that Roland cherishes her as much as he would have his own mother, were she still with them today. But more than anything, Robin is beginning to suspect it's not simply the way she is with his son that affects him so, that has her smile and scowl alike preoccupying his every wayward thought. That has him risking life and limb to protect a queen who had once offered a pretty sum in exchange for his head.)

"Regina, _I_ need you."

And when she'd looked too stunned for words alone to properly convince her, that was when he'd leaned into the space between them and kissed her, full on her luscious red mouth, still slightly parted in shock. And it had been stupid.

Stupid and absolutely bloody fantastic and the best decision he'd ever made in his life, without question.

She'd gone still as a statue in his arms as one wrapped around to her back and the other encased her shoulders, fingers weaving through her satin tresses and getting lost in them. He'd dragged his mouth away, just long enough for him to absorb a rather breathtaking sight: the heaviness in her chest, the half-lidded daze and the dewy crimson flush of her lips that his bruising kiss had left there. His heart had neglected a beat or two when her hands drew near, hovering, and then his shirt collar had creased and crumpled at her touch as she tugged him to her, his answering groan muffled by a heady kiss of her own.

He hadn't wanted to push his luck. But the taste of her, gods it had intoxicated him beyond all rational thought. As had the scent of her cheek to his nose when he pressed deeper into her kiss, utterly mad for the feel of her tongue against his, the little moans she let out into his mouth when he slanted it over hers just right. His hands had roamed, oh how they'd roamed, overcome with an acute wanderlust for her body, cradling her neck, scaling her spine, gripping her hip, and forever, forever transfixed by the silk of her hair.

So he couldn't be blamed for not noticing it at first, the steady increase in pressure at his arm, with his body set pleasantly alight all over as it was, an exquisite ache and burn licking deep within his chest. But then her grip had tightened, tightened, until he'd been gasping for reasons entirely separate from the desire seizing his senses and igniting his nerves.

When he'd parted his lips reluctantly from hers to draw in that first grunt of pain, Regina had looked furious, either with herself or with him she couldn't tell; whichever it was, he was the one she'd evidently decided to punish, fingers digging and digging until he saw stars.

"Well," she'd seethed, and he knew he was in for it now, "what did you expect to happen?"


	5. V

**A|N:** Missing Year.

* * *

_"So, I found this waterfall..."_

_(In which those who wander are not always lost.)_

* * *

They're lost.

He hadn't been willing to admit it to himself, not at first—he'd never hear the end of it from her, for one, and for another he's got a bit of his own pride to maintain. But the second time they pass the exact same bush, perhaps no different from any other at a casual glance but rather distinctive to a keen hunter's eye such as his, there's no denying that they are, in fact, most assuredly lost.

And he doesn't have to look far to work out why.

Speaking honestly, though, how can one be expected to navigate with any accuracy at all when the company he keeps is so…well…distracting? Whether she's trekking through the trees or fairly demanding an impromptu swim to wash off the "smell of forest," as she'd so charmingly put it, she looks entirely out of her element. Like some breed of creature so exotic even the surrounding wilderness holds her in captivity, her beauty so deadly one can only fail attempting to keep it contained.

She scowls her displeasure as costly-looking furs drag further into the mud. Not that they aren't both still dripping a bit all over from their underwater excursions—though his hair has now dried, her locks are damp save for the curls blooming back to life at the ends.

To his relief, she seems more focused on which parts of the path to avoid rather than where said path actually leads. So at least he has that playing to his advantage. Until he can figure out how the bloody hell to get them out of a mess she's yet to realize they're in. Until—

"We're lost," Regina states with a restrained sort of resignation, as though she's been well-aware of it for quite some time in which she'd been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the midday light is retreating for the afternoon; it casts shadows over already darkening features, features that make it clear she's no longer in the mood for allowing him to spin them in circles round the setting sun.

"Are we?" Robin questions mildly, because apparently he has a death wish today, and baiting an irate queen who is about as cuddly as a scorpion—he ought to know, as he's tried, unsuccessfully, numerous times—is the best way to go about granting it.

"How did you let this happen?" she accuses him. "Isn't this _your _forest?"

"I'm certainly more familiar with it than your guards are," Robin replies with an amusement she doesn't appear to share. "They never were able to find me or my Merry Men here, were they?"

"Well now _nobody _will be able to find us, at this rate," she snaps. (_Odd_, he'd love nothing better than to retort, _I seem to recall that was exactly what you'd hoped to be the case earlier_, but he values his life, so he holds his tongue.) "I refuse to rot in the woods with a man who can't even keep track of where he is, let alone what belongs to him."

Robin marches purposely onward as her words scathe and dig without effect; he's had her enough to know better, has heard and seen and touched parts of her she'd hidden so deeply within herself that even she couldn't find them, not anymore, not until he'd come along.

"I may have a general idea, actually," he tells her, as familiar cascading tumbles of water reach his ears, followed by a rush of blood downward at the onslaught of memories carried along with it. Sure enough, he sees the tree up ahead, with swatches of bark freshly gouged out by crimson nails, as a rich, throaty cry of his name had fallen from lips to match. And beyond, round two, where he'd replaced every kiss she rinsed off with three more, at least.

"I found the waterfall, Regina," he tells her lowly, and maybe it's a trick of the light, the dusky glow of the sunset painting her cheeks, but he swears he sees her blush before she ducks her face out of his sight. "It shouldn't be hard to find our way back to the castle from here."

But Regina disagrees, as she always does, and after careful contemplation of the forest floor she levels him with a half-lidded gaze that quite steals his breath away. "I think we can stand to be lost a little while longer, don't you?"

* * *

_"Hey, have you seen the...? Oh."_

_(Robin gets lost in the castle and winds up late for a very important date.)_

* * *

"Oh, for gods' sake," he sighs for likely the fourth time that morning when his careful searching yields nothing but a sore back and rather tried temper. He could have sworn—

"Robin!" greets Snow White as she happens upon him loitering, lost, in the corridor; she's cheery as ever, her smile infectious, and he finds his dreary mood lifting considerably, thinking perhaps at last someone will point him in the one direction he'd somehow overlooked. "What brings you to these parts of the castle?"

"I seem to have misplaced something," he confesses, with a rather rueful sort of grin. Oh but she'll have a right time of it, when she hears of what he's looking for. "I don't suppose you've seen—" To his chagrin, he's cut off suddenly by a booming voice nearby, announcing the Prince's arrival before his boisterous coif of hair has even emerged around the corner.

"Darling," exclaims Snow's Charming counterpart, advancing for a kiss and distracting them both from Robin's rather audible sigh. "There you are! I've been looking for you everywhere!"

"You'll always find me," she beams, and Robin politely bows out, deeming it highly unlikely he's to get a useful answer from either of the two for the foreseeable future.

He makes a speedy turn into the nearest available passageway, which does such a bang-up job of leading him far, far away that now he is well and truly lost, in this damn castle with more dark corners than well-lit hallways to mystify even the most skilled hunters and trackers.

Thoroughly chastised, he winds up wandering past a vaguely familiar set of double doors—leading to the library, he's fairly certain—and hears a scuffling sound on the other side. Surely Belle will be able to sort him out and set him straight, he decides with a renewed determination, as he raps a perfunctory knuckle to the wood and then throws it open without lingering for any invitation from within.

"Hey," Robin starts, "have you seen the…" Queen, is what he means to say, tripping over the tip of his tongue before fading into a dumbstruck silence as he slowly comes around to the realization that not only is the room he's just barged into very much not the library—it is, in fact, exactly where he'd intended to be, eighteen bloody minutes ago.

"Oh," he breathes.

"You're late," Regina sighs, pausing in her careful fussing over the superb breakfast arrangement that has now grown cold while awaiting his arrival: small pyramids of buttered biscuits and a veritable spread of things to sandwich in between, various flavors of jam and honey, generous slices of meat and cheese. Nestled amongst the laden platters and jars sits a teapot, delicately carved and painted in the likeness of a woodland scene, with ivy-twined bramble for a spout and handle, and the small, wily eyes of a fox peering over the edge of the lid. Beside it rest twin teacups; one is chipped at the lip, much like the woman pouring them to brim with a steaming, amber-colored liquid. The scents of spiced apple and cinnamon waft through the air.

Robin's mouth is already watering when she steps out from behind the table, and his jaw drops in a most ridiculous manner at the splendid sight of her clothed in—well, very little. She's donned in a corset that's unlike any he's ever seen, with thin black straps fastened together at the neck and scooping down low in rather magnificent display of her breasts. The skirts to accompany the corset, at first glance, look too scandalously short to aspire as anything but an undergarment, but upon further inspection they appear to have been rather deliberately lace-trimmed, carefully intentional in the way they've been cut several generous fingertips above the knee. Draped over the dress is a swath of fabric he thinks might resemble a white apron, though judging by its negligible size, it seems quite ill-equipped to serve any actual purpose.

"Eyes up here, thief," Regina scowls, and he sheepishly retraces the shameless path of his stare, finding none of the ire in her tone to match the lovely depths of her gaze.

"Apologies, milady," he smiles, "I'm afraid I got turned around."

"Typical," she says with a haughtiness he doesn't buy, and her frown softens with each step he takes to reach her, calm her fiddling with the hem of her skirts. "When will you learn?"

"Oh, I rather think that whenever you're around, I couldn't possibly look elsewhere long enough to get lost again," he tells her seriously, and then he's hushing her objections with a lengthy kiss to prove his point.

Dessert first. Breakfast later.


	6. VI

**a|n:** regal believer + outlaw queen, in the missing year

* * *

_"What are you afraid of?"_

* * *

She does it for Henry, in the end.

Though she had nearly convinced herself it was for Henry's sake that she didn't, for a time.

That it wasn't Robin's gaze, but the campfire lighting the air between them, which pressed like a heated kiss over and over to her skin.

That it wasn't happiness she felt, but despair, as he'd gathered her close and said he was hers—long before she saw the tattoo and knew that she could've had him longer, had she not turned her happiness away at the expense of his back then too.

She knows that it's a futile thing, to be happy without Henry, so why even bother to try?

"But Mom," goes her darling boy's voice in her ear when she finds herself running again, away from Robin, and it's her hope (her fear) that one day she'll pause to look back and he'll have stopped running too, "What are you afraid of?"

Of happiness, she thinks at first, of feeling even a shadow of it without Henry by her side, because how would that be possible, how could she even think it to be so? The guilt is a plague; it lies heavy in her bed at night when Robin's not there to warm it, and he is a salve over her heart that cracks and bleeds when he's gone.

She realizes it's not happiness itself that she fears, but that she will try to be happy, and that she will fail.

That this—this thing, with Robin, whatever it is, will unravel faster than it has come together, and is still coming together in many ways, ways that leave her breathless and terrified and always wanting more.

But the fear is a testament to her old self, one who had loved and then lost and gone rotten to the core; it is not a testament to her new second skin, who had also loved, and lost, and must now find a way to love again. For Henry. He would never forgive her, if she got in the way of her own happiness, didn't even try for fear of letting him down.

Well. He would forgive her, in the end, because otherwise he wouldn't be her Henry; but a disappointed Henry he would be, and it's that phantom ache, to feel worthy of her son's faith in her, that has her finally taking the leap.

She flies, and Robin's arms are there to catch her when she falls.


End file.
