Many thanks to ninzied for helping me fix the ending and title, suggesting a couple of very necessary, significant changes, and catching the typos that would make me look like an idiot.
Her eyes are captivating.
Usually, he tries not to notice that kind of thing. This job is easier if they aren't people to him, if the bodies he pierces with his arrows for king and country are just that-bodies, and nothing else. Not mothers or fathers, siblings, spouses. Not human.
But he cannot manage that with her, the Evil Queen, finally captured.
She is gorgeous-he'd known that-but she is also captivating. Indescribably so.
Her voice sounds angry and solid, but as they pull the mask over her eyes, her lips and chin quiver, and he thinks of those melted brown eyes, the pain and fear he could somehow read in them.
He nocks an arrow with the other men, tensing and releasing his jaw in an attempt to quell the anger that's suddenly risen up in his throat at the Queen and King's display.
Robin aims, pulling back the bowstring.
He watches, unable to look away, as her jaw tightens in expectation, and he's always thought this method of execution brutal but this...this intentional attempt at shaming her in her dying breaths, at gathering the kingdom to watch her writhe and bleed out...
(He hopes one of the arrows is a clean enough shot to kill her quickly, because this is barbaric. As if the pain will somehow result in repentance, will make her death count for something. As if someone who has so entirely lost her way could be capable of repentance or shame when placed in such a vulnerable position. As if allowing the inhabitants of the kingdom to watch her blood stain the dirt and her heart thud to a stop will somehow heal their wounds.)
He hears the order to fire, but his hands, his body, refuse, and he can't be the one to end her life. He can't be the reason she bleeds.
His arrow leaves his bow on a determined path, just to her left, positioned exactly to slice through the edge of her robes and leave her unharmed. At least by his hand.
He stares as if mesmerized, in the cruelest, most terrifying way, as the arrows fly towards her heart, as her breath hitches and her teeth clench.
"Stop!"
Robin blinks, turning his head with the rest of the crowd to see Snow White descending from her throne.
He is dizzy and nauseous with this, more than he ever has been in the service of the crown.
He is done.
Done serving royalty, done following orders that are wrong, done ending the lives of people with pain in their eyes and a terrified tremble in their jaw.
There has to be something, anything more honorable on earth than this.
"Milady," he says, extending a hand to the brunette who has fallen to the ground. (The one wearing black and feathers and pain. The one with a quivering jaw and endless depth to her eyes. So deep he's drowning in them, just as he was, just as he always will be.) "You're injured."
There's something different about her. Something softer in the way she speaks and moves.
"It's Your Majesty," she corrects, her voice firm but tired, as she looks him over, "and I'm fine."
"A simple thank you would suffice," he returns. It is as easy as breathing, to be this way with her, to leave behind the weight of the Forest's history with her. To wish that she might have the space to find her footing in this place, and in herself.
"I didn't ask for your help." A response, he supposes, also as easy as breathing for her. Easier perhaps. Her armor.
As he helps Snow to her feet, Robin's eyes remain on this endlessly fascinating once-Evil Queen, now traveling through the Enchanted Forest with her apparently former arch-enemy.
There has to be a story there.
He aches to know it with a fervor that surprises him, wants to tease a smile from that heavy expression she wears like armor, wants to understand what's given her such pain, what's forced her to automatically bristle at kindness.
(Eventually, he does.)
"Regina," Robin asks gently, an arm wrapping around her waist as he sits and presses a kiss to her bare shoulder, "why are you looking at that?"
She twists away from him, her fingers tracing the frozen blue arrows on the bookmarked page, dimly illuminated by the patch of sunlight from her vault's only window.
His heart pounds, and he closes his eyes against the memory, against the sight of so many arrows bunched together and on their way to pierce the heart he now loves more than his own.
"I wonder, sometimes, what would've happened if Snow hadn't...interfered," she confesses. "This is what is...supposed to happen to villains in the book."
Robin waits, his hand resting on the blankets and aching to reach out and comfort her, but this is her burden to share, and these are words she feels safe enough entrusting to him. He'll let her reach for comfort when she wants it.
Regina shakes her head, that unconvincing, tearful, mock-optimistic laugh on her lips as though she's brushing off a moment of uncertainty. He hates that laugh-he loves learning everything about her, every gesture and sound and breath, but he hates that he can recognize this gesture as her belief in her undeserving, as the manifestation of this ridiculous notion that she is somehow not meant for happiness.
"That's why I have to find the author," she finishes, "so that he can change that for me."
Robin frowns at the sneaking suspicion that the author's power is somehow not all that concerns her, that even without the book she'd still be waiting for the other shoe to drop, for love and safety and happiness to be ripped away from her as they always have been.
"I was one of them," Robin says roughly, his fingers joining hers on the page and tracing one of the arrows. "I was an archer for the royal family."
Regina whips around to face him, her tousled hair fanning then settling in the air as her eyes search out his.
He rushes to explain, as best he can, "I always hated that part of the job...the rare executions when they deemed it necessary to follow the old custom, but yours-" he sucks in a breath, relieved when her hand finds his on the pages of the book and she twines their fingers together. He lifts his other hand to her face gently, feather-light touches tracing the brow that had scrunched up in anticipation, the eyes that had been full of pain and fear, now open and vulnerable, the lips and jaw that had been tense and quivering, now at rest as she watches him, "I botched the shot. Sent the arrow flying towards the air beside you." He presses his face into her hair, takes a deep, calming breath. "I couldn't face it after that. I deserted the army, became a thief, tried to help people instead, and, well, you've heard the rest."
"Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves," she finishes for him, a mock-epic intonation that yet trembles at the edges.
He laughs humorlessly. "Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want it to change-I didn't want you to think that that was how I saw you."
Regina leans forward to rest her forehead on his. "I know it isn't."
"We'll find the author, Regina, but you have to trust that you can be happy. I know you can." His fingers work their way into her hair, fingertips tracing soothing patterns on her scalp. "Your story didn't end on that day because it wasn't supposed to."
Regina sighs, and he soaks up the warmth of her skin, the steadiness of her pulse as his thumb rubs circles into her palm and wrist. "Why didn't we just meet then?"
"The timing wasn't right," he suggests, his quiet voice rumbling in the otherwise silent room, and he wishes, not for the first time, that he could protect her from these thoughts, from this belief that she alone is responsible for everything she's ever done, and yet has no power to protect herself from more loss, more heartbreak.
That almost-execution was the reason he became who he is; it was the turning point from which he learned his drive to help people, and yet at the time he never imagined she would be one of those people herself.
He cradles her face, lifting his forehead from hers so that he can meet her eyes. "And the timing's right, now?" she challenges.
"Regina—" his stomach bottoms out, and it could be true that he has no idea what he's doing right now, but he also has absolutely every idea, because this thing between them could not have continued as a mere shadow, as determined avoidance and quiet, pain-filled glances. He's with her, and he's kissed her again, their bodies have been close in ways they hadn't been before, and yet all of that is nothing compared to the feeling of her skin beneath his fingertips again, her body pressed close to his, her lungs filling beside his.
But he never gets to finish that thought, never quite knows exactly what he was going to say, because at that moment her phone rings.
She turns to it with a scowl, tugging her bra straps back into place and reaching for her shirt, her bare skin covered for the second time this morning.
She frowns, and then her expression drops into panic, and this time he reaches out for her, his palm landing on her arm, thumb stroking over her wrist.
She shoots him a brief, grateful, half-hearted smile, but he can see that pain has begun to seep back into her dark eyes and set lips, and he promises himself to prove to her that she can be happy, that the phone call and whatever news it brought weren't some cosmic sign that they won't work out or that nothing ever will for her.
He has seen her at some of her lowest moments and some of her highest, and no matter how much uncertainty and fear haunt her, he wants nothing more than for her to let the past go. The Evil Queen with her trembling face and frightened eyes, the mother grieving for her son, the woman yearning for happiness and uncertain whether she deserves it-he has always know that she is meant for all the best and beautiful things.