A/N: Greek Mythology AU for OQ week. Guys, this is a weird one. Super different from anything I've done so far, I think? Nervous about it. Tell me your thoughts! Good, bad and everything in between.

Part I: Earth

Regina doesn't venture above ground often. Not as often as she'd like, anyway.

It's not that she doesn't love it, to be up there, to warm her skin in the sun and feel the grass with her toes, as she searches the skies and finds nothing but blue. It's that she loves it a little too much, if such a thing is possible, and every moment she spends soaked in the light is another she'll regret later when she's shrouded by darkness once more.

She convinces herself she really doesn't mind it most days. They're nearly impossible for her to tell apart, when one just bleeds right into the next, and she's not sure she even understands what a "day" is, anyway—without the sun touching the dead down here, there is no morning, nor midday solstice; only eternal, timeless night.

Which is why the whole curious notion of hours and minutes and reading them in the shadows on a sundial absolutely fascinates her, and has been the subject of rather extensive study, when she finds herself bored silly by tedious matters of the underworld.

Based on Regina's repeated perusal—the yellowed stacks skimming her cavernous ceilings have seen drier, sunnier moments in the monastery libraries from which she'd "borrowed" them—humans seem remarkably narrow-minded, to think only in terms of night and day. Of things like mealtimes, and bedtimes, and whatever falls in between.

Although she supposes one could argue that down here, Regina only knows of life as it ceases in death. The final bookend, so to speak (it preoccupies mortal thought more than living itself seems to do, something she has always found rather ironic).

And whatever lies beyond that…well…there's not much to be said for it. Not much that humans would care to believe, anyway.

So, more often than not, most days will amount to more death, then more monotony to follow. And for every ferry full of lost souls drifting down the river Styx, at least twice weekly some unexpected cargo will have smuggled its way onboard.

At first, Regina sympathized with them, the brave yet foolish men who were brave but foolish enough to hitchhike from the land of the living to the domain of the dead, and negotiate for mercy from their queen. It would move her to tears, to hear them plead for their loved ones—wives who'd been taken too soon, sons who should have seen their parents go first—and whatever they offered to give in return.

But it has never been in her capacity to upset the balance between their world and hers, something she always regretted that they never understood. She may tend to the dead, but death isn't her doing; it's simply the natural way of things, and when the men who sought her charity were in turns respectful of her power and resentful for it, as though she owned both their hearts and the blame for how they ached and ached, Regina felt her own bitterness grow and fester, until she had no room left for such sentiments as pity and remorse and compassion. Not for those who dare to exploit her hospitality, demand she defy the limits they're too shortsighted to appreciate in life.

Which is why she spends most days now begrudging these humans who don't understand her, even as she longs to understand them—their obsession with the finite edges of time, how they use it up by asking for more. Their all-consuming fear of the dark, when the light is what they take for granted.

So no matter how tempted she is to feel the sun for herself, to witness life in bright pops of color instead of death in morose shades of grey, hatred always draws her back under. Hatred for those who freely wander the earth and lay it to waste as they please, while Regina is banished to dwell beneath it, as eternal penance for the crimes her mother had committed against the gods.

But on other days, such as this one, the pull above ground overpowers every rational argument against it. Today, she's feeling bold.

It hasn't been terribly busy thus far. She's just had to fend off the one man, bearing a leer, a cane and a bribe for the ferryman (she'll have words with Leroy later, she thinks with some exasperation). Upon finding Regina alone in her gardens of ash and tombstone, he had then proceeded to insist she bring back his wife, who'd just suffered some unfortunate boating accident, so that he may have another turn at killing her all over again.

Regina had politely declined his offer, as novel as it was, to spin straw into gold in exchange for this one act of kindness. What use did she have for such frivolous things? Honestly. Men these days, thinking they can buy their way into and out of everything. Just what, exactly, was she expected to do with a heap of gold? Distribute it amongst her royally dead subjects? They already have all the time in the world, and absolutely nothing to spend it on as it is.

Well, she supposes she could finally pay off all her library debts. But if bewildering the monks is the most villainous thing anyone is going to rightfully accuse her of doing, then so be it. It wouldn't do to create a paper trail anyway; strictly speaking, she's to stay put where she is, has been fairly prohibited from ever putting so much as a toe to the soil, and that grey-bearded idiot sitting atop Mount Olympus will be none too pleased to discover Regina breaks their contract often, and with great pleasure.

Yes, today will be one of those days, she decides with conviction, as she makes her way to earth.

(She makes sure to take the long route, giving the seas a wide berth; today is not going to be one of those days wherein she gets drawn into another long and heated argument with her half-sister, who's been determined for a century and a half to overthrow the Charmings from where they decorate either side of Leopold's celestial throne.)

Regina can already feel the damp, oppressive fog of the underworld lifting like a veil as sunlight blinds her eyes and the busy bustling of forest life rushes through her ears, a heady, deafening sound. Tree frogs croak their little tunes as beetles scuttle underfoot and birds soar through the sky overhead. A stream of water runs nearby, babbling all the way. Blood red rhododendrons dot the path, shying visibly away from every step that brings her closer, as though they somehow sense the death that lingers on her. But she won't be deterred, not when there are songs of nature to be heard, to dance to, to echo on in her head long after they've reached their coda.

She can't help it. She closes her eyes, and she starts to spin.

Regina twirls until she's dizzy from it, delirious and giddy as the light absorbs through her skin and straight into her bloodstream. There's a bubbly, exhilarated sound somewhere, and she only laughs louder, smiles harder when she realizes it's coming from her. A tree root catches hold of her skirts, but a carefree movement or two frees it, and she'll mend the tear later, maybe, but for now there's only time to bask in the moment before it's gone.

She's thinking it's been too long since she last paid a visit to her favorite library, drove Friar Tuck mad with yet another document gone missing from his archives, when she senses the slightest shift in the wind, a subtle subsiding of the birds' chirping and the frogs' chanting. She swivels slowly to a stop as she feels someone watching her, eyes burning into her back, hotter and far less pleasantly than the sun had just a second ago.

Regina turns, ever so slightly, chin to clavicle and gaze leveled just above her shoulder. The sunbeams hit her lashes and as she blinks them out, a man some yards behind her slowly comes into view.

He's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

Though dressed head to toe in loose, unfitted garments, he looks undeniably strong, the hard lean lines of his body filling them in just the right places. A belt and quiver hug him across the waist and back, green cloak flowing freely where it just kisses the ground but knotted securely in place at the juncture of his open collar as it tapers down to a v over his chest.

And his face—it's a face that stops time and starts wars.

Yet he's the one who'd been staring at her first, and still he stares now, transfixed to the spot as though struck dumb by the sight of her (and what an odd sight it must be, this pale woman with crimson lips wrapped in a virginal white dress and dancing barefoot in the woods). He's staring, and then he's shrugging, almost ruefully now that she's caught him mid-gape; the smile that spreads slowly over his sinfully handsome face is dimpled and half-crooked, and she feels something she hasn't felt in a long, long time.

Warm. She feels warm all over. Not just where skin's been exposed to sun, but where the heat of his gaze has penetrated everything underneath, blood simmering, insides softening, heart thawing and she feels…

Alive.

She's not entirely sure if that qualifies as a good thing or a very, very bad one.

He can't be a human, Regina thinks dubiously, can he? Humans see right through her unless she allows it otherwise (the poor Friar has thought his monastery haunted by pilfering poltergeists for years), yet this man—he sees her, down to her very soul, it seems, and what's worse, he won't look away.

But if he isn't a human, then he must be a god, like her, or borne of one, a demigod at the very least. Who, though? She'd thought she could recognize them all by face—or carefully inked illustrations of them, anyway (of all the irreplaceable things that Friar Tuck has most unfortunately misplaced, his hand-drawn genealogical tree of the Olympian bloodlines smarts the most).

In fact, Regina has had several near run-ins with one such god of the lesser variety, between shelves and encasements of rare artifacts, as she'd purloined library after library of all the information she could on those who rule earth from the high heavens above it. The She Charming in particular, the goddess of beauty and of love, who out of hate had exiled Regina's mother to the prison of the gods for her crimes—for seducing Snow White's father, and for stealing his lightning bolt while he slept to slit his wife's throat.

(Or so read the accounts of Cora's demise, which had been written by an undisclosed hand.)

When Regina's not digging up the well-kept secrets of a family she will never know, there is of course her favorite pastime, of studying up on the humans and the odd things they fixate on, which seem to similarly fascinate her companion amongst the dusty stacks. The girl is beguiling but bookish, and even without the good Friar's quill to parchment identifying her as Belle, she reeks with the same prepossessing intelligence of all Athena's brethren.

And because Belle is just as smart as her heritage implies, if she recognizes Regina (and she would even if she were only half as smart as she ought to be), she breathes not a word, ignoring her just as completely as Regina does her.

Which suits Regina just fine, really. She doesn't care to know those who've deserted her to darkness and shunned her to hell, any more than she cares to join them where they sit on the sun. She'll take her light with the trees and their frogs, thank you very much, with the streams and their pebbles sanded smooth beneath her feet.

This man, though…there's something different about him. He appears determined to see her, to know her, to never lose her from sight.

And no matter how hard her gaze probes his, taking in the blue of his eyes and the lines of some unaccountable period of history etched into their corners, she can't place him. Has no earthly clue who he is, nor why he's staring so hard.

His bow and arrow—a descendant of Eros, perhaps? It would make sense, given how her pulse has picked up speed the way human ones are speculated to do when made a target by the god of love. But she's always pictured Eros as a pleasantly rotund, not particularly athletic sort of deity, his aim accurate but his actions leisurely. It's a great stretch to imagine this magnificent specimen of the male form even remotely related to one who's rumored to be more cherub than god.

Even so, Regina continues to watch him apprehensively, wondering whether she would be better off not knowing, if she ought to make herself scarce before he in turn gets too curious, comes too close.

Unless he already knows who she is.

The thought alarms her for a brief instant before she concludes it highly unlikely, because if he did then he would have been long gone by now, instead of…just…standing there, with his lower jaw slack and his bow dangling uselessly at his side.

She's clearly interrupted him mid-hunt with her unforeseen presence in his forest, though she can't help but feel like she's the one being hunted now instead.

Indecision weighs her feet to the ground. She glares balefully over one shoulder at him, a perfect picture of misgiving.

And then he speaks.

"Hullo," he greets her finally, amiably, invitingly, but with just a touch of hesitation.

He still hasn't moved—seems to believe she'll vanish into thin air like a spooked deer if he takes even a hint of a step forward, and he's not wrong about that. A shroud of purple and a cloud of smoke will transport her back to the underworld faster than the blink of a human eye, and she's just wary enough of him that she's considering it, very seriously, at the current moment.

"I'm Robin," he offers, free palm out as if to indicate that he means no harm. "Son of Demeter."

Demeter. Of course. It makes sense. Famed for her jurisdiction over the harvest and fertility of the earth, Regina has wandered right into the goddess' domain, waltzed amongst the lush green vegetation and dug gleeful toes into its rich, fruitful soil.

Even so. Her eyes narrow further. Okay, son of Demeter. What is it that you want from me?

Regina would love nothing more than to write him off, to retort that she's never heard of any such son, that the Demeter of her meticulously researched pedigrees has only ever been recorded to give birth to girls; but this Robin seems to possess the ability to disarm her with a single stare, and heaven be damned what had she been about to say?

"You're, ah—" he seems at a loss of words himself, while her thoughts whir and her suspicions mount. Why does the son of Demeter seem so hell-bent on engaging her in conversation, as awkward as he is in going about the whole thing? Perhaps he's here to pass along a message on behalf of his nurturing mother. Maybe Regina has violated the earth in some way, rendered it barren with a few careless missteps.

Which is absolutely ridiculous, she quietly seethes. Just because she oversees the dead doesn't mean anyone has the right to deny her a place amongst the living.

Regina feels her ears start to steam and her eyes start to glower. Uh oh. Not good. Even if this Robin fellow weren't here to convey some concern of the precious Mother Earth's, it wouldn't do for Regina's anger to get the better of her and ignite a headful of flames in her hair. That was always the most mortifying pitfall to her power, that it came with a remarkably short fuse and a rather conspicuous, uncontrollable show of her temper.

Still, something tells her he's not here to cause trouble—that he's here of his own doing, and that in fact maybe she will be his undoing; she feels the anger abate, his captivating gaze like a balm on her nerves, until she finds herself growing mildly curious again. So is he a god, then, or only half of one?

Only one way to know for sure. Gods are not obligated to pay a fee to the ferryman for passage into the underworld. They're not exactly encouraged to invite themselves freely into her realm either, but she has a strong suspicion that this one will have no qualms about following her where she's about to go.

"Wait," he starts, but she's already gone.

It occurs to Regina, as she traverses ground and slinks her way back to the darkness below, that she'd never once spoken a single word to him.