note: Deals with post S4 and a somewhat with the Zelena babyarc. Posted a couple of weeks ago on my tumblr (descaliers) and on ao3 (colourmayfade)... oops, sometimes I forget that I have this account.
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Every abyss is navigable by little paper boats.
João Guimarães Rosa
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They fit into her world, but not neatly, not like the missing piece of a puzzle falling into place. Not filling some kind of gaping hole Regina had been previously unaware she had.
As it turns out, she has everything she needs within herself. And in this life she has built for the past thirteen years, her son is the one thing her heart truly needs to settle down.
No. If she had to pick a metaphor, Regina would stick with the ongoing theme (cobra, mongoose) and say that Robin and Roland fit into her world more like beavers in a forest: in many ways fulfilling an essential role, but knocking down the occasional tree while at it; changing the flow of the waters every now and then.
Their presence leaves traces, trails of physical evidence marking their path right into her home, her life, her heart.
It's shoes discarded in the living room — small boys' boots and large, adult ones too, sometimes — jars and cooking-pots in the wrong cabinets, toddler's toys to be found at odd places such as inside the washing machine or mysteriously perched over the chandelier that hangs in the hall. It's enough blu-ray discs in the wrong cases that their whole movie collection becomes an adventure to navigate, and a copy of ELECTRONICS FOR DUMMIES that makes her laugh when she finds it, kicked as it's been under the bed, the place where their children keep their monsters. Why, it seems her thief has found some horrors of his own.
But this, this is later.
First, there are the flowers.
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Like much in those first couple of weeks after his return to Storybrooke, the flowers are overlooked.
Most times, they are the kind native to the town's woods.
Sometimes they are evidently stolen from the garden of some unsuspecting neighbor.
Only once are they actually her roses, chopped from her own back yard. (The gall of this… thief.)
But usually they are wildflowers, tied together indiscriminately in asymmetrical bouquets that lack for any and all sense of aesthetic.
Regina fills in the blanks: She imagines Robin and Roland scavenging the forest, making it the adventure of their mornings. The father helping his son with their first selections and then letting the boy run off for a while as he'd go about making his own picks. Robin might even put together a mostly lovely assortment, but all his efforts would invariably go down the drain when Roland turned up clutching the most hideous blossom to be found in the forest, along with a smile that could melt any iron-cast resolve.
The lopsided grin with which Robin presents these arrangements, as though he knows exactly how peculiar an excuse for bouquets they make, tells her these conjectures are not far from the truth.
These are, by and large, the flowers that delight her the most.
It isn't until every room in the mansion (Henry's included) is adorned with its own vase that Regina begins to take note of this as a pattern.
To her credit, it is difficult to notice much when the hours seem to run together in long clusters of 24, 48, 72 and most of her waking minutes are spent with her nose in books, desperately seeking a miracle that could restore Emma to herself. Regina moves from crisis to crisis, villain to villain these days. The gaps are spent figuring out how to be a comfort her son and mustering up the courage to look into Snow's tired eyes.
Robin is with her whenever he can get someone to look after his son, which is often considering the whole crew of men under his leadership. There's not much he can do to help in the way of magic knowledge, but he does prove himself useful with his ability to pick up on a lead and come up with information (though, Regina decides soon enough, it's always best not to know where such information comes from). And more than that, there's something to be said for the power of his steady touch on the small of her back; the casual way he says things like 'if anyone can find a way to defeat this, it's you', as if he's offering nothing more than the plain truth.
As easy as was to fall in love (and it was, astonishingly, incredibly easy though she'd spent a good year hiding from it), it's more difficult to work out how to be in love. Easy to place a kiss on the inside of his wrist and mean it; harder to ask what he's thinking when her sister's name is mentioned. Easy to believe Robin when he says he wants her, Regina, and her alone. Harder to float in the happiness of it when the circumstances anchor her to Earth.
"Together," he told her and he's given her every reason to believe that he'd meant it. But it is also true that their moments alone are, or feel — which amounts to the same —, stolen. What they have, for now, are moonlit walks once a day is done, short drives in her car on their way to look for clues at the edge of town, lunches in her office with admittedly very little food involved. After so much, something as mild as being able to expect him to walk her home each night is enough of a gift.
There is an unspoken agreement to draw a temporary veil over the deeper issues left by their months apart; put the conversation off while this storm is going on.
Perhaps the truth is, she underestimates his inner turmoil and finds relief in burying her own for a while.
The flowers are a warning sign that not everything is as it should be.
Not that there should be anything odd about a man giving his (yes. The word, she supposes, is) girlfriend flowers. What befuddles her is the frequency with which they are given and the endurance of the pattern.
So she invites him for dinner at her house, letting slip that Henry will be spending the night with his grandparents. The first perspective of a whole evening… no, scratch that, an entire night together they've had since his return.
He arrives in his nicest shirt and smells so wonderful, it is physically painful. She opens the door wearing the same clothes he's seen her wear for the past two days, and his smile falls away instantly.
"What's going on?" Robin asks as he steps into her kitchen, his countenance that of one cautious of looming danger.
Regina makes her way around the counter, puts enough space between them to assure she won't be swayed by the scent of him, and then lays the flowers on the marble between them.
"Robin," she starts. At the height of her gravity. "I've run out of vases."
"You've…" Robin repeats, shaking his head as he wraps his mind around her words. She is almost amused to see that, with an exhale, a visible thread of tension hollows out of him.
When Robin lets out a low sigh, though, she raises one brow and drops her gaze down to the offending floral arrangement to bring home the point that she is not done.
Robin side-eyes her warily and rakes a hand through his hair. "Regina, you had me concerned for a moment there. I thought something serious had happened."
"This is serious."
He smirks. "Oh, forgive me. Shall I take care of that for you? I believe I saw a spare vase at Snow's apartment a few days past."
"Don't," she all but commands, raising both hands on instinct and then forcing them flat against the marbled counter, "go anywhere near the Charmings and their furniture."
Surprisingly, the implication of Robin pilfering something doesn't irk her; but Regina does feel within her rights to be baffled at the thought she'd ever want any item of her stepdaughter's taste on display at her house.
His smirk grows into a fully entertained smile at her scandalized tone.
Narrowing her eyes, she steadies back on track. "Don't change the subject. What are these for?"
"They're…" Robin replies, looking genuinely confused, "for you, of course."
"No, I meant what. What are they for."
Robin frowns, shakes his head lightly, telling her, not for the first time and without words, that she is acting oddly.
"Well, you might not remember this, but in our realm it was customary for a man to present his beloved with flowers."
"I do remember that," Regina agrees. "I also seem to recall men bringing home flowers when they had something to be contrite about."
The frown deepens, turns serious on Robin's face. His voice is low, on alert. "Regina… speak plainly."
"My castle used to be full of Leopold's flowers," she tells him more bluntly than intended, "and now my house is full of yours."
With that, his whole body startles, shifts back slightly as if physically struck by her words. The very air hardens between them.
"I see," he says, a feigned neutral pitch now. It's the fabricated nature of it that lets her know she has hurt him, because he is always, above and despite all other things, sincere with her.
"That was… not what I meant to say." She stands up straighter, slides a hand against the knot on the back of her neck. Lowers her eyes, thinking of ways to salvage whatever's left of the conversation.
When she looks up again, he is looking straight back at her. After a brief slide of gaze to the flowers lying on the kitchen island and a conceding nod to himself, Robin grants her, "It's alright."
The next time his eyes bore into hers, they are clear again and he is unarmed.
"I suppose a part of me still feels as if…" Robin lingers on the if as he reaches for the right words, "there is something to be made right. Between us, with my son."
And after a pause:
"With myself."
Regina breathes his name out softly, her heart breaking along with her voice, and immediately, decidedly starts making her away around the kitchen to stop at his side.
"Robin." Cupping his face with both hands, Regina uses his words, the words he has said to her in so many different ways and occasions; has been carrying with him ever since they met, though she's been so often unwilling to listen: "Let me help."
He nods, his stubble scratching at her fingertips. And with love visible as ever in his eyes, Robin begins to truly share the weight he's been carrying with him for the past however many months.
It takes more than one night, more than a handful of hours for either of them to express the full extent of the hurt. For her to understand how far his feelings of bewilderment and betrayal run. For him to make sense of how he could have lost sight of a woman he once loved with all his heart, enough to let himself be fooled by such a farce.
More time until Regina's heart truly understands what her mind already knows: that neither of them could have predicted, and neither are to blame for her sister's actions.
More even, for the pain to stop flaring up when least expected; for the hurt to fizzle out and, finally, die down.
But though it is only the first of many conversations, it's a good start.
And in spite of her expressed concerns, Robin's very next visit sees him stoutly at her doorstep with flowers in hand. Again.
Along is a little boy attached to his knees.
"Hello," Robin greets, already smirking impossibly at the sight of her arched brow.
"Hello?"
"Roland insisted." He drops his gaze down to the boy's small frame by way of explanation. Shrugs with the abashed grin of one who has accidentally conditioned his son to believe that a visit to R'gina must mean flowers (and undoubtedly, flower picking).
"For you, R'gina," Roland chirps from behind his daddy's legs.
She can't help but beam as Robin hands her the strange bouquet. As odd an arrangement as ever, with a large, perilous-looking bloom in the middle that Regina internally hopes isn't poisonous.
They're nothing like elegant, bland flowers that the king would bring with him at the return of his travels, when even he felt he'd left the queen alone in the castle for too long.
These are the kind of flowers Regina can welcome into her house.
She'll just have to buy a few more vases, she decides.
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The shoes are second.
At first it goes: Robin and Roland are polite, almost constrained, coming into the house. Robin reminds his boy gently that certain things are not to be asked (a third serving of ice cream for dessert; please, will you do that again? any time Regina uses the most innocuous bit of magic; and the inevitable: how come Henry has two mamas? Does he get two papas too?).
But then there is a Friday night spent inside, watching television with their sons as raindrops patter against the window. There's popcorn and sodas and shoes kicked off to the middle of the room. But excited as Roland might be to find out if The Goonies will ever find their treasure, the Mills' comfortable couch and his daddy's lap speak louder; forty minutes into the movie, his eyelids are fluttering helplessly. An hour in and he's fast asleep, so quiet and peaceful that Regina feels a tightness in her chest.
They watch the movie to the end and Regina is glad to witness, through glances from the corner of her eye, that Henry does still hold his breath through the spooky parts of the film just as he did when he was five.
The credits roll. "We hadn't seen that one in a while," Regina says, as she rises and slides an arm around her son's shoulder. She sounds overwhelmed even to her own ear and Henry purses his lips, raises both brows the way he's been doing more and more as of late, whenever he feels compelled to point out to either of his mothers that they're being such a mom.
Robin whispers to his boy, softly trying to persuade the toddler to wake up for only a minute but Roland is mostly asleep even as he latches on to his father's neck. There is a spare room set up for the Locksleys, the guest bed for the little boy and a makeshift mattress on the floor for the grown up — one that Robin will only surreptitiously slip into at dawn.
They make their way up the stairs, Regina with her arm still around Henry, and Robin with Roland balanced on his hip. The house is quiet and so are they; all it takes is a touch of magic to switch off the lights.
The shoes, they find them in the morning. Forgotten and abandoned in the middle of the living room, where they've been all night.
After that, discarded shoes become something of a recurrence. One in a series of small things that the Locksleys bring with them coming into her life.
There are muddy soles that she sighs at, and one time or another they lose one half of a pair to the same unknown black hole in the mansion where Roland's things often insist on escaping to (Henry smiles; maybe we don't know about all the portals).
There are slippers thrown aside in favour of sock sliding competitions that Regina has most definitely not pre-approved.
There are three pairs of dirty boots by the back door and not one of the men of the house can give her a straight story about how their footgear got to its dreadful state.
And this is early on:
There is a shoe peeking out from the edge of the bed, on what is quickly becoming his side, so that Regina can't even claim that Robin has recklessly thrown it aside. She trips on it, keeps tripping on his boots every morning because she keeps rising from this side, which is not her usual side. Because they keep falling asleep entangled together on what just happens to be the warm corner he likes to occupy on the large, large bed.
She stumbles loudly, letting out a flurry of expletives that might be considered too fierce for so early in the day.
It has Robin appearing in the doorway of the bathroom, cloth in hand.
"Good m'rning." It's entirely too early for the smirk he is sporting. He is one of those bright moods, whereas Regina huffs as she runs her gaze across his jeans thrown carelessly over the back of a chair; his shirt on the leg of said chair, having slid down to the ground some point during the night.
She can't imagine where his socks have gone to and his rucksack is nowhere to be seen.
Sighing, Regina magics it all into a neatly folded pile.
"We need to find a place for your clothes," she comments offhandedly. Slides a hand across his abdomen as she squeezes by him through the door, a slow, inviting gesture that is really more of a snare.
It catches.
"Do we now?" he asks, his voice suggestive at every curve.
Over her shoulder, Regina throws him a mock coy smile.
"This is a large house," Robin tells her, crossing the bathroom to stand behind her at the sink. "I think you can find," his breath getting dangerously close to the shell of her ear, "some space to spare for my things."
She ducks her head, hiding a small smile as she takes her toothbrush from the holder. "I'm sure I could be convinced to," she concurs, grinning. Robin's fingers dig into the slope of her hip bones and Regina thinks he's steeling himself, in a show of remarkable patience, waiting for her to finish brushing her teeth.
Regina plays with the idea of taking her time, see how he manages his impatience as he so often toys with hers. On the other hand, his hair is still mussed up from sleep and this undershirt he insists on wearing to bed leaves his arms on objectionable, irresistible display and he's listing a few things he might do to convince her… convince her of what?, she's forgotten, though she might list a couple of things of her own.
He steps a little too close, close enough for her to feel him half hard, and her breath hitches a little too audibly. Her eyes meet his hungry gaze over the mirror and she rushes through washing her mouth, does a shamefully poor job of it, leaves some toothpaste for him to kiss away. He looks straight into her eyes as he slides a hand under her silk nightshirt and up toward a breast, the other pulling her flush against him. It has the length of him pressed to her backside and that's all her body requires to grow pliant, her back arching into it. She lets her head fall back on his shoulder, loose strands of her hair cling to his lips. His eyes stay trained on her through the mirror, watching her as she reacts to him. The hand on her hip sneaks its way under the fabric of her pajamas, making her belly hollow in anticipation.
Her jaw goes slack, and her lids threaten to fall shut.
"Keep your eyes open, my love," Robin tells her.
She shivers with the request, tightens a handful of his hair in her fist, and does.
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Half of the Locksleys' belongings are already living at the mansion by the time the Locksleys themselves officially move in.
Robin furrows his brow and says he doesn't know when they even acquired so many items; outlaw style of living certainly never permitted quite this many change of clothes.
For a couple of weeks, he walks around looking mightily uncomfortable each time he turns the key to the house.
Roland, however, quickly adapts to the wealth of space. The boy leaves his hair brush at the dinner table and leaves his Spiderman watch on the couch and leaves a trail of wet footsteps running between the lawn and his bedroom when he discovers the sprinklers.
At any given time they can find him by following the things he leaves behind, like following the lines on a treasure map. It goes on until the boy loses all his beanies, and it's too cold to take him outside without one. Robin reminds his son that's he's always taught him to take good care of what belongs to him. "My boy, I have never known you to be careless like this."
"But papa," Roland asks, spares a hesitant glance to Regina before he continues, "how can they know this is my home if they can't see my things?"
Robin smiles knowingly. "Well..." he starts, crouching down to look the toddler in the eye. "There's no need to lay claim to —"
Regina puts her hand on Robin's shoulder and shakes her head. Putting a hand under the boy's chin gently, she takes over for Robin. "Do you like it here, Roland?"
Roland blinks and nods his yes, serious and eager.
"Then this will be your home as for long as you want it be," Regina assures him. "I promise."
And this is a promise she makes sure to keep.
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Then there is the sound.
Well, sound, that is not a solid thing. It can't fill a house the way flowers and shoes and little boy's things can.
Only, yes. Yes, it can.
Sound is solid as Henry and Robin and Roland come bounding into the house, laughing, talking loudly over one another, though they are all three of them out of breath from some ballgame that had them running around the yard. As Henry shouts in celebration, the first time he finally manages to get an arrow ripping through the bull's eye. As Roland cries out in his nightmares, the forgetting spell that has taken weeks out of his memory providing its own scars.
When a baby's wails break through the peace of dawn.
The sound of cartoons on the television in the morning. Music Robin plays in the background when it's his turn to cook lunch on the weekend. Things falling off their shelves when she's not there to watch. Independent conversations that blend into a strange alloy of voices when the whole Charming family comes over for Sunday dinner. Toddlers getting into screaming matches about things that will be long forgotten twenty minutes later. Glass breaking. Toys breaking. The rocking chair breaking, don't ask her how.
And Regina had never thought of a huddle of men as being particularly rowdy until the Merry Men intruded upon her life.
("It's a wonder you ever managed to complete a successful heist," she tells Robin after the first time they have his entire troops over.
The men are not only loud, but also remarkable gossips, which makes her comment doubly pertinent.
"Ah," he counters, untroubled, "but is a successful heist truly successful without ale and some merriment to crown it?"
She shakes her head, pinches the bridge of her nose.
"It's a wonder," she mutters to herself as he laughs.)
Sound creates a presence as much as any of the other things one might think substantial.
Sound fills her house in a way it never had before; strays far from the obedient silence kept in her parent's estate, the lonely, empty placidity of her husband's castle.
It is not a thing she'd have thought to want, or even something Regina could believe she would come to enjoy.
She is very surprised to find that she does.
And when the unyielding string of noise curves into a rare silence, it fills it with that much more depth. When the house is still, it is a soft, a peaceful kind of stillness. It is sharing her study with Henry, each absorbed in their own task. It is early morning to herself, before anyone's awake. Bedtime stories for Roland; nights when Henry doesn't mind being tucked in. It is a silence pregnant with grand adventures, conspiratorial childhood secrets she is not meant to be privy to.
It is a baby girl nestled in her arms.
It is a whisper of I love you just as she's falling asleep.
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For two or three years there, their home seems to be filled to the brim with baby gear.
Babies, how could she have forgotten, bring along with them a sizeable pile of stuff.
It makes an already overwhelming situation even worse. The sheer amount of plugs they have to baby-proof and bottles they have to wash and diapers they have to stack in preparation for her arrival.
In the month preceding the birth, there are days when Regina stares at Henry's old crib, newly dusted off and repainted, and wonders whether she'll ever truly be able to love the child that is supposed to occupy it.
Regina remembers Snow, remembers how vivid, how solid a necklace could feel in her hand… when she'd daydream of choking her stepdaughter with it.
For a whole week she avoids the nursery altogether.
Then, a little girl arrives.
Her hair is blonde enough that it could grow to become a fierce red like her mother's but her eyes are a serene kind of blue that could only have come from her father. She doesn't sleep through a single night for what feels like months. Her nose is heartbreakingly tiny and she has five fingers on each hand and she is, in every one of her ten fingers and in every soft inch of skin, a gift.
And Regina, much to her own surprise, finds that she loves this baby girl, loves her without much effort or discomfort.
All the baby has to do is blink those pebbled blue eyes up at her, and any leftover anger — whatever baleful desires might still hide in the deepest ridges of her heart — seems to exhaust.
Robin is the one who struggles.
The baby monitor stays, more often than not, on Regina's bedside table and it's not unusual for her to be the one to grumble I'll go, already staggering out of bed and rubbing sleep from her eyes, once the crying starts.
It is one of those nights.
The nursery is dark, except for the silver moonlight streaming in from the window and a yellow spotlight on Regina's shoulder created by a single lamp. The baby gulps greedily, small fingers closing and opening against the plastic just under the place where Regina holds the bottle still.
She starts humming without really meaning to, not quite a lullaby but a song from her childhood with words left behind in an enchanted forest of long ago.
She is caught up in her own brain, struggling to remember how it goes, when she senses a movement. Sure enough, Robin is standing there, leaning against the doorway and lost deep in thought.
"Hey."
"Hello," he whispers back.
He murmurs for her to go ahead as they shuffle back to bed, takes almost twenty minutes to come back with a glass of water in hand and looks startled to find her still awake when he returns.
She asks, "is everything alright?" as he turns off the light she'd left on for him.
It takes a long swig of water, a stroll across the room, a careful adjusting of blankets before he replies and Regina waits, her hearing sharp enough to hear the low hum of static coming from the monitor as she holds her breath.
Robin settles belly up with an arm under his head and admits to the ceiling, "I want her to think of you as her mother."
Her body draws tight with tension. "Zelena's alive. We can't… lie to her about that."
"No," he allows easily, with the sound of having gone through the whole line of thought on his own. "We can't."
Regina scans the side of his face, stiff in expectation of whatever is next.
With a terse sigh, Robin pushes heavily to his side. Regina follows his lead, mirrors his position as he smooths the disarranged blankets again. Even then, he doesn't touch her. The space between them, too cramped to hold the whole heap of dark thoughts and mildewed wishes they each hoped never to have.
She focuses on the string of imaginary static in her ear, hoping he won't propose anything they'll later come to regret.
"I want her to think of you as her mother," Robin repeats fiercely.
Regina exhales, deflating with relief. Only a wish, not a plan, then.
A foot bridges the abyss of the bed, rubbing against hers. The curtains billow and in the quiet of the night, she feels safe enough to confess, "I hope she does, too."
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At some point, Regina stops keeping track. So Henry's old toys start popping up again. So the pantry's contents disappear in truly appalling rates while dirty socks increase as if by mitosis. So they have to triple their amount of dinnerware sets because hers hardly has enough pieces for a meal with the entire Mills-Hood-Charming extended family, let alone for the Merry Men once they start coming over — which they never seem to do only one or two at a time, but always in numbers, numbers that always seem to go one higher although Robin swears no one has joined their ranks since arriving in Storybrooke.
Sometimes she can't quite believe how fond she's become of certain testimonies of the daily chaos: the corner of the hallway where she used to mark Henry's height progress; the wayward coffee table that Robin took upon himself to fix; a faded green stain on the carpet from the day Roland discovered watercolors; that loveseat in her study that has been witness to some of her most outstanding orgasms; the back door, which looks like no other door in the house ever since they had to replace the original, fallen victim to Henry's bow and arrow lessons.
Every little nook and cranny of the house that has been given meaning through their presence there.
It is all a part of the fabric of her life now.
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(And as long as we're talking patterns:
It is evening, a date like any other. Regina and Robin are cleaning up after dinner when Henry comes into the kitchen to ask, "Hey mom, have you seen my —"
A dull, resounding thud cuts him off.
Robin freezes with the door to the fridge open, while Regina breathes in and looks to the ceiling.
"That seems ominous," Henry cracks.
"Was that from my study?"
Henry glances across to Robin, in a look of complicity that his mother does not miss, and gets a grimace and a nod in return.
"May have been," Robin answers, sounding sorry to say so.
Regina sighs before she goes back to wiping the dish in her hand. "Henry, would you go check on your brother and sister and make sure they haven't destroyed the yearly city budget?"
"Sure thing, mom," Henry says, turning around and making a clean break for it.
Once he's gone, Regina narrows her eyes at Robin, waving the dishtowel as she does. "This house used to be organized."
"I know," he agrees, slowly moving toward her with a stupid, fond grin on his face.
"Everything used to be in place."
"I've no doubt."
She rolls her eyes as her lips rise up with the hint of a smirk. "Are you just going to stand there or are you planning to help?"
"I don't know," is all Robin offers even as he steps up to her and takes the dish from her hands to put it in the wash. He steps forward into her space, curls an arm around her waist and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"Thank you."
Regina looks up at him, slides her hands under each of his elbows, lets any pretence of annoyance fall away. Only a wide, happy smile to replace it. "What for?" she asks even though he doesn't really have to say it; she knows.)
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the end.