I own no one but my own people
He saw her. For the first time in almost two weeks he saw her.
He saw her, and he didn't do anything but stare.
Robins mind had been screaming at him the moment he took that drink of water that 'Marian' poured him after he got home from working retail at an outdoorsman and hunting store.
He felt the magic trickle down his throat and spread throughout his limbs, settling deep in his chest.
It was cold and heavy, made him sluggish and slow.
He pushed away the glass, his mind racing. Why would Marian give him magic? What reasons would she have to him a potion that made him foggy?
"Wha- what did you do to me?" he muttered as he climbed off his stool. He would have fallen if Marian hadn't of caught him. "You… did you put something in my drink?"
Through his haze he saw her smile at him. No. Not a smile. A smirk. A crazed cold calculating smirk that his wife had never worn before in her life prior to now.
She reached into her pocket, pulling out a thin glass vile and showing it to him. "My own creation," she informed him. "A tiny bit of a memory potion crossed with a dab of love potion mixed with a bit of this, a touch of that…"
Robin could barely hear her words. The room was moving and spinning. He needed to sit down but Marian kept holding him up, grabbing at him, stroking his cheek in a way that was as deadly and dangerous as it was meant to be romantic.
He heard himself ask her why. Why would Marian need to give him a love potion much less a memory potion
This was his wife.
"Marian," he groaned, reaching for her but she just grabbed his hand to still him.
"No not quite, Dear," she purred. She lifted her hand to the necklace around her neck, giving it a gentle twist and Robin watched, horrified, as he saw his wife, his beautiful brown hair and brown eyed wife, morph into a wickedly sinful woman with wild red curls and icy green eyes.
Zelena.
"No," he groaned, shaking his head. A dark fog began to creep in and every second longer, the more he knew the inevitable was coming.
"No," he said again. "Marian…"
"Never actually came back I'm afraid," she told him with a smile full of bright white teeth. "I killed her. And then I took her place and came back with Emma and the Pirate. It's only just been me. Me…" She reached out and stroked his face again. "And you."
Tears flooded his eyes at the admission. Marian was dead. His wife was dead, and Regina...
Robin tried pulling away from her touch but the black fog compelled him to lean in closer to her soft hand.
No. This wasn't right. This wasn't right, he had to get back to her, he had to grab his son and get back to her.
"Regina," he moaned, his head lulling side to side. "Regina…"
"Funnily enough she's the problem," said Zelena. "If you had just been happy with me, I wouldn't have needed to curse you but you just couldn't leave well enough alone."
The fog grew thicker, darker, overtaking him almost entirely.
Zelena just smirked, leaning in to kiss him and Robin found himself kissing her back. "Don't worry," she cooed to him as he closed his eyes. "In a moment you won't remember any of this happened. You won't remember SHE exists. You'll still think I'm your boring doe eyed wife but you'll have no memory of my bitch of a sister. Emma will have saved me and gave you the idea to take me across the town line." She leaned in, a manichical crazed look in her eyes. "And you'll be in love with me."
Finally, the fog surrounded him entirely, trapping him in this false existence without knowledge of his soulmate.
When he opened his eyes he saw Marian looking down at him rather frightened.
How had he wound up on the floor?
"Robin!" she cried, wrapping her arms around him and laying her head on his chest. "You passed out! I was so worried!"
After taking a moment to shake the fog from his head and to collect his bearings, he realized he was physically okay at least.
"I'm alright," he told her, kissing the top of her head. "I'm alright, M'lady, I promise."
Marian let out a breath at him, running a hand through his hair. "Good. I'd hate if anything happened to you."
Robin smiled at his wife, kissing her again. "I know. But I'm alright."
"Papa?" Robin and Marian turned towards the voice of their son who was walking almost nervously out of his room. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, my boy," Robin assured him as Roland walked over to him and Marian. "I just tripped."
The blue eyed thief stood with the help of his wife and he couldn't help but feel his heart full with love as he looked down at her.
She was so beautiful. So beautiful and innocent and kind and genuine… Marian was everything he ever wanted in a woman and nothing was going to tear his family apart again.
In a way he was glad that Emma told him the small family had to be sent across the town line. Sure he was away from his men and the forest but he was also away from magic and spells and villains and curses. More important than all that was his son had his mother back and Robin and his wife back.
The thief couldn't have asked for anything more.
Weeks past in bliss. Days full of work he didn't particularly mind, nights spent with his family, and when Roland went to bed Robin and Marian were together in the most intimate ways a husband and wife could be together.
Then, three weeks after that odd fall Robin came home from work to find his wife sitting on the kitchen floor in a state of shock and disbelief. When he asked what was wrong all Marian could do was point to something on the table. Robin followed her finger and saw what she was pointing at, a positive pregnancy test, he started weeping tears of joy right there in the kitchen. He hugged her as tight as possible, kissing her all over repeating over and over how much he loved her, that this child was their miracle, never taking his hand away from cradling her still flat stomach where their child was growing.
It was weird though, Robin thought, how when Marian finally broke free of her trance she wasn't overjoyed and ecstatic like when she found out she was pregnant with Roland, but she looked almost… smug. Like she won something by being pregnant.
But the thief put it out of his mind and just kept kissing her, his heart close to bursting.
Their child, their miracle… The next day they found a doctor who assured them that Marian and the baby was healthy and perfect, they even printed out a photo of the baby from inside her and as he stared at that photo, Robin realized he had never been happier.
Then two weeks later the strangest thing happened. Marian was at the store while he and Roland were at home enjoying a book of his tales from this world (Emma bought it for him actually) when there was a knock at his door.
"Robin?" a voice he didn't recognize asked through the door. He got up to answer it when the person pounded more frantically. "Robin, open up!"
He wrenched open the door and found some woman standing there with brown hair and brown eyes, looking at him like he was her entire world, like seeing him was both the most painful and the happiest moment of her life.
"Robin," she breathed, racing forward and wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder while he stood there in the doorway frozen.
Who on earth was this woman?
"I missed you," she told him, tears heavy in her voice.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Emma and another stranger standing there with the blonde smiling at him and the woman hugging him, like it was the most lighthearted and joyful thing she had ever seen.
"Emma?" Robin finally asked, gently pushing the stranger away who looked like the simple movement was equal to a dagger in the heart as he walked past her. "Emma, what's going on, why are you here?"
The stranger who had hugged him spoke first, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I can explain everything but first where's Marian?"
"She's at the store, I'm sorry who-?"
"Good," she interrupted, "then there's still time. But we have to act fast."
She grabbed hold of his arm, a rather intimate hold if he's being honest with himself, and pulled him back into this apartment.
"I'm sorry, I'm confused…" he finally said when the three women and him were back in his home. "What's this about?"
"Marian," the brown eyed woman said, speaking her name like it was poison on her tongue. "We have to leave before she gets back, she is NOT who she says she is."
"What?"
"She's… my sister. Zelena."
Robin's mouth fell open as he glanced from Emma back to the stranger. "The Wicked Witch? No she's dead, we all saw that."
"Somehow she tricked us. Robin… she went back in time… and SHE killed Marian."
Robin shook his head again and backed away from the stranger. None of this made sense, Zelena was defeated after Emma used her light magic to destroy the witch...
"She took her place," the stranger continued rather apologetically. "To get back at me."
"This is madness… why would Zelena care about killing Marian?" he demanded. "How would taking Marian's place get back at you, you and I don't even know one another."
A look of horror and pain overtook the strangers face while Emma's eyes went wide with shock.
The stranger swallowed hard and when she spoke her voice trembled. "Robin, you don't remember me?"
"Remember you? I'm sorry, M'lady, but I've never even met you before."
"She must have cast some spell or something," sighed Emma and Robin shook his head.
"I think I would have remembered my wife casting a spell."
"She isn't your wife!" the stranger barked rather dangerously. "Okay, she's my sister, she wants revenge on me, and you-!" She reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulders, her nails digging into his flesh with a desperate frantic look in her admittedly stunning brown eyes. "You're my soulmate, we were one another's second chance!"
"She isn't lying, Robin," added Emma but the thief barely heard her.
Robin took a step back from this clearly unstable woman, eyeing the knife on the counter and calculating the time it would take to grab it if she became violent.
"I'm sorry," he told her as carefully as he could. "But we've never met, I think I would remember an entire relationship with someone other than my wife."
"We were in a relationship through!" the stranger cried as she bridged the distance between them only for Robin to take another step back. He didn't want to hurt this clearly disturbed woman but if she kept it up, especially with his son in the next room… "We love each other!"
"Robin?" The four of them all turned towards the voice in the doorway belonging to Marian who walked in, eyeing the woman in front of him just as confused as he was. "What's going on? Who is this?"
"It's over, Zelena!" the stranger barked. "I told him everything!"
Marian set the groceries down on the counter. "What is she talking about?" She came over and stood behind Robin, clutching his arm while her voice filled with fear. "Whose Zelena?"
"I don't know who you are but you're scaring my wife."
"Good!" Regina snarled. "Where's the magic? You must have brought something to make this glamor work, where is it, Zelena?" When neither one of them answered the strangers eyes went wide with hate and anger. "SHOW ME OR I WILL RIP YOU APART UNTIL I FIND IT!"
"That's enough!" Robin barked at the stranger, placing his hand in front of Marian's stomach, missing the smug look on his wife's face behind him. "I don't know who the hell you are but get out of my apartment NOW!"
"You little green bitch!" the stranger snarled before she launched herself at his wife.
She grabbed hold of Marian's arms and tried to yank her from behind the thief but Robin shoved the stranger away, hard, making her stumble back into the counter and nearly falling to the floor. Without so much as another moment wasted Robin grabbed hold of the knife on the counter and pointed it at the stranger, who looked like he had plunged the knife into her heart already.
"Get out!" Robin yelled at the stranger as Emma raced in front of her and urged him to calm down. "Get out of my home and don't you ever come back!"
"Robin, please!" she cried. "Please you have to remember me, you have to remember US! We have to grab Roland and leave!"
"Don't you talk about my son!" he shouted. "Get out! Emma, take her and get her out of here!"
"Robin, PLEASE!"
"Robin, the baby!"
Those three simple words brought the two strangers and Emma into a stunned silence as Robin whipped around and saw Marian with panic in her eyes and her hands on her stomach. "I- I think she hurt the baby." She let out a desperate sob. "Robin, I think she hurt our baby!"
"...No…" the stranger breathed as tears flooded her eyes. "No!"
The thief rounded back on the stranger, a terrifying look in his eyes that made even this clearly psychopathic woman shut her mouth. "Get out," Robin told her, his voice shaking with anger, once again missing the smug look on Marian's face. "Or I will kill you."
The woman who had been silent so far didn't need to be told twice and hurried out of the apartment. Emma grabbed hold of the stranger and began to pull her out of the apartment.
The stranger must have realized what Emma was trying to do because she began to struggle against the sheriff's grip and fought to get back to the man who was still glaring daggers at her. "No! No, Robin, please! Please you have to remember me! You have to! Remember Tinkerbell! And the tattoo and the tavern and the vault! ROBIN PLEASE!" she finished with a desperate scream as Emma finally dragged her out of the apartment and shut the door behind them.
The moment it latched Robin raced forward and locked and dead bolted the door before he rounded on his timid shaking wife and ran to her, wrapping his arms around her. He tried to lower his heart rate, to make himself calm down.
Marian was safe, Roland was safe, the baby was safe… that woman hasn't harmed them and he would never let her come anywhere near his family again.
"Are you alright?" Robin asked as he held her, his voice soft and gentle as he could have made it.
Marian just sniffed away her tears and nodded, returning the embrace and resting her head on his shoulder. "Oh Robin I was so scared. If she had hurt you or Roland…"
"But she didn't. She didn't we're fine, my love. The only thing I'm concerned about is you and Rosemary," he told her as he put a gentle hand on her stomach.
A flood of confusion overwhelmed her face. "Rosemary?"
"The baby."
"No I know but that name… you really wanna name our child after a spice?"
This time it was Robins turn to look confused. "You always loved that name for a girl. Rose after your grandmother then Mary for you. Unless you think it's a boy?"
A smile replaced her confusion. "No no no, I'm sorry, it's just been a long day. Rosemary would be a perfect name for our baby." She hugged him and rested her head against his chest. "I just want a long hot bath with the man I love so we can just forget all about that crazy woman."
Robin smiled down at the woman embracing him and planted a kiss on top of her head. "I think that sounds like a fantastic idea…"
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