At least it's a clear night, a myriad stars blinking down upon the kingdom under the black vault of the sky. The Regina of old used to dream by them, the Evil Queen plot under their squinting eye, and this Queen Regina of fresh starts has a newfound appreciation for these tiny lights in the dark.
The fires, not so much.
A flaming line snakes through the courtyard, poorly concealed under the domes of bare-limbed, half-dead trees.
Regina, face turned towards the heavens, lets it be for now.
It started three days ago with the first angry mob raising their pitchforks against her for supposedly murdering their king and queen. So much for blank slates. At the time it seemed rather like a small nuisance, a minor issue she could easily solve with a flick of her wrist. A spark here, a flicker there—sometimes she'd even wait for one to catch, let it feed on the battered rooftops and spawn more frisky flames to lick at the ramshackle remains she calls, for lack of a better term, home. Never enough to burn the place to ashes, but one must turn negatives into positives somehow, and she supposes she'd always had a penchant for playing with fire.
The problem is these villagers don't know when to give up and go back to their pathetic peasant lives— lives she's graciously deigned to let them keep despite the trouble they've given her. They're relentless. With each vanquished threat to her poor excuse of a castle, the attacks only grow more vicious. The brunt of them comes, whether as a matter of tactics (hoping to catch her defenceless in her sleep or trying to rob her of sleep?), or necessity (common folk have work to do by day after all), or perhaps just for effect, by night.
She knows she can fend them off—be it protective enchantments or incantations or spouting jets of water from the palms of her hands. It's not that she cannot stand her ground against them, even though admittedly doing so without causing them serious harm—because that's the person she is now, isn't she, darkness and light interwoven—has proven quite the challenge.
And then there's the heart-rending incident from this morning.
At this point, Regina is just…tired.
And is any of this really even worth it?
The castle hardly lives up to its name these days. Hell, Regina barely recognised the place when she first chose to claim it. As the plaque commemorating the downfall of this realm's Evil Queen so proudly boasts, measures had been taken to strip this once symbol of terror of its power. Instead of the grotesque, spiky skyline, a single spire juts out where only stumps of the rest stand pathetically like stems whose flowers had been nipped off. The outer walls had been razed to the ground, and the marble chambers and halls are riddled with debris.
Why bother fixing up the place when she's clearly not welcome in this land?
The eerie cheers of the angry villagers seem distant from her vantage point as torches soar up in the air and dent the aged slates.
Tonight won't be quite the lazy stargazing rendezvous she's planned—if Robin shows up at all.
The ale was especially strong that night, the first tankard spreading warm and heady in his belly and making him pleasantly dizzy.
Or perhaps it was her.
The Queen. Not evil—bold and audacious, certainly, but somehow…different. Not the monster of his land's tales, and softer around the edges than the woman who'd had him tied to a chair in that strange faraway realm. Over shared drinks, she met each smirk with a coy smile of her own, her quick wit and sharp tongue keeping him on his toes—and Robin likes a challenge. Brazen words sometimes were chased by oddly gentle looks—a legacy of the other Robin, surely, frustratingly. But she wanted to know him, told him so straight up. He liked that, too, the bluntness. It made things easier.
And she was quite the sight for sore eyes.
What was it the stories would dub her? The fairest in all the land? Not by any means a stretch, for Robin couldn't help drinking her in: the dark locks curling in the stuffy heat and clinging to her face, her eyes shining with mirth as she parried his jest with one of her own, and those lips smacking ever so slightly as she relished her drink.
It was definitely her as much as it was the ale.
Was she in the same boat? Were her flushed cheeks a mere result of the amber liquid they shared? Or did he get to claim at least some credit for that?
"Enjoying the view, Thief?" she quipped.
Caught.
Best 'fess up then.
"That I am, Your Majesty." He meant for it to be cheeky, roguish, charming even; he was taken aback instead by the soft sincerity of the confession that shouldn't have been much of a revelation in the first place because she had to know how bloody gorgeous she was.
Her cheeks burned a decidedly deeper shade of scarlet, and she seemed just as embarrassed by her unguarded reaction as he was by his own.
"A bit of air, perhaps? The lady seems a tad short of breath."
"And here I thought I was the breath-taking one," she pouted playfully, but stood all the same, slightly unsteady on her feet for just a moment.
"Milady." He offered her an arm with mock ceremony, and she let herself be led into the night.
Stumbling slightly in their blissfully buzzed state, they headed for the forest—and would she have trusted him so blindly to not lead her to danger had she been completely sober? She wasn't drunk, not quite that, but still he wondered. She kept glancing up at him from under long lashes, her lips twitching whenever she caught him watching her in return—and his eyes refused to follow the sensible path their feet trod and remained glued to her instead. She was absolutely stunning, half-unravelled hairdo and hooded eyes and her laugh tinged with liquor as they tripped over a tree root. She grabbed onto his shirt, nails digging into his side, and suddenly her face was inches from his own, her tongue darting out to lick her lips as her eyes dropped to his.
Never, not even in his inexperienced boyhood, had the prospect of a kiss filled him with such anticipation.
And yet Robin didn't kiss the Queen that night, nor any night since.
He didn't want it to happen in a liquor-induced haze and have that mar the experience for either of them. And then, well, he finds he somewhat enjoys the sizzling sparks flying between them and the charged expectation of almost-kisses that end up being planted on flushed cheeks, pecks that barely touch the corners of her lips, the teasing temptation that's become a bit of a game between them. Who will last longer; who will be the first to yield to temptation?
It's all new to him, this…almost reverence, this willingness to wait with which he actually lends weight to such a simple—and to his old self, mundane—thing as a kiss. Had someone told Robin of Locksley only a week ago that he'd ever consider such a thing, he'd have roared with laughter. Yet now he finds himself acting like a sentimental fool—and it scares and puzzles him as much as it thrills him.
Wondrously, she seems to understand, even possibly to have been there herself once. He supposes she must have; assumes with a pinch of bitterness it would most likely have been Other Robin who'd had a hand in changing that. His shadow looms over them, over him, ever present—will it always be so?
Robin dismisses it now, enough shadows already lingering in the night as he approaches the palace by a well-trodden path.
It only takes a glimpse—a tendril of smoke curling towards the crescent moon, an orange blaze flickering through the treetops—for him to know the Queen's in trouble.
As he tears through the foliage towards the crumbling walls with straining muscles and a squeezing heart, Robin wonders if they've gambled too much on chance and pushed their luck too far.
By the time Regina snaps out of her starry-eyed stupor, the fire has eaten away a good chunk of the slates and sunk its teeth deep into the wooden beams criss-crossing the roofs underneath. The supporting structure creaks and groans in the roaring inferno, and Regina watches in consternation as a large block is shaved off the northern tower, a flaming mass hurtling down and hitting the dome one level beneath her. It caves with a pitiful, ear-splitting cacophony, the tremors upsetting her balance and landing her on her backside, much too close to the edge she was already dangerously teetering on to begin with.
This may be a bit more than Regina had bargained for.
Chanting voices join the deafening conflagration, and that's what does it for her—she's not giving up. She will rise victorious if only to spite this misuided witch hunt.
A deluge of water rains from the dark cloud Regina summons with trembling arms, a torrential downpour that has her drenched to the skin within seconds. Still it's not enough to quench the flames, and weather spells are not her forte, are more trouble than they're usually worth what with the demands on the caster as well as the potential upheaval of climate. Perhaps if she can hold it long enough to at least contain the fire to the northern wing, it might consume itself in time. Lose a battle, win a war.
Fresh start, indeed.
Another beam shatters and falls, pulling the ground from under her feet, sending her tumbling and sliding down the rickety, white-hot slope as she scrabbles for purchase and grabs for a fortuitously positioned ledge with bloodied nails.
Caught between two fires—a literal one above and a metaphorical one in the form of a raging mob below—Regina's mind works furiously as her fingers begin to cramp.
"Your Majesty! Let go!"
It's his voice, and Regina grins. With a quick downward glance that sends her head spinning, she closes her eyes and releases the ledge, falling, falling…
And then she's yanked by the arm and hoisted up, her other winding around his torso instinctively as they swing together before Robin begins their descent down the rope and to the sheltered alcove at the foot of the wall.
###
"That," says Robin after they've slipped deep enough into the forest, "wasn't quite the outing I'd imagined."
Regina chuckles breathlessly. She's winded, likely a combination of smoke and exertion, but there's a spring in her step and a quickening of her pulse he associates with that familiar adrenalin rush he himself is positively addicted to.
"Not quite what I had planned either," she lets on. "Although it certainly livened things up, don't you think?"
So they may have cut it a bit too close tonight even for their liking, but it's done now, the incident but another adventure under their belt. Daredevils, the both of them—and the thought warms him. Almost as much as the dawning realisation they've been walking through the woods hand in hand, weaving between the trees as the shouts of the villagers deprived of their prey gradually fade. Not so the image of her standing atop the roof, her silhouette etched against the flames, proud and unbent, majestic in her defiance like some mighty goddess of old lore—that Robin doubts he'll ever forget.
"You needn't try so hard, Your Majesty," he winks back at her. "I've never once been bored in your company."
"Still a terrible flirt, I see. You'll have to come up with something less tired and cliche than that if you'd woo a queen."
She's always challenging him, this woman, dancing a dance he's become quite attached to, one whose steps and figures no one but they get to invent. Yet the single squeeze of his hand reads as an acknowledgement of his perfectly sincere compliment, no matter how nonchalantly delivered and received.
"I'll try my hardest, but I'm afraid my predicament can only be remedied by a wealth of practice."
"And I assume I'm to subject myself to your clumsy efforts?"
"It'd be my immense honour. And ultimately, forgive me for saying so, your immense pleasure."
"Mmm, so cocky."
And shit. The way she says it, with an eyebrow cocked and her voice deep and husky, that little hum she leads with, it all makes his blood boil hot with desire.
And she knows, of course she knows because that's a glimmer of pride in her eyes right there, and he's so going to pay her back in kind. Just as soon as he's collected his wits about him. She moves past him, brushing ever so gently against him as she does, and throws back an amused:
"Coming, Thief?"
Well, that's just—Well, he might as well.
###
They're stranded.
A roadblock bars their way forward, a mountain of stone and tree trunks heaved atop each other to slow their progress. And behind them, faint shouts and the distant flicker of torches. Regina can't transport them with magic, for she needs to save all of it for later if her scheme is to succeed; nor can Robin lead them around, for it'd either take too long or land them straight on the villagers' pointy pitchforks.
So here they are, camped in a tree until the villagers pass, allowing them to double down on the hidden trail Robin swears will get them where she wants to go. Regina's heavy skirt is nigh impossible to manage as it snags on twigs and upsets her balance, and Robin is teasing her mercilessly for it. So she raises a brow at him and summons a purple cloud faster and more precise than the nimblest of handmaids, reemerging before him in a riding coat and leather pants. He stares for a bit, then shakes his head in amusement, opening and closing his mouth.
"What is it?" she asks, changing course halfway from teasing to hesitant. He's giving her this peculiar look, like he's seeing her for the first time, and perhaps in a way he is—this side of her at least.
"Nothing, just—it suits you. Never pegged you for a rider."
"But I am. I was."
"What happened?"
She tells him. About Rocinante and how he was her best friend, her escape, before he fell victim to her darkness. About Daniel, how she loved and lost him. She even tells him about Snow White and her obsession with riding, with Regina, and how instead of forging a bond between them it alienated them and robbed Regina of the one last retreat she still had. About how in all those years in Storybrooke she never really took up riding again. Even though they aren't Other Robin and That Regina, she takes that leap and lets him in.
When she's done and Robin's said nothing at all, never once reaching for her hand (he doesn't have to, of course he doesn't have to, this is new to both of them after all and it's not quite clear just yet where they stand, but that doesn't stop her from wishing to be touched, wishing he'd want to offer her this kind of comfort), Regina wonders if perhaps her little tirade was too much, too soon.
"I'm s—"
"Your turn." To her astonished expression, Robin flashes his dimples at her, though she fancies she catches a hint of apprehension in the tense line of his jaw. "You get to ask me something personal about my past. That's how the game works, yeah?"
Oh. Well, that's…correct.
They've had this little thing going ever since that first drink. That first night, Robin had insisted it be made clear from the get go that despite what either of them might sometimes be led to think, the two of them don't actually know each other. Not these versions anyway. But even on that first night, they'd both confessed they wanted to. And so they struck a deal: they would take turns to ask the other questions about anything and everything, from the mundane to the deep. Quid pro quo. Passes are fair game; lies and assumptions are not.
He was right, of course—this Robin is not the Robin Regina knew, and it's paramount that she remember that. If they're ever to stand a chance together, she needs to unlearn what she thinks she knows about him because assumptions, especially false ones, have and will hurt him more than ignorance ever could.
Perhaps that's where her other half had gone wrong—she'd wanted so much to see the two Robins' similarities, to find a connection between her Robin Hood and this Robin of Locksley, in hopes she'd feel as close a connection with this new Robin as she had with hers; and she'd failed to understand exactly how and why this search for Robin Hood would make Robin of Locksley feel less than. Like a surrogate, an impostor, a placeholder—always second best. Her other half had had neither time nor chance in the upheaval that had been Storybrooke to process her own feeling enough to get to the bottom of Robin's.
But this half will.
And so they ask away: random things that cross their minds, silly things and painful ones alike; they crack jokes and delve into deep discussions. She knows this Robin, unlike Other Robin (as they've come to call him for clarity and brevity's sake), is a light sleeper and an early riser. He prefers ale to wine and meats to sweets. She knows he detests sunsets because they remind him of death and decline, but has a passionate love for the night sky because it's full of stories and symbolism and I'm secretly a sentimental fool (and if that one doesn't hit close to home). He's been in love once, or getting there, but Marian had been ripped away from this world too soon to find out what that really feels like.
So far he's only taken one pass, and that concerned the subject of his parents (Regina is tempted to make those pesky assumptions here, but this Robin's father needn't have been a dispossessed widower with a broken heart).
Robin's watching her, fiddling with the strap of his quiver, and she tries to take a deep breath subtly.
"If you were never to return to this realm," she asks, loses her nerve halfway as his brow shoots upwards, and amends. "If you'd had to stay in the Land Without Magic, I mean—what's the thing you'd miss the most?"
"About this land? Or about my life?"
He's stalling.
"Either," she shrugs, then winks at him. "Both. You know how greedy us royals are."
It helps—he grins, his shoulders relaxing and his restless fingers stilling. A while passes in silence and his eyes have wandered, gazing at nothing in particular as Regina shifts on her bough. She'd wonder again if this was such a great idea after all—he seems like a private person, one to not dwell on feelings or over-analyse them, much less do so with others around. But he's agreed, has used his pass before, and doesn't seem particularly put out besides—just deep in thought.
"Honestly?" he puzzles. "There isn't much. That's partly why I'd agreed to leave with you in the first place—new world, new life, new adventure. If there is anything for me here, something I'd come to miss in time, I'd not had the time to find out—Storybrooke had been," he grimaces, "eventful."
Regina laughs at that—boy, was it ever. Robin throws her a half-smirk before uncertainty flashes in his eyes, and he fidgets with his quiver again.
"And, believe it or not," he says quietly, with an undertone of sarcasm he can't seriously expect she's buying, "I'd hoped to maybe, I don't know, find myself? I hadn't exactly been happy with me."
"And did you? Find yourself?" Regina probes tentatively, a mere breath of a question. This is possibly the closest they've gotten, the most open he's been about the emotional turmoil of being confronted with a better version of himself (at least that's what she knows he—still?—believes). In a way, she knows the feeling, even though his circumstances bring their own unique challenges she can't pretend to fathom.
Robin lets out a sharp breath through his nose, a faint scoff with hints of self-deprecation (that she can relate to).
"Not quite. Some answers, perhaps. I don't really— I see—possibilities. Vaguely. Before it'd all felt sort of—tedious? Dull? Without prospect. Now it's a bloody mess. Better in a way, though."
"Makes you feel alive?"
A bewildered, dazzling smile splits his face at that, and there it is—one of those indescribable moments where their souls seem to connect, to flutter pleasantly, ready almost to take flight.
"Yes." Robin bites his lip, sending more than just Regina's soul aflutter as his body gravitates towards hers. "And what about you, Your Majesty? How's this whole split-personality-mixed-but-not-merged business working out for you?"
She blinks, shooing the brief but decidedly sinking sense of disappointment when he makes no attempt to move even closer (they're already in close quarters sitting in the tree, she needs to stop this—this wanting) and perhaps, oh she doesn't know, let her sink her teeth into that lip of his (oh well, she definitely needs to chill the fuck out, he's never kissed her before and he's clearly not going to do it now). His question runs as deep for her as it does for him, and her answer will be just as candid.
"Still strange—but good. So much better than before. Even back when we were one, part of me—us?—always felt shunned. Unloved." She swallows. "Unlovable. Turns out we were wrong. And now…I'm the Evil Queen, but I'm also Regina. I'm both and neither, and it's—confusing, and I need to figure myself out all over again. It's—difficult to explain."
Before she knows what hit her, Regina finds her hand clutched in Robin's, pressed against his heart, however briefly, in a gesture that has instant tears springing to her eyes.
"That goes for the both of us."
###
Robin isn't sure what possessed him to say and do the things he's just said and done. What he does know for certain is he'd never felt this close to anyone before—never let himself feel this close. Never had that moment where understanding sparks, where another person just gets him—and he just gets them in return.
It's vaguely threatening, but incredibly intoxicating.
Just like her.
A stray moonbeam seeps through the foliage and illuminates her face, casting its light on a smudge of ash smeared across her cheek. Somehow it doesn't seem to mar her features one bit.
"I'm about to go down in history as the worst thief by far for blowing my cover," he says before he loses his nerve, "but I'd very much like to steal a kiss right now."
Air collapses from her lungs in what he would very much like to think is relief, and then she's shifting, gripping his tunic and crashing their bodies together as he tries to balance them in the branches, and with their lips just a hair's breadth apart, she whispers coyly:
"Can't steal something that's been given to you."
He kisses her then, buries his fingers in her hair as he tastes her, and fucking finally. Her lips are warm and soft and kissing back just as hungrily, just as desperately, just as impatiently as she licks the seam of his lips before slipping her tongue in his mouth and working bloody magic as she lets it slide deliciously against his.
There's been a speck of doubt, a buried fear that this would be just like that unfortunate kiss in her vault in Storybrooke, wrought with unfulfilled potential and marked by confused disappointment. Robin hadn't felt quite that, but then unlike her he'd never kissed a soul mate before, so he hadn't exactly known just what their kiss had been missing.
Now, though—now he knows. His head spins and his chest bursts with something bright and happy, and gods he's never letting this feeling go—never letting her go. Unless—
Regina hums, a throaty thing that drives him mad with desire, and pulls back with a little pop that sends another little thrill through him. He doesn't want to open his eyes just in case he's wrong and she doesn't feel the same, just in case he'll see that pinched, pained expression from back at the vault. But this time, when he finally does pluck up courage to look at her, her face doesn't crumble nor does she frown. Instead he finds her watching him with the same frantic hope, with a dazed look that must mirror his own—and she smiles a dazzling smile before they dive right back in.
It's the bloody angry mob that interrupts their thorough, and thoroughly delicious, explorations, and Robin's fingers itch with a wild desire to notch an arrow and strike them all down for their insolence. But the path stretches before them unobstructed after the villagers pass, clueless as to their prey's close proximity, and Regina slips from his arms and descends the tree with surprising agility.
Only as he reaches the ground himself and catches her weighted expression does he realise he's actually not the faintest clue where she's taking them.
"Truth or dare, Thief."
He knows about the game, but so far they've stuck to the truth part as it served their purpose; she must be asking for a reason, and Robin knows what to pick.
"The latter."
"It might be more than you can handle."
The delivery is all impish and playful, but Robin's eyes are drawn to where her hand flies to her stomach, touching lightly.
When did he see that before?
The night before, they rambled through the forest. It was Robin's turn to show Regina around his home, and he did a thorough enough job that dawn had arrived before they reached the edge of the woods again.
The royal highroad loomed before them, and the ground shook with dozens of thundering hooves as a retinue of knights came to view. Robin's instincts kicked in immediately, but despite his timely warning Regina stood rooted to the spot smack-dab in the middle of the road as Robin looked on with alarm from his wild hydrangea hideout.
"It's her! The Evil Queen! Charge!"
"No! Leave her to the king!"
The young king charged forward, plucking the helmet from his head, and even from afar the hatred radiating off of him was tangible as he stared Regina down. Yet still she didn't move, with the exception of her arms winding around her torso, as if such a feeble attempt at defence would count for something.
"Henry…" she pleaded, voice brittle as glass.
But the boy—her boy, Robin realised, only this one not at all hers—unsheathed his sword, not a word to spare for the powerful sorceress begging for mercy as if she couldn't snuff out his life with a flick of her wrist. She would do no such thing, however; nor would she move as the young knight raised the sword in the air, ready to strike the deathly blow. Robin notched an arrow, drew, and released, watching its flight straight for the knight's neck—
And Regina spread her arms wide, a burst of magic blasting the arrow as well as the horsemen away, yet not harming a hair on the king's head.
What in the bloody hell was she doing?
Robin shot forth from the bush, using the moment of surprise that had stayed the swing of the boy's blade, snatching Regina by the arm in an effort to pull her to safety. The boy awoke from his stupor then, and Robin saw death descending upon him, glinting off the shiny metal of the sword—
And then a puff of purple smoke, and the pair of them were transported to the dark alley behind the tavern.
" Never," Regina hissed, shaking from head to toe, "ever do that again."
Robin recognises the gesture now as he glances down at her arm brushing her belly. She's nervous. Anxious. Vulnerable. He doesn't know which, but it dawns on him he knows her well enough now to understand it's not a good emotion, not a welcome one, that she's trying to anchor herself this way.
"Try me," he throws back with a cheeky smirk he hopes will distract her.
Regina nods, the barest hint of a smile fleeting across her face.
"I know we've been through this once, and it didn't exactly work out for you in Storybrooke. But this realm—we're not getting our fresh start here. I'm not getting a fresh start here. Because Nottingham and his brutish guards might be after you, but you can still blend in fairly easily. It's me whose face is known and hated by all the realm, including my—including Henry. The new king." Her words turn bitter there, but she swallows her pain quickly and takes a step towards him. "I can open a portal. Get us out of here, somewhere we won't be hunted. Maybe the Enchanted Forest—my version of it."
Robin looks at her long and hard, looks at the fading stars scattered in the sky, behind the curtain of smoke still rising from the charred castle that's almost certainly doomed to burning to ashes. Regina isn't wrong—there's nothing for them here.
If stars are nothing but scorch-marks in the sky doomed one day to die, aren't shooting stars the better off for choosing to go out in a blaze?
There's just one question he needs to ask before he gives her his answer.
"Because your son cannot touch you there," he says, "or because I cannot touch him?"
Regina smiles—a sad, dark little thing.
"Because I don't want to see either of you hurt the other…for me." And because she can't stand to see the hatred in the boy's eyes, even though she's not saying it.
Robin is content with what he now knows, however, with all the things said and implied between them. Enough so to reach for the hand now gripping her riding coat, and tug her forward with a surprisingly freeing:
"Lead the way, Your Majesty."