A/N: So I found a prompt on tumblr last night from thecitricacidcycle and thought I'd give it a go. Well this wasn't how I had originally planned to go but I am pretty proud of it. Please read and let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a Time, or these characters… if I did, you best bet that I would have met Lana by now.

Regina was frustrated. No, scratch that… Regina was freaking pissed. Waving her fingers over the slightly purple marks on her neck she finally accepted the truth she had been rejecting for the past twenty minutes. She had hickies. Three to be exact, and they weren't going away.

Slamming her fist down onto the counter she glared at herself in the mirror. How could she have allowed this to happen?

*Last Night*

"Robin," the queen moaned as she tilted her head further back to allow his lips to move farther up her neck but he wasn't having it. He stayed in the same spot. "Robin… I don't like it when men give me-" her sentence was cut off by the unconscious moan that escaped her mouth as his lips left her throat.

"Lovebites, milady?" Robin asked, his eyes growing darker as he took in her disheveled appearance.

Regina scoffed at this. "Lovebites? Really?" the way her mouth curled distastefully over the word showed that she approved of the word even less than the action. "More like marking."

The hurt that shown in her eyes, if only for a brief second, took Robin slightly aback. His face screwed up in confusion as he wracked his brain for a way to respond to her distaste for something that he rather enjoyed. "M-marking?"

"Yes marking… Marking me as your own. As your property, Like I'm some piece of cattle to be branded with your mark so that all of the other kingdoms and all of the other cattlemen know that I am yours."

"Oh, Regina," Robin sighed, finally realizing what this was about.

"No!" Her voice was sharp as she sat up, essentially knocking him off of her as she settled back into the couch. "I don't want your pity either. I think you should leave."

"No." His voice was soft and yet firm and she knew it was going to be a battle to get him out of that door tonight… no matter how badly she wanted him to stay. No, she wanted him to leave! Forget about the fact that he and Roland practically lived at her house. Forget about the fact that this was his… their home. Forget about the fact that she wanted nothing more than to fall into his arms and tell him all of the bad things that had ever happened to her in her life-time. To do that would be weak and she could not allow herself to become what she despised. She was not going tot be one of those women whose lives revolved around their lovers. Never again would she allow a man to be the sole thing keeping her together because now she had Henry to think of. He didn't deserve to loose his mother to the darkness again.

"It wasn't a request. Go stay the night at Granny's. I think this is moving too fast. Maybe we should take a break." Regina looked straight into the fire, unwilling to look into the eyes that could break her resolve on everything she had just decided on.

"What about, Roland?" He tried to control his voice but the extra gravel to his tone due to the suppressed emotion made Regina close her eyes in an attempt to control her own.

"He's already asleep, he can stay, obviously. But I know that you won't want to live away from him and neither should you have to but I don't want him out in the camp site with the fierce winter we are supposed to have. I'll look into getting you two a house tomorrow."

"So that's it then? I have no say in this?" Despite his even tone she could sense the emotions raging through him… the curse of being soul mates she surmised.

"Don't be ridiculous, I'll send you possible options and you can choose which house you'd like." She still had yet to turn to him and Robin felt his heart breaking. Where had he gone wrong? All he wanted out of his life was to be a good father and to love this woman before him for the rest of his life.

Robin sighed as he stood up. Not knowing what to say, he simply leant forward and placed the gentlest and sweetest of all kisses to the top of her head, taking the smallest breath in so that he could get one last breath of her scent because he feared this may be the last time that he was this close to her.

As she felt his lips touch her head, a lone tear slipped down her cheek and she knew that while her heart screamed at her to take it all back, her mind would win out. Robin was too dangerous for her heart. Her heart had to be guarded… protected. It didn't know that what it so desperately wanted was the poison that would destroy it.

She heard his footsteps retreat, heard him putting on his jacket, heard his steps go out the door and his feet carry him out of her life forever. The door had just closed on her absolute last chance of a romantic happy ending.

With that last thought, Regina crumbled. Her resolve to stay strong didn't last long when she was alone and she had the overwhelming urge to rip her heart out of her chest for all of the horrendous emotions that it was causing her. Her sobs were loud and her sobs were ugly and she could concentrate on nothing other than the emotions raging through her soul.

So loud were her sobs that she didn't hear the door open back up, didn't hear Robin come back in the door, close it gently, lock it and begin closing the house down. He checked all of the locks as he did every night, all the while, his own soul breaking at the sound of its other half in such distress, when he was finished and the only light still shining on the first floor was the one on the end table beside the couch, he went to her.

"Regina," he sighed as he brushed the hair that was plastered to her face with tears away.

The moment he toucher her, her eyes burst open and he saw the mask she was about to put up. He caught a glimpse of the embittered woman he had first met in the Enchanted Forest and he knew that if he didn't speak now, he might really loose her forever.

"Regina, every person that was ever supposed to love you has either hurt, neglected, or left you… or any combination of the above whether that be physically or mentally. I know," he looked down, trying to gather the words that he needed to let out. Finally he looked back up to her, his eyes conveying the sorrow of his entire being. "I know I put my own name on that list a long time ago with Marian, and I'm still trying to erase it off. I know that you said you wanted me to leave and, while I don't exactly understand why, I respect the fact that you do not want me to be with you tonight. However, I refuse to leave this house… I refuse to leave our home… I will sleep down here tonight. Hell, Regina, I'll sleep in the garden if that would make you more comfortable. Just please," he touched her chin to beg her to look directly into his eyes. "Please don't make me leave you like this. Please don't make me leave you at all."

Regina looked at his face clearly (her tears had subsided the moment he begun speaking) and she saw the truth in everything that he had said, felt the honesty in her own chest as their connection verified his words. "Ok." It was merely a whisper but those two letters made Robin's heart soar. "Let's go to bed." She mumbled and he bypassed the sexual remark siting on the edge of his tongue. Now was not the time. There would be no lovemaking… no sex, no nothing tonight and that was ok with him. That was more than okay with him. She was letting him stay and that was all that matters.

As the couple walked into the bedroom Robin mumbled something about "just getting clothes and he'll be right out."

"You don't have to," her voice was strong and clear but her volume was still soft. He looked back towards her, making eye contact with those beautiful brown orbs. "You can sleep in our bed." She turned back to continue changing and he wanted nothing more than to scoop her into his arms and kiss her but no… tonight was not the time. But dammit! She had referred to it as their… their bed!

He grabbed his night shirt and was about to ask if she was sure when he felt her hand rest right above his hipbone, fingers deliciously curling around his side as the coolness of her hand sent goosebumps all over his body. "Please don't."

He smiled. This was one of his favorite aspects of their relationship. On the nights that they didn't make love, and when it wasn't too cold, she would ask him to not wear a shirt to bed. She liked to feel the warmth of his skin against her cheek as she laid on his chest while they talked and against her back while the slept. She had shyly admitted one night that it made her feel safer and he would do anything to make his Queen feel even the slightest bit more comfortable. "Ok," was his only reply. His eyes slid shut as her arms wound around his naked torso, fingers splaying on his chest and abdomen and face burying itself in his back. They stood like that for a couple of minutes before she kissed his back and turned her cheek to lie flat against his shoulder blade.

"I'm sorry."

Robin slid his hands up her forearms towards hers and entwined their fingers. "You have nothing to apologize for." And he was honest, completely and utterly honest. Life had dealt her a shitty hand and she had every right to feel everything that she was currently feeling.

Without a word she pulled from him and began walking to their bed, climbing in as he did. He laid on his back, one arm across his chest, the other above his head in an invitation for her to come into his embrace if she wanted, but an acknowledgement that she may not want to… and that that was okay. She just laid on her side and watched him wondering how on Earth or any realm for that matter, had she had the utter stroke of luck to have this man?

They stayed silent and away from each other for a few minutes. Then her hand slid across their bed to tangle with his on his chest, her body soon following and tucking itself as closely as it could to his, her head resting over his heart.

"When I was five, I fell off my horse and got mud on the new dress that mother had gotten me. She was so mad that she beat me… with her magic of course… always magic… it didn't leave marks. I cried and told her that I was sorry, that I didn't mean to… I had just fallen off of my horse when he got spooked. But that only made her turn on the horse. She made a large whip appear in her hand and she started to beat it as she held it still with her magic." Regina closed her eyes to try and block out the memory of the fear in the horse's eyes as she had begged her mother to stop, but closing her eyes only made her tears escape them and Robin's other hand (the one she wasn't currently holding in a vice grip) came around her and up to play in her hair. An action Robin had learned early into their relationship would soothe her. "I was so angry at her that I tried to physically stop her. She saw me coming out of her peripheral and threw her hand out but she had moved the hand with the whip. It caught me." She extended one of his fingers out and moved it to touch the scar on her lip. "It ripped my lip apart. I screamed and looked at her, terrified that she could ever hurt me that badly. That was the only time I ever saw fear in her eyes and I stopped crying." Regina gave a humorless laugh that made Robin cringe. "I stopped crying for a moment because I thought for a second that she might actually be sorry that she hurt me. Somewhere in my five year old mind I thought that small trace of fear meant that my 'mommy'," she cringed at the word, "actually did love me. But then she started rushing at me shouting about how I had ruined my face. No one would ever love me now! I was marred… Imperfect… That I had just made her plan ten times harder. 'But mommy!' I had cried 'You have magic you can make it all better!'" Regina sighed and moved her face back into his chest for a moment before resuming her story. "Then she looked at me with this cold… evil smile and she said… I still remember it as if it were yesterday: 'Why would I do that, Regina?' she had asked 'With such a marred face you'll have no choice but to marry whomever I choose for you. And, should he have a problem with the scar… I can heal it then. But for now, you can keep it as a reminder of what happens to bad little girls when they don't listen to their mommies.' and then she sent me off."

Robin tried to ease the tension in his body, knowing that if she even slightly sensed how much this was bothering him, that she would get the wrong idea and wouldn't open up to him about this again. She wouldn't understand, because she never did, that he wasn't angry at her but at the injustice done to her. She wouldn't understand, because she never did, how all of his anger and hatred were geared towards the people who had hurt her so badly in her past. She wouldn't understand that he wanted to hear all of these things because he wanted to know all of her, even the darkest parts of her past.

"Leopold, liked to leave his mark as well, but he left a different kind." She let go of his fingers and wound her arm tighter around him as she tried to pull herself ever closer to him, slipping one of her legs between his. "When he would… summon me to his rooms, he would make me undress myself for him and he would sit and leer at me while he got himself off. He was old and so it took him a long time to be ready to go again and so he would make me do… different things to stimulate him… then he would make me lay beside him on his bed as he let his hands travel all over my body. Then, when he was ready, he would cover my body, and I mean cover it in hickies, whispering 'mine' and talking about how I was his and was going to be his for the rest of our lives. I really was just a piece of property to him, because he wouldn't even wait for me. He probably knew I'd never be ready for him and so he decided there was no point in the waiting. He'd take me the way I was, dryer than a desert. He took… joy in my pain. In the yelp that I couldn't suppress no matter how hard i tried. He'd whisper in my ear 'That's right. You're mine and until you accept that fact… I guess it's just going to hurt.'"

"Oh gods, Regina," Robin sighed into her hair as tears matching hers spilled from his own eyes. Really and truthfully, he didn't want to know more but she needed to share and he was more than willing to share this burden with her if it would lighten her load, if only the smallest bit.

"That's not even the worst of it," she sighed and Robin found himself turning towards her so that he could pull her further into him, wondering how this horror story could be any worse. "All of the realm knew that Leopold had 'the most beautiful wife' and so when dignitaries would come he would parade me in front of them and their wives in the most extravagant of dresses and introduce me a his wife. Never the Queen… no, his wife, with emphasis on the fact that I belonged to him. That was during the day, however. At night, he would bring me into a room where all of the dignitaries were sat. A room full of men leering at me. Then he would make me strip down into my underwear… or well as close to it as we had in the Enchanted Forrest and make me stand there in front of them only for them to continue staring me down. But the really really important people would get the full view. When I was standing there in my night gown he would come up to me with his dagger and slice through my underthings showing off, not only my naked body, but also all of the marks that he had left on me. Once.. as he came towards me with his dagger I whispered 'Please'… one of the few times that I have ever used that word to anyone other than my mother or Henry… begging him not to do this to me again. That time when he sliced through my clothing he nicked my stomach, once again whispering, 'Mine,' and leaving his mark. I also tried once to heal the marks- the knife wound and the hickies-he left on me, but the next time was only worse so I allowed them to stay.. I just… gave up." With her last words Regina fell into a fit of sobs as both of them tried… to get closer to the other. Robin held her to him as tightly as he could, his own tears falling down his face, as he simultaneously cursed the gods for having put her in such situations and thanking them for giving her the strength to make it to him… to this night because they sure knew he didn't have half of her strength.

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LOVE,

LIzzie

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