Cold

by nonsequiturvy

In which winter months in the Enchanted Forest bring out the more miserable side of a certain female bandit, and Robin secretly hopes to warm her up however he can.

Originally posted for the Once Upon an Advent Calendar. A thousand thank yous to the lovely ladies who made that website possible, and to emily31594 for being a phenomenal beta.

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Cold

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Robin drew in a breath, smiling as the dusk-chilled air touched deep in his chest.

Gods, he loved this time of the year.

There was a settling calm over the forest as the season began to take full effect, everything somehow shrinking and expanding all at once in the solitude. He thought it rather refreshing, this quiet resetting of the world before life resumed full force, the softer moments to be found in answer to these harsher, more trying conditions.

Besides which, he had been waiting for this particular moment ever since…well. Suffice it to say he had certain regrets dating back nearly twelve months to the day now, amends he wished to make, second chances he hoped to prove worthy of, and he could think of no better time than this, when the very forest had shed itself clean to pave the way for a brand new year.

His men, he could tell, were of an entirely different opinion about the weather; several of them had already retreated to their tents for the evening, and the few who remained were huddled around the cooking fire, grumbling their displeasure as another arctic current blasted them by. Still, Robin was feeling optimistic about his odds, and he could easily use this to his advantage, when the opportunity presented itself in three…two…

"Smells like snow," he cheerfully informed Will Scarlet as the lad ambled over, slumping down onto the vacant stretch of log beside him.

"I'll tell you what it smells like," muttered Will, looking surly to say the least. "Smells like the same ol' stew we've had to call supper for the last damn week and a half. I mean, would you look at this?" He jabbed a spoon into his broth, and a thin piece of meat floated sadly to the surface, along with a single wilted stalk of greens.

"It's winter, Will," Robin reminded him patiently. "We make do with what we can." He broke a few stems from the drooping parsley plant he'd been stripping for leaves, tossing them helpfully into Will's fast-cooling stew.

Will grunted his thanks, grimacing through a few delicate sips before setting his bowl back down. "Y'know what I think it is? I think it's that Regina woman."

"You think she did something to your food?" asked Robin, amused.

"What she didn't do, more like, which was leave enough game for the rest of us!" Will straightened suddenly, speaking with a conviction that seemed to suggest he'd been harboring these thoughts for quite some time. "Ever since she did…whatever it was that she did to get herself banished, all our winters've gone this way. Hardly a deer in sight, all the good berry patches picked over—"

"Bear in mind you've just accused one woman of not only out-consuming but out-hunting twenty some-odd men."

"I'd believe it of that one," Will argued stubbornly, and Robin did not disagree. "You seen her around lately? Aren't the two of you friends, or something like that?"

"Something like that," said Robin, smiling to think of what offense Regina would take to even that more-than-generous description. "And no, it's been a while since I talked to her last."

This was, in fact, technically true.

The year had not been kind on the realm, their autumn over far too soon, the winter already with a bit more bite to it than usual, and he'd spent enough time in the company of Regina Mills and her many moods to know that the cold did not sit well with her. Her fuse seemed to shorten remarkably with each precipitous drop in the temperature; he always found her to be particularly prickly on All Hallows' Eve, and positively hellish to be around by the time the trees lost all their color. And then there had been that Yuletide fiasco the previous year…

At any rate, after repeatedly finding himself on the wrong side of her ire during what ought to have been the most festive few months of the year, Robin had honestly thought it best to keep his distance until both she and the weather finally warmed again.

As much as she was capable of warming to him, anyway.

Of course, that had hardly deterred him from finding other ways of staying in touch, so to speak. His contacts had proven invaluable in that regard, and Robin soon learned that in addition to trying her temper, the cold also made Regina reckless – almost predictably so, particularly when it came to taking on jobs that required no fewer than two sets of hands and eyes to pull off. He'd found himself scrambling on more than one occasion to head off potential catastrophes, managing to only just escape her detection each time he lingered, unwisely, to leave a few parting gifts meant to distract from the true nature of his interference.

He would never have Regina guess at the bigger part he played in such matters, knowing how heavily those unspoken thank yous would sit on her conscience wherever he was concerned.

"Well should you happen to come across her," Will said glumly, having given up on his stew altogether by this point, "I'd appreciate if you passed along my concerns. What I wouldn't give for a decent meal…or an indoor fire…"

He gazed moodily ahead, watching Little John tend to their rapidly dwindling fire pit. The wind had begun to pick up, and Robin slipped his hands into his pockets, closing around a pair of thick leather gloves and a folded square of parchment, a few more stems of parsley, a scattering of berries he'd scavenged earlier with the last bit of sun.

"Granny's is only a half day's ride from here," he thought to mention then, carefully clearing his throat. "I know we've been keeping a low profile, but we'll need more cover once the snow arrives. Besides, I'm sure the other men could do with a bit of old-fashioned holiday cheer."

Will thought this over before nodding slowly, "Y'know, considering what a crusty front she likes to put up the rest of the year, Granny always outdoes herself when it comes time for Christmas. The nog, the pies…"

"The mistletoe above every doorway?" Robin suggested, with a well-placed wink when Will turned to look questioningly at him. "Remind me of your friend's name, the barmaid with the blonde hair and those big green eyes – Annie, was it?"

"Anastasia," corrected Will, his cheeks now a slight shade of pink that Robin suspected had very little to do with the weather, and then the lad was mumbling, flustered, "They're not green, they're blue, and we're not friends, we're just…we…she… Oi, John! What would you say to paying ol' Granny a visit tomorrow? I reckon it's gonna snow soon, so might as well, yeah?"

"Snow?" they heard an irate John holler back, followed by a string of indistinct but unmistakably colorful-sounding words before he was shouting again, "Well all right, then. Listen, Tuck, what d'you think about—"

Smiling, Robin excused himself and left Will to his contemplative silence, the prospect of tomorrow now appealing to both of them more than either was probably willing to let on.

Robin nodded to the rest of his men in passing, fiddling with his pocket contents while his mind turned thoughtfully over the coming Yuletide, and he wondered how many levels of hell would be required to freeze over before a certain female bandit could be convinced to embrace the holiday spirit.

…

She hated the cold.

Burrowing into her blankets, Regina gave the fire another prod, feeding in the drier pieces of kindling she'd come across the last time she ventured out of her tree hollow. Her teeth were chattering to the point that she worried her entire body might break from it, her scarf already wound so tightly around her face that her eyes just peeked over the wool.

There had been a point in her life – once upon a time, even, if her life had gone the way of a fairy tale – when Regina didn't mind the chillier months so terribly much.

Growing up, she'd spent half of autumn outdoors with Snow White, taking turns at playing princess and pauper amongst the groves surrounding the stables. The castle had never looked more beautiful during those times, catching fire in leafy bursts of reds and oranges and goldenrod yellows, while their distant view of the Enchanted Forest remained steadily, cheerfully evergreen.

Winter, of course, would come and drape everything in its dazzling layers of frosted white, the cold seeping into every nook and cranny of the castle, leaving the maids to all but wrestle Regina out of bed in the mornings and out of her bath before bedtime. But winter had also meant warm hearths and spiced ciders, and holidays spent with Snow and the twins, back when they were younger and their lives not so complicated by things like thrones, and treason, and treachery.

Until one of their lives had taken an unexpectedly fatal turn seven winters ago, and Regina suddenly found herself amongst the kingdom's most wanted, cast out of the only place she had ever known as home.

Every winter thereafter had proven every bit as miserable as the last.

It wasn't just the weather that had made them so: the bleak coloring to the skies, the deadened look about everything, the brutal winds that made game scarce and forced Regina into hiding more often than she would have liked.

Truthfully, the realm was hardly a friend to any outlaw even on a perfectly sunny, cloudless day. The Queen's Black Guard routinely trolled the roadways and bridges, interrogating the locals as to her whereabouts – most of them provided such convoluted directions that the Guard would often wind up chasing their own tails for days on end – and generally being a downright thorn in her side.

What was most distressing to Regina, however, was the fact that not an inch of the goddamn forest seemed to have been spared from the Guard's insulting wanted posters, deigning to lump her into the same company as him. That thief, with those smiling eyes and the very bad habit of stealing things that were rightfully hers, whose reward for his capture was inexplicably worth double the price over her own head.

As if there could be any true question which of the two made the better outlaw.

The single upside to the gloom of this weather was that she hadn't had the misfortune of crossing paths with Robin Hood in quite some time, despite his irritating knack for turning up whenever he was least welcome.

Ever since she'd disgraced the kingdom and made her bed alongside the condemned and the lawless and corrupt, Robin had taken it upon himself to teach her a thing or two about honor amongst thieves. He was always butting his too-handsome face in where it didn't belong, derailing every one of her carefully laid plans and stealing off with half her gold before she could so much as seethe in his direction.

"Milady," he'd winked at her once when she, invariably, looked up from the hand that was reaching for her Hua Mulan dynasty vase only to find it attached to his stupid arm, his stupid chest, his stupid…well…everything. "Always a pleasure," and then he'd rappelled back up the way he came, calling down to her as he went, "Perhaps some evening I'll owe you a drink for this."

"Oh, I'll owe you so much more than that when we meet again," she'd snarled after him, all the more rankled when he only laughed, a powerful flash of dimples followed by a promise of his own before he vanished through a hatch in the ceiling:

"Then I have every intention of coming to collect, milady."

And so he had – last Christmas in fact, though she couldn't say the exchange had ended all that satisfactorily for any of the parties involved, particularly the man Regina had been kissing when Robin walked through Granny's tavern door.

Several things had been thrown that night – several punches, for one, though there had also been the drink that he owed her, because someone had been incapable of keeping his fists to himself. Despite all this, Regina had still wound up the one tasked with bandaging Robin back together, Little John apparently not too keen on the sight of blood, while Will Scarlet had fairly insisted that the touch of a woman would serve Robin best.

She'd blotted away all the damage done to his nose while the idiot grinned dazedly up at her, slurring something only halfway intelligible about how pretty she looked but what a shame that she had such poor taste in men. Regina had let that one slide, deciding he was too concussed at the moment for her to take him seriously.

All in all, Robin Hood was far more disarming than he had any right to be, and she was certain it would be the death of him someday – which she meant in a completely literal sense, because the next time she got her hands on him…

Of course, he seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to that kind of thing too, and had lately taken to sabotaging her heists without even bothering to show his damn face. She found it somewhat concerning that her work had started to develop an element of predictability to it, enough for her greatest rival to anticipate her every move and outpace her – outmatch her, even, though she'd never admit it aloud – accordingly.

And oh how it burned her, to picture the laughter crinkling his eyes every time she broke into This-Lord-or-That's coffers only to find that Robin had replaced some priceless heirloom with a pile of tree nuts, or left her an offering of pine cones when she'd come with a few precious gems in mind to steal instead.

He'd bequeathed her a paltry handful of berries just that afternoon, in place of some very valuable documents that she'd spent a fortnight gathering intel on, plus a fortnight of planning beyond that. The estate's security had been surprisingly lax, which was lucky considering the fact that the whole thing was really meant to be a two-person job, not that that had ended up mattering in the slightest.

The memory of discovering those ridiculous berries, resting innocently inside that hidden desk compartment without a single sheet of parchment in sight, was enough to make Regina grind her teeth together all over again.

Rooting through her breast pocket, she unearthed the last of the berries and chewed, mulish, grimacing at their bittersweet taste.

She supposed it could be the unseasonable chill that had driven Robin and his men further into obscurity than previous years, opting to lie low for a change in favor of creating their usual ruckus. Or perhaps the debacle from last Christmas had shamed him enough not to risk any repeats this time around. Either way, she was glad of it, really. The forest was certainly quieter in their absence, without their drunken carousing and general talent for making a scene.

Besides, if suffering through the cold saved her the trouble of having to scowl at Robin in person for another couple months at least, then so much the better.

She nestled resolutely back into her blankets, tucking the ends beneath her until she was a veritable ball of lambswool and furs. The wind was making a racket outside her tree hollow, loud whistling wails that tore at the bark trying to break their way in, and through the splinterings of a door Regina had fashioned out of branches and vines over the entrance, she detected the promise of snow in the air.

Well wasn't that just wonderful.

The flames flickered pitifully in reply, throwing shadows into a half-hearted dance across the hollowed contours of her tree, and she found herself thinking wistfully of the open hearth at Granny's, of roasted pheasant and winter squash and pitchers overflowing with enough mead to warm her from head to toe and back again.

Regina sighed. It was more than tempting to her, the thought of escaping the cold if only for a night or so, especially when said cold was on account of a brewing snowstorm. She could practically smell the ovens baking now, her mouth already watering at the prospect of taking some pie to her corner table, while the other bar patrons got sloshed on eggnog and exchanged sloppy kisses underneath the mistletoe.

Something inside her froze a little at that, trying to crack open – the last time she'd ventured to partake in such festivities had gone so well for her, after all – but she put herself firmly back in place the next instant. She'd left that life behind in the castle, that life that came with traditions and holidays and a sense of belonging, and there was no reason to dwell on these things that weren't hers to dwell on any longer.

Any reprieve from the winter would be a welcome change at this point, she told herself, and even if Robin happened to be there, not that she cared one way or the other, she could only hope he made his disruptions brief and left her to thaw in peace once he realized she was not in the mood.

Regina was not particularly fond of the cold, you see, when there was little warmth to be found but in some lost childhood memory, and for as long as the Queen remained hell-bent on ripping her heart out, it seemed unlikely that would ever change.

…

Granny's tavern was situated deep in the heart of the Enchanted Forest, well off the beaten path and surprisingly difficult to find unless one knew exactly where to look. It was a fairly nondescript place – bit of an eyesore, really – but over the years, it had earned the favorable reputation of being a safe haven of sorts for those with a tendency to accumulate debts and criminal charges.

Robin considered himself something of a regular during the spring and summer months, as did all his men, but their business had dragged to a regrettable standstill once the days began to shorten. They risked their necks on the regular so long as gold was involved – occupational hazards and all that – but traveling after dark on ice-slicked roads for a pint and a pretty girl or two hardly ever seemed worth the trouble.

That being said, tonight had felt like an important exception as far as Robin was concerned, and after his initial talking-to with Will beside the fire, more than enough of his men had been delighted to volunteer making the journey together.

"You all again," grunted a grey-haired woman from behind the bar, eyes narrowing over her wire-framed glasses as a dozen soggy, wind-rumpled men tramped in single file through her doorway.

"Granny, how do you do?"

"Good to see you again, Mrs. Lucas."

"Shut that behind you, would you?" she barked, and a sheepish Tuck hurriedly complied with an apologetic wave of his hand. "And the door mat is there for a reason. Honestly…" She muttered something under her breath about thieves and manners while they crowded around the bar with hopeful expressions.

"Granny Lucas," Robin inclined his head, sidling up to the front with an easy smile, but she only pursed her lips at him and turned stolidly around to wipe down the rest of the counter.

"I think she's pleased to see us," Little John commented wryly.

Granny let out an audible snort, scraping vigorously at one of the more persistent stains in the wood paneling. When it seemed to prove equally stubborn as the men currently gathered around her bar like so many lost puppies, she tossed the rag aside and began to assemble a tray of pitchers and glasses together instead, grumbling all the while.

"What'll it be, then, boys?" she asked gruffly, looking thoroughly taken aback as a clamoring of orders broke out all at once.

"A pint for me – nah, make that two, I'm starving—"

"Just a tea, madam, if you don't mind."

"Got any nog yet?" asked Little John eagerly.

"And a couple of whiskeys for you, I expect?" Granny paused expectantly in front of Robin. He glanced up to find her gaze boring into him before shifting away to some point beyond his shoulder, where his own attentions had admittedly wanted to go on instinct the moment he stepped foot in the tavern.

She raised an eyebrow, waiting, and he gave her a lopsided grin in answer.

"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid."

"So you fancy having another drink thrown in your face, do you?" she asked matter-of-factly. "Because I'll bet half of Sherwood that someone's in another one of her moods tonight."

"Just how I like it," he winked, earning himself another spectacular eye roll, but he caught the edges of Granny's smile – or at least something closely approximating one – before she pivoted briskly away.

Will had stationed himself next to Robin in the meantime, leaning a casual elbow onto the bar ledge as he surveyed the pub. Anastasia had just finished clearing a table, gracefully balancing an armful of dishware as she glided past Will with a shy little smile, and a deep flush traveled up his neck to reach his ears in reply.

"Lovely crowd tonight, eh?" he said happily, to which Robin gave an agreeable mmm, helping himself to a bowl of salted peanuts while performing his own subtle inspection of the room.

It was the prospect of snow, or the day's bone-rattling chill if nothing else, that had emptied the place of its usual occupants. The few who'd braved the weather were scattered about the tables at irregular, solitary intervals, many picking listlessly at their food, bent over their plates with a muted sort of heaviness that seemed to suggest they had nowhere else to go.

He examined every last corner of the tavern before finally allowing his gaze to settle on Regina – Regina in profile, at least, her face currently half-obscured by hair and shadow, though it made little difference given that he could easily recognize her anywhere. She was situated at her usual table closest to the hearth, the weather having driven her out of hiding exactly as he'd anticipated. He watched while she made quick work of her plate, his mind tripping over her windblown appearance, the too-thin material of her clothes that seemed to fit looser than he recalled, before he forced his eyes back to the bar.

The outside elements fairly exploded then with a great blustering howl, and there was an echoing creak that seemed to reach from the wooden ceiling beams all the way down to the roots of the tavern. There was little shelter to be found as it was under these conditions, let alone, say, in an enclave of rock or some godforsaken tree hollow, especially one buried feet-deep in the snow.

Robin cleared his throat, tugging off his gloves and stashing them back into his pockets as he considered his options. He was stalling, he knew, but the thought of facing her and all her scowling before he'd gotten a proper drink in seemed inadvisable, all things considered.

Granny eventually returned with a full tray, pushing it across the counter at them with a clatter and a curt-sounding "Try not to break anything this time." She eyed each of them in turn with her characteristic ferocity, settling at last on Robin with a particularly meaningful glare as if to say she would hold him personally accountable for any more shattered glassware, overturned tables or broken…err…other things.

"That was hardly my fault," he protested mildly, thinking again what a disaster last Christmas had turned out to be.

"You assaulted the damn sheriff, you foolish man," Granny chided him, rolling her eyes with such aggression that he half-expected the room to turn over from floor to ceiling. "I know this is asking a lot, but exercise some judgment the next time you feel like you have something to prove." She leaned over the counter, pinning him down with another dirty look as her voice lowered. "At least take it outside, got it?"

"You have my word," Robin told her sincerely, and she snorted again before shooing them irritably away from her counter.

Will suddenly went stiff as a board, his eye snagging on something at the back of the tavern. He slipped an elbow in to knock against Robin's, upsetting half the drink he'd been reaching for. "Oi," said Will in a hushed whisper, "d'you see—"

"What is it, Will?" asked Robin patiently, shaking the wayward droplets from his hand and reaching for the other glass, wondering if it would be bad form to approach Regina looking like he'd already taken a swig of his own drink. So much for toasting to second chances, then.

"Oh come off it, did you know she was going to be here?" Will gesticulated toward the very back corner of the tavern, but Robin was only keeping half an ear out at this point, craning around in search for Granny. "Right," Will carried on, making a right fuss about the whole thing now, "so you honestly expect me to believe this was just some bloody coincidence, running into her, in this bar, on this very night?"

"You are free to believe whatever you like," said Robin distractedly. Where the hell had Granny gone?

Will looked increasingly frustrated with all the vague responses he was getting, and his silence stretched the length of several seconds before he started in again, sulkily this time. "Well there was no need to be all secretive, was there? Anyway, when you talk to her, try not to go about it like too much of an idiot, you know how she gets, and – word of friendly advice – if she throws that at you too, it probably means you've done something to deserve it."

"Here," said Robin, his patience starting to wear a bit as he nudged an unclaimed pitcher of ale over to him. "Have a drink, Will."

Will accepted it with a greatly put-upon air, clearly still debating whether or not he had room to press the issue further. Robin, having given up on Granny altogether, was about to turn around, praying he would not cock this all up simply by looking at Regina the wrong way, when a feminine voice broke in behind them.

It was a voice he had not heard in a long, long time.

"Robin? Is that you?"

…

Regina saw him first, all dimples and uncommonly roguish charm as he sauntered into the tavern like the whole damn place belonged to him. He and his men had traveled some distance to get here, she could tell, the wind having whipped a healthy amount of color into Robin's cheeks, and his eyes shone a brighter blue than she remembered as they briefly flicked about the room.

She slouched deeper into her shadowed little corner, not wishing to make herself known right away, but there was no need; his gaze slid right past her, like water over glass, to eventually land on a testy-looking Granny, who was sizing them all up from behind the bar. Regina could just make out Robin's features, falling sideways into a crooked sort of grin, before his men were congregating all around him, raising a din as they fought for Granny's attention and shouted their drink orders at her.

It shouldn't have nettled Regina as much as it did, that after weeks of baiting her temper with his anonymous gifts of pine cones and other miscellaneous rubbish, Robin would not only turn up unannounced like this – that part she'd at least half-braced herself for – but that he'd actually have the audacity to not even notice her.

It shouldn't. It didn't. Not in the slightest. Never mind the fact that this was exactly what she wanted from him anyway, which was of course nothing at all, but he hadn't even given her the option of telling him so and how dare he?

She tried to focus on her food, and was more than irritated to find that his very proximity seemed to have wiped out the taste of things, turning her sweet potato mash into a dry, flavorless paste while the turkey felt like large strips of fabric in her mouth. Giving up on her plate for the time being, she took to cracking peanut shells open, perhaps with more force than was strictly necessary, before hazarding another glance up at them.

Will Scarlet, much to her chagrin, was not quite so obtuse as his leader, and after Granny finished preparing a tray for them, he took to scanning the room much like Robin had, gaze crawling over every corner until their eyes jolted most disconcertingly together.

In the few seconds he spent simply goggling at her, she recovered enough from her own surprise to glare most menacingly back at him, but it was too late.

He turned away the next moment, elbowing Robin so hard that his whiskey slopped over the sides of his glass, and then proceeded to whisper furiously into his ear, all the while gesturing back at her in an annoyingly obvious way. Still Robin's face remained perfectly placid, and he did not so much as spare a glance in her direction before he was turning his back again, clearly more invested in his drink than anything to do with her.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Regina muttered, glowering down at what remained of her apple pie before shoving it aside. Oddly enough, she didn't have much of an appetite anymore.

She'd come here for a moment of solace, to defrost a little while she filled up her stomach with more than a handful of berries or a thin bowl of stew. She hadn't wanted company, really she hadn't, and certainly not in the form of these ill-bred buffoons, crowding out every last promise of peace and quiet she'd hoped to find in this place. The mere sight of Robin, standing there with his one-and-a-half whiskeys, inconvenienced by absolutely nothing – least of all by her – punctured a hole in whatever good mood she'd managed to recover, fizzling away like weak champagne.

Regina was glaring uselessly at them when the front door swung open, letting in a draft that she felt, inexplicably, like an icicle down her spine, seated as far from the entrance as she was.

A woman with lush, ginger-golden curls stood uncertainly at the threshold, blue eyes brilliant as gemstones darting methodically from table to table. Her skin was flawless, radiating the sort of beauty that got written up in song, and everything around her seemed to dull and darken in comparison, as though she were the single source of lighting in the room.

Regina's first thought was that the woman looked like she'd taken a wrong turn somewhere, stepping out of a fairy tale and into this dingy, stale-smelling bar in search of her Prince Charming.

There was a distinct air of nobility about her, with her fine petticoats and even finer jewelry, and Regina was wondering what sort of prince, exactly, she had been hoping to find in this place when the redhead lifted a delicately gloved hand and trilled out in a musical tone, "Robin? is that you?"

A good two-thirds of the Merry Men swung their shaggy heads around in answer, gaping toward the vision at the door. They all seemed to recognize her instantly – not that Regina cared who she was, or what she meant to…any of them, really – and they hastened to rearrange themselves into something more presentable, even Friar Tuck standing a little taller as the woman swept eagerly past them.

Robin strode forward to meet her, a full smile reaching up to the corners of his eyes, transforming his entire face as he took her proffered hand into his.

"Zelena," Regina heard him say, with great affection in his tone, and he bent to press a kiss to her knuckles.

There was a sudden buzzing sound in Regina's ears that she couldn't account for, growing and growing until it all but drowned out the dulcet sounds of Zelena's reply. Unfortunately, it did nothing to hinder Regina's view of them, and she found she was unable to look away as Zelena slipped dainty hands out of her gloves and practically leaned with her whole bosom into Robin's chest, playfully adjusting his tunic collar while he reached out to touch her hair.

She giggled over something Robin said and tossed her magnificent red mane about, helping herself to his second whiskey while he proceeded to speak most animatedly to her. Regina watched with something like morbid fascination as Zelena let a hand flutter to toy with her neckline, drawing attention to the creamy-smooth swells piled high in her corset. The men nearest her looked unsure what to do with themselves, as though they'd never seen a thing with breasts this up close before.

Little John was leaning over Robin's ear, muttering things to him that Regina was probably better off not hearing. Robin looked serious for a second, nodding thoughtfully while Much the miller's son took advantage of his distraction and sidled up to offer Zelena another drink.

Men.

Disgusted, Regina reached for her pie again, mashing it into a very fine pulp with the flat edge of her fork. Her eyes narrowed around the room, cataloguing every point of entry with such instinctive precision that it took a moment for her to realize what she was doing.

The back way was not ideal for exiting purposes, she knew, poorly lit with the path half-blocked by trash bins, crates and large wooden barrels stacked haphazardly atop each other. There were other, even less appealing options: a tiny sliver of window in the washroom she'd have to stand on a toilet to reach, another door through the kitchens that she couldn't possibly get to without alerting Granny and her wolf-like hearing. Alternatively, if she managed to sneak her way upstairs, many of the rooms had thick, wide-beamed windows that should be able to support her weight, provided she tie enough bedsheets together…

Regina was glaring at the front door, wishing Robin's men would have the good sense not to loiter there all damn day, when a new kind of disturbance drew her attention back to the bar.

Alan-a-Dale was pointing out something above their heads, and a roar of vulgar whistling and other embarrassing sounds burst from the group as they looked collectively upward to find a sprig of mistletoe winking over the spot where Zelena stood.

"Oh!" said Zelena, looking anything but demure as she blinked and laughed in a girlish manner that made Regina want to stab her fork into other things than apple pie. Several of his men were taking turns elbowing Robin conspicuously in the ribs, and he waved them genially off, teeth digging into the lower half of his smile as Zelena gazed coyly up at him.

Will, to his credit, had not joined in on their needling, turning instead to fix a sharp stare back upon Regina's corner. She hadn't been expecting this – had all but assumed she could very well waltz her way to the front door now without a single one of them noticing – and she was too taken aback by Will's scrutiny to hide anything from him.

His expression was unreadable as they stared at one another, but then it slid into something like a grimace, something like sympathy that she wanted no part of, and it alarmed her to think of what he had seen in her to warrant such a response.

"Oh come on, love, for old times' sake," Zelena was pouting at Robin, who out of some sudden need for propriety had yet to move another inch toward her, "it was never like you to be shy about this." Her voice trailed tellingly off, and whatever unspoken history the two of them shared began to unfold, unbidden, in Regina's mind, like chapters out of a goddamn fairy tale.

She knew nothing about this woman, she reminded herself forcefully – what right did she have, to pass judgment on Zelena's life or the lovers she took? – yet even the knowledge of that burned relentlessly at Regina, the fact that she cared, and she wondered, with a bitterness she could hardly swallow, whether she had ever known Robin Hood at all.

His grin took a turn for the sheepish then, which Zelena seemed to consider as an invitation, curling fingers around the edges of his vest, and he didn't resist her as she pulled him in.

Before Regina could register what she was doing, her legs were swinging over one side of the bench, hands fumbling for the loose coins in her pocket. She blindly tossed what she had onto the table, along with a single, sad little berry that had managed to escape earlier notice, caring little for whether she'd fully covered her tab. Her desire to be gone from there as soon as possible felt more important than any flack she'd get for shortchanging Granny, and besides, she could make up the difference another time.

On any other day that didn't happen to be Christmas.

…

"Robin? Is that you?"

Well, bloody hell.

For a fleeting moment, Robin entertained the thought of feigning deafness, perhaps sneaking out the back exit under cover of his men, but then several of them were swiveling curiously around toward the voice at the doorway, betraying him in an instant.

"Robin!" Zelena called again, sounding positively delighted this time.

He turned with a smile at the ready, dutifully ignoring the muttered "Oh, for gods' sake" that sounded suspiciously like Little John coming from somewhere to his left.

"Zelena," he greeted her warmly, extending a hand for her gloved one as she rushed to join him up at the bar.

"I was hoping I'd find you here," she said, cheeks flushed and voice still breathless from the cold, but her face lit up, sun-like, as he brought her knuckles to his lips for a brief kiss.

"I believe I was the fortunate one in that regard," he replied, and she giggled while John not so discreetly grunted his disapproval beside him. Robin shot his friend a warning side-eye, a careful reminder of just whom they were talking to – it was by the good grace of her father, Lord Henry, that they'd once been spared a trip to the gallows, resolving thereafter to steal only from those who truly deserved it.

That Robin had then had the poor sense to become involved with the man's daughter for a time was, of course, not up for discussion at the moment.

"I trust your mother and father are well?" he inquired, squeezing her hand amiably before letting it drop.

John kept his thoughts to himself this time as Zelena moved closer to Robin, discarding her gloves by the bar and leaning in to straighten out some kinks in his collar. Wisps of her golden red hair snagged in his stubble, and he politely brushed them back over her shoulder as she pressed her palms to his chest, lingering a touch longer than the situation truly called for.

"Well enough, I suppose. They've managed to go quite a while now without someone else trying to rob from them." Her tone had taken on a slightly sullen quality, as though she actually faulted Robin and his men for not attempting another heist on her parents' estate after they'd done such a stellar job the first time around.

"I did return most of the things I stole from them," Robin pointed out fairly, "though I will be forever indebted to your father's generosity."

"Yes, most things," echoed Zelena, gazing up through heavy lashes at him as she pouted, accusing, "including me."

Robin bowed his head in gentle acknowledgment, giving her a rueful, lopsided smile when his eyes rose to meet hers again.

"That was a long time ago," he murmured, and she sighed in wistful agreement. Ages ago now, really, their whirlwind of a courtship a distant blur that had only detached itself more and more from his memory over time, until he felt as though he were peering through a fogged up windowpane into someone else's life.

He'd been younger then – a bit more reckless with his heart and with others', content to settle for the flashier fireworks that sparked prettily before burning out – but he'd since found himself falling slowly into this silent yearning, a constant, at times unbearable ache for something more, something real, ever since he'd met—

"My father was asking after you, actually," Zelena mentioned then, and he felt something inside him creak with the effort it took to focus back on her. She blinked up at him with an innocence he did not buy for a second, this more than familiar act she put on whenever a bit of calculation was involved, and he wondered wearily what angle she might use on him this time.

"His health is not what it once was," Zelena continued, and ah, yes, he could see where this was going now. "I think he would be most overjoyed to have you—" her eyes shifted around to regard his men, her smile thinning as it widened into something not quite natural, "—all of you over to celebrate the Yuletide with us."

"Mm," said Robin, and several of his men perked up hopefully. "I'm flattered by the invitation, truly, and you have my deepest condolences; your father is a great man. But I'm afraid that…" It seemed insensitive to say they'd made other plans, when she'd just happened upon them all idling about at the local pub.

Not for the first time, he berated himself for lingering at the bar as long as he had; if he had simply gone up to Regina's corner table the moment he set foot in the tavern, her sourness and her blistering stares be damned, if he had given her no choice but to hear him out and finally got around to asking her…

"It's all right," Zelena dismissed immediately, reading into his hesitation, but from the way she continued to glance sideways up at him, Robin wondered that she wasn't simply waiting for him to act the gentleman and object to her having given in so easily.

Fortunately for him, thieves were exempt from doing the gentlemanly thing, from time to time.

When it seemed unlikely that he would play into her hands after all, Zelena released him in favor of claiming his untouched glass of whiskey, taking small innocent sips as he dropped his gaze away with a carefully neutral expression. Before she'd even drained the last bit of it, Much was shuffling over to them, shyly asking if she might like another.

Zelena turned on Much with a dazzling smile, already lifting an imperious hand to summon the nearest barmaid, and Robin watched with some chagrin as she set her empty glass down with a clinking thud.

It was the drink he'd intended for Regina, if only for her to hurl it right back in his face, as she had most unapologetically done last Christmas. He'd been asking for it then, that much he was able to admit to himself now; she reserved the right to be kissed by whomever she liked, and it was none of Robin's business – a "nosy pain in the arse" is what she'd called him – to throw his fists around because he didn't approve of her choices.

From that point on, Robin hadn't allowed himself to assume things as far as Regina was concerned, least of which that she might deign to accept anything he had to offer her. But there she sat, alone at her corner table, and here he stood, the air around them thick with the promise of the season's first snowfall, and surely all of that had to mean something.

Gods but if he could just have the chance to know that he could mean something, to her.

Little John cleared his throat, and Robin bent his ear in time to hear his friend rumbling lowly at him, "Regina's over there, in the back."

"Trust me, I'm well aware."

John jerked a chin toward Zelena, currently twirling a minty stem around the rim of a tumbler, her interest in Much fast-fading now that he'd served his purpose. "Just saying, mate. If you need an out, I will – at great cost, of course – volunteer as tribute."

Robin nodded his gratitude, knowing full well that John was no fan of Zelena's. The man had been less blatant about it while they were together, more committed to playing the role of supportive friend. Still, a few well-chosen remarks had eventually worn through the novelty of Zelena's shine and sparkle, exposing the more tarnished qualities underneath such that Robin could not unsee them even if he wanted to, her frivolity and her games, her disdain for those less fortunate than her.

John had his own weaknesses when it came to women, his designated corner of their camp having seen more action, so to speak, than any of the others' combined through the years. But he had apparently drawn the line somewhere on his oldest friend's behalf, declaring that Robin was meant to have better, and that better rarely involved titles, or villas, or any number of other luxuries that would have come with asking for Zelena's hand.

The rest of his men had questioned his sanity, but these were the very things Robin had once abandoned willingly to live as an outlaw, and by that time Regina had already blown her way into his forest and made her mark on his heart. The force of it had thrown him off guard. And each time she reappeared, like something that belonged to the wild, he considered himself lucky just to have caught a glimpse of her before she scorned him and took off again.

It was her determined coldness that prevented him from getting any bolder with her, though he could never resist a good chance to rile her up, to stir that fire in her whenever fate permitted. While his meddling this past winter had served a more practical function, the thought of her scowl still warmed him considerably, and the gold he'd acquired along the way had gone handsomely toward paying off the guardsmen, not to mention the bounty hunters and various town officials routinely on her tail.

The Sheriff of Nottingham was the one lamentable exception in all this, his regard for Regina equal parts baffling and yet begrudgingly understandable in Robin's eyes. It was Regina's apparent lack of disregard for the man that aggrieved Robin the most, however, and the memory of it – of them, wrapped so cozily up in one another last Christmas – tormented him as though it had happened just yesterday. He'd come here to prove himself the better man this time around, but he was a thief, first and foremost, and being the better man was, quite frankly, perhaps an overrated endeavor.

He was about to track Granny down for that third whiskey once and for all when he saw it.

Alan, the sodding traitor, was calling everyone's attention to a bit of mistletoe dangling rather conveniently over Zelena's head. Her eyes zeroed in on Robin's with an ominous sort of accuracy, brow arching slyly upward, and she gave him a knowing smirk that dropped little dead weights of dread into the pit of his stomach.

Robin suddenly felt a jumble of elbows urging him forward, the accompanying shouts of encouragement practically deafening, and he could only grin and bear his frustration in silence, because bless these sometimes-idiots but they sincerely meant him well, and what else was he to possibly do now?

Zelena was being just as difficult as the rest of them, batting her lashes and talking of old times' sake, hands sinking hook-like into his clothes and reeling him in before he could call up the right words to dissuade her.

Her lips were looming nearer, eyes fluttering closed in anticipation when Robin found his voice again and said, with his best attempt at sounding regretful, "It's a shame that I've already taken my turn."

Zelena froze, eyes flying back open to stare incredulously at him.

He moved his hands over hers, kindly but firmly extricating himself with a respectful dip of his head. "I shall have to leave the honor to someone else." Before Zelena could so much as offer up a protest, John wedged himself in front of Robin, with the gravity of one resigned to doing something that was particularly distasteful to him.

Robin already felt he owed it to John for escaping a thankless marriage with a woman he did not love, and he was doubly obliged to him now for coming to his rescue yet again, particularly if it gave him a chance to finally turn around and – best case scenario – give Regina more things to throw at him.

Will had left his ale unattended on the countertop, and Robin brooded over whether he ought to save himself some trouble and take that to Regina instead when he noticed the lad standing off to one side, having for once elected not to partake in the other men's antics.

The oddity of that alone had Robin following his gaze to the farthest corner of the tavern, and he let himself see Regina, clearly, for the first time that evening. She was scowling about something as she rifled through her pockets, pausing to bat irritably at a lock of hair that had fallen loose by her forehead. The rest of it was swept into her usual messy side braid, the ends curling farther downward than he recalled they had last, though her face was just as ill-tempered, and lovelier than ever to him.

There was an empty goblet in front of her, a plate skimmed over with food crumbs and peanut shells, a piece of some half-eaten pie next to that. Robin's mind turned to the modest collection of berries he'd saved for her earlier, sparing only a few to stave off his own gnawing hunger, and he hoped that she'd found them in time before the skies fully darkened, that this wasn't her first legitimate meal since winter had taken hold of the forest.

Regina's features flattened into a grim look of satisfaction then, and she stood to scatter a fistful of coins carelessly over the table. She grabbed for her outer things next, tugging a scarf around her neck as though she had every intention of walking right into the start of a snowstorm, and the realization of it crammed something large and painfully like a heartbeat up into Robin's throat.

"Regina," he called before he could second guess himself any further, stepping forward, but at that precise moment a loud cheer erupted behind him, signaling a job well done by that damn mistletoe, and her name was abruptly swallowed up in the noise. He thought he might have imagined it, but her face gave a pained flinch at the commotion, and then he couldn't see anything of her at all as a rowdy group of drunkards ambled into his sightline on their way back to the bar.

Cursing inwardly, Robin pushed around them as politely as he could bear, precious seconds slipping past as he lost her in the crowd long enough to worry that she might not resurface. Neither of them were in the habit of being found out when they had no desire to be, and Regina had always had a particular knack for disappearing whenever it inconvenienced him the most.

Still, it was unlike her, he thought, to leave like this without subjecting him to some kind of public ridicule, or at the very least mock him in private if she was in a giving mood. Surely she would have had time to recognize him and his men, surely the sight of him alone would have been too much for her to resist knocking down a peg or two instead of simply taking flight.

Surely…

He felt the frigid breeze from a door slamming shut before he'd managed to clear a path to the back of the tavern, and a brief survey of the room confirmed what he already knew.

She was gone.

…

The cold wasted no time, it seemed, taking vicious bites at the exposed areas of Regina's face and hands as soon as she flung herself through the door. She wrapped one edge of her scarf over the back of her head in a makeshift hood, wincing as the frosty night air scraped away at the bared skin of her knuckles. In her haste to make herself scarce at the bar, she'd dropped a glove somewhere between the bench and the exit, and it seemed stupid, somehow, to wear only one despite how much she was already suffering for it.

Stupid didn't even begin to cover how she felt at that moment.

She could still hear the whooping cheers of Robin's men, the chill of the abandoned alleyway somehow only amplifying the sound in her head, and it grated her nerves until they frayed painfully thin at the edges. She'd heard enough to guess at what happened, had already seen more than her fill of their goopy-eyed flirting to know it was just a matter of time before they picked up wherever they'd left off before.

How wonderful for them.

Frankly, Robin and Zelena could go and kiss to their hearts' content until they fairly choked on each other, for all that Regina cared, because she didn't. It wasn't like they'd done anything wrong, other than ruin a perfectly good meal with their general unpleasantness and offensive displays of mutual devotion. It wasn't as though Regina had come to Granny's for any other reason than a moment of calm, some pie and perhaps a good night's sleep for a change, in a real bed with a pillow that wasn't made of pine needles. It wasn't her fault that those morons thought with the brain between their legs instead of the one between their shoulders.

It wasn't like any of those morons mattered.

Feeling mutinous, Regina picked up her pace, her body stalking ahead with a poise and a purposefulness that her mind did not share. She would need shelter, that much was obvious, but the matter of where posed more of a question.

Granny kept a shed of contraband nearby that wouldn't be difficult to smuggle herself into and stay for the night, but Regina could put entire realms between here and that miserable little tavern and it wouldn't be enough at the moment. Venturing back to her tree hollow was also out of the question, a trip that was not meant to be made after sundown, and even if she set out at first light tomorrow there was no guarantee there'd be a tree left to find, once the night was done with them all.

Frustration prickled hot behind her eyes, and she couldn't decide what she despised more then, that insolent man back at the tavern, or her own foolish belief that she could have spent this Yuletide any other way than homeless, half-frozen, and irrevocably alone.

She was buried too far down in her thoughts to hear her name being called, at first.

"Regina."

There was a river nearby – frozen now, more than likely – with slabs of bedrock overlying one of its many mouths that fed through the neighboring villages. Perhaps she could find some gap in its boulders, a cave or other small space to burrow in until day broke again.

"Regina!"

Powerfully confused, she almost collided with a teetering stack of wooden crates, maneuvering a foot backward just in time to restore her balance and avoid banging a kneecap.

Robin?

"Regina!"

Her name had grown louder, and she heard the quickening beat of his footfalls behind her as she spun halfway toward the sound. She must have been more unsettled than she gave herself credit for, because a warm hand was closing solidly over her forearm then, steadying her again before she had even registered the need to fall over.

She shrugged him off as soon as she was able, turning stiffly around to glare at a lamppost that was giving off a dim glow just behind his left ear. Robin, on his part, was staring intently down at her, seeming determined to make some kind of contact, but she left him no opening. For all her enduring vexation with him, she'd still let him throw her off guard, and she didn't feel ready to face him head on without every last weapon at her disposal.

"Regina," he tried again, gently this time. "It's been too long. How have—"

"It's slippery, right there," she interrupted him in a lofty tone, waving a vague hand toward the ground. "So I wouldn't come any closer, if I were you."

He didn't move, but he didn't say anything else either, continuing to gaze down at her with a baffling intensity that seemed to suggest he was deep in thought about something, about her.

She scuffed a boot impatiently over the cobblestone, feeling self-conscious and very nearly hating him for it. "What do you want, Robin?"

He held out his hand to her, and she stared at it, uncomprehending.

"I…couldn't find the other one," he said by way of explanation, and she realized he had her missing glove, wielding it like some kind of white flag between them. "You must have dropped it before running off."

Regina blew out an irritable sigh, just shy of snipping that she had not run off, thank you very much, when it occurred to her that denying it aloud would be just as good as any confession to him. She scowled at her glove as though it had betrayed her somehow, not understanding why Robin had felt it worth chasing her down the street for when he reached out again, one hand curving around her wrist while the other pressed her glove into her palm.

There was a startling warmth to his touch even though his own gloves were nowhere to be seen, and it was a testament to the glacial numbness now spreading deep in her bones that Regina didn't shake him loose right away.

"You're cold," Robin stated, brows knitting together, and he moved as if to take her other hand. Alarmed by his boldness, she twisted free of his grasp, fingers clenching stubbornly into fists around her gloves.

"What was your first clue?" she groused, arms crossing, as much to hold in their warmth as to ward off any more ideas he got about getting too close to her.

Robin's hand twitched up toward the ties of his cloak, like he might actually presume to have her wear it instead, but he seemed to think better of that plan when she leveled him with an obstinate expression. She'd forgotten her resolve not to look at him, and for a moment she registered nothing but blue as their eyes caught together, depthless as the sea and almost impossible not to drown in.

He bit into his bottom lip, drawing her focus down to the tinge of pink that lingered there, not that it mattered where – or whom – it had come from, and Regina forced herself to look away.

There was a flickering hiss of the half-spent lanterns as they creaked in the winds, and then Robin dropped his hands carefully back to his sides. They regarded one another for several more seconds without speaking, taking measure of the distance between them like something crucial depended on it.

Robin's voice was suspiciously casual as he mentioned then, "You know, I thought I might see you here this evening."

"Congratulations. Now you've seen me."

"Are you staying the night?" he asked conversationally, as if he'd taken her storming away from the bar as nothing more than a late night stroll before bedtime.

"I thought about it," she told him, terse.

Robin frowned at that. "What stopped you?" he wanted to know, sounding genuinely curious of all things, and she felt her glare slip ever so slightly.

"It was starting to get a little crowded in there," she muttered.

He had the good sense to look rueful at that, trying for a grin as he said, "Yes, I know people are not your thing."

"Depends on the people," she told him pointedly.

He didn't seem to have any immediate response to that, and Regina refrained from sighing too loudly.

A wintry gust blew through the alleyway while she waited, and her arms tightened to contain her shivering. She was starting to feel partway unhinged, here in the cold with this insufferable man, his strangely earnest expressions and those eyes that were looking no less blue despite the dismal lighting. How much longer, exactly, did he plan to go on standing there, throwing all these useless questions at her while she half-turned to ice? He'd given her glove back. She couldn't fathom what on earth else would be keeping him out here, with her, when he had far more enticing things to attend to inside.

One thing was certain. If she let him detain her much longer, his lady friend would eventually come wandering outside in search of her beloved, and Regina wasn't in the mood for introductions, or really for anything remotely Zelena-related.

The mere idea of it sat heavily inside Regina's chest, an oppressive thing that grew teeth and claws as another thought reared its ugly head. Perhaps this was Robin's idea of paying her back for the folly of Christmases past, flaunting his own romance in her face and expecting her to be nothing but thrilled – as if he'd done her the same courtesy last year, with his ridiculous assertions of manlihood or whatever the hell that had been.

It toed the line of her temper, that he might be dense enough to believe this situation no different, and if he truly meant to test her limits then he would sorely regret that he hadn't gone another round with the Sheriff instead by the time she was through with him.

Robin was squaring his shoulders, with the air of one having finally reached an inevitable conclusion about something. "There's a matter I've been meaning to discuss with you," he began, with all the formality of one at a business meeting, but then his eyes flicked down to her hands and he broke out, exasperated, "Regina, could you please put your damn gloves on?"

"I don't see yours anywhere," she said rigidly, jamming them over her hands and despising him all the more for bringing out the petulant child in her.

"For the love of…" Robin muttered under his breath, flipping aside the edges of his cloak. As he tugged his own gloves out, a folded slip of ivory parchment followed, fluttering to land most innocently over his boots.

"Ah," he said, waylaid.

"Is that…?" Regina felt herself bristling, and she bent to snatch up the paper, seething in her disbelief. She supposed it shouldn't surprise her anymore, the lengths he seemed willing to go in order to piss her off. Still, after all the effort she'd put in to get her hands on this, she found it nothing short of offensive that he'd treated it no better than scrap paper, clearly with zero regard for its true value.

"It's not what you think," Robin insisted to her quietly, to no avail.

She gave him a withering look that would've cut through any other man as she unfolded the parchment, eyes moving furiously over the first several lines before blinking and reading them again. Mystified, she skimmed hastily down to the bottom of the page, but no, she couldn't be seeing any of it right. There was a meticulously illustrated wreath at the center, with flowery script denoting a date and time, and a dragon, wearing what looked to be a baubled nightcap, stamped like a signature across the bottom corner.

"This…" Regina flipped the sheet around, glaring determinedly at the back and lifting it within a centimeter from her face just in case she'd missed some kind of fine print.

Maybe there was invisible ink involved, she thought with a frown, or the contents enchanted to look less conspicuous, and she was about to suggest as much when she glanced up and saw Robin's expression.

"It was old intel you got," he informed her, not unkindly, coaxing the parchment out of her dumbfounded grip. "Those papers you were looking for had already been handed off to the highest bidder by the time I got to them."

More embarrassed than she was willing to let on, she resumed a belligerent stance, asking aggressively, "So what was that doing in your pocket?"

"Well, I…" Robin cleared his throat, trailing a finger over the edges of the paper before joining them back together, tucking it away with greater care than seemed warranted to her. "I'd originally thought, as an attempt to make amends of sorts – that perhaps you might have agreed to join me—"

"That's a flyer for a Yule ball," she said blankly, not following a word he was saying. He fixed her with a serious look, and she felt her gaze shift from astoundment to something almost like horror. "Wait. You…?"

Her mind skipped conveniently over the parts she still didn't quite understand – the parts that had made it sound like he actually wanted them to attend some ball together, of all things – and stumbled onto the obvious point of the matter, which was that he now intended to take Zelena instead.

"It's one of the kingdom's larger affairs of the season, so it'll be that much easier to slip past security," Robin said, sounding perfectly reasonable despite the fact that he was making very little sense to her. "And I've been told the Duchess is nothing if not fond of putting her extravagant wealth on rather, shall we say accessible, display whenever she has the guests to see them."

Regina continued to squint at him, still certain she hadn't heard him correctly. "So you expect Zelena to, what, smile at a couple of guards while you steal all the jewelry?"

For the first time that evening, it was Robin's turn to look confused. "Zelena was not who I had in mind for the job, no."

"Oh," said Regina.

Oh.

"Besides, I'd hoped you might assist me in a more…direct capacity." He paused, then added with an impish grin, "Standing by to flirt with the guards feels like it would be an extraordinary waste of your talents."

It was several seconds more of her staring and him waiting, the perfect picture of cautious optimism, before she could finally manage a faint "You must be joking."

"I assure you I'm not."

"Is this your idea of spreading goodwill and all of that other Yuletide nonsense? Because I can assure you that when it comes to this time of year I'm not—"

"Not in the mood, no. Believe me, I've gathered as much over the years," he said, tone wry, lips quirking firmly sideways. She notched up the intensity of her glare, but he seemed committed, now, not to take no for an answer from her.

The shock of his proposal aside, the concept of them actually trusting each other enough to work side by side for a change was so ludicrous to Regina that for a moment she could only roll her eyes at him. "In any event, according to your invitation the ball's already well underway, so." She set her jaw, as if that were the end of that.

"Yes, thank you, I read it myself," Robin said patiently, refusing to be swayed by her defeatist attitude. "Is that supposed to be a problem?"

"It's going to snow any minute now, for one," she said, irritated that a second reason was not presenting itself more readily in her mind. "You can practically smell it in the air, or did Granny's whiskey burn through all your senses?"

To her everlasting bewilderment, he actually looked rather pleased that she'd pointed it out, biting a lip as though his smile might otherwise grow out of control. Still, he dismissed her objections with his next breath, winking, "I don't see why we should let a little snow dampen all our fun."

"You say 'fun,'" Regina retorted, but already her thoughts had begun to double-cross her, wondering, reckless, how they could even pull this off at so late an hour – they'd need a convincing cover, some fake title with a not-so-fake carriage to gain them entry through the gates, not to mention more formal attire, and unless he expected Zelena to just lend Regina her gown for the evening…

He shrugged. "Did you have other plans?"

Sobering, she dropped her gaze, staring hard at anywhere but him, thinking of long red hair and kisses stolen beneath the mistletoe as she asked him in a quieter tone, "Didn't you?"

Robin took a step closer, reading her wariness well enough not to crowd her any further than that. "Regina…"

There was something in his voice, a care she wasn't accustomed to hearing from him, a softness she didn't quite know what to do with, that made her glance up again. The lamplight caught over his features, turning the blue in his eyes fairly molten, and she felt her stomach lurch into her chest the way it might before falling downward from some great height.

"I confess that I haven't been entirely honest with you."

"No?" she asked evenly.

"Earlier, when I said I thought I might see you here, I may have downplayed the circumstances a bit. Truthfully, I came expressly in the hopes that I would, so that I might have a chance to…" He scratched a sheepish hand over the back of his hair when she only blinked at him, leery of what other bizarre revelations he might have stockpiled for her benefit. Perhaps a long overdue apology for always nicking her things, or that he'd taken her to be some squirrel in a past life, which would explain why he was always leaving her little gifts in the form of forest debris.

Or maybe he was finally about to come clean on the fact that this was his plan all along, stalling and hedging and stalling some more until he'd frozen out his competition, quite literally speaking. She'd already lost sensation in her toes, what was a few more limbs, her nose, the tips of her ears at this point?

That her hands were comfortably snug inside their coyote fur gloves was neither here nor there, really, not in the slightest.

Robin cleared his throat and carried on, "There's something of a more serious nature that I've been wanting to ask you, for quite some time now, actually—"

"Something more serious than a last-minute proposition to crash a Yule ball?" Regina supplied dryly. "A ball with half the realm in attendance, and two of said realm's most wanted thrown in, just so you can line your pockets with a few Fabergé eggs and whatever else catches your eye."

"Precisely, yes," said Robin, with a hint of impatience to suggest he found that all beside the point. "Look, I know you've been a bit off your game, of late" – she scowled, he smirked (and such was the way of it, with them) – "but that is what bandits do, Regina. We crash, and we steal things."

"And that is assuming we would even live to tell the tale."

He frowned. "I think we both deserve a little more credit than that."

"She's called the Dragon for a reason, Robin."

He huffed out an aggravated sound, and it pleased her more than it probably should have to know how thoroughly she had sidetracked him. "Look, this is all rather beside the—"

"And just to clarify," she continued, before she lost the nerve, "it was never your plan to bring your old girlfriend along?"

"No," said Robin, looking at her so strangely now that she almost craned around to ensure she hadn't done something like sprout a second head – honestly, he couldn't think it was that much of a stretch for her to ask – and then he gave a baffled noise of understanding as he said, clearly taken aback, "Who? Zelena?"

"No, Little John," drawled Regina, sarcastic.

"Oh, John could only dream of being so lucky," said Robin, playfully serious, but his eyebrows furrowed as he took in her humorless state, and he finally seemed to arrive at some understanding about this unbridgeable distance between them.

When he spoke again, he sounded grimly determined to set the record straight about something. "Zelena and I – we were betrothed, once."

Regina's vision blurred a little at the corners, as if her mind had already started taking an eraser to this new piece of information. That ringing sound from earlier filled her ears again, and she noticed vaguely that breathing seemed to require more of a conscious effort than usual.

"But to be perfectly frank, that was so long ago…" More lines creased his forehead, as though he were experiencing some technical difficulties in calling up that particular time in his life, and then his mouth twisted into the grimace of one who'd just tasted something unexpectedly sour. "Those memories hardly feel like my own now."

"So what happened?" Regina wondered, trying for casual and quite possibly failing.

Robin cast his eyes down for a moment, the silence growing thick and heavy with things that he was either reluctant or unable to say (not that it mattered, not that she cared), and then he looked back up at her and said, simply, "I met someone else."

Her chest constricted oddly, pressing out that breath she had just remembered to take, and her heart beat almost painfully close to the very edge of her ribcage.

"Oh," she said, mouth opening and then shutting when she realized she didn't have the faintest idea what she was feeling, let alone how to respond.

Robin was doing very little to improve upon the situation, gazing down at her with all that blue in his eyes, bright and open and impossibly earnest. His lips pressed thoughtfully together as he searched her for a reaction beyond that single Oh, as if he'd expected more, as if she'd been able to glean any other meaning from his confession than the fact that there was someone else.

There was someone else, and it was none of Regina's business, and yet here she was, asking him things she half-dreaded to know, acting for all the world as though he'd answered her wrong when she had no right to pry in the first place.

And there Robin stood, taking everything in stride, every last indignant inch of her, despite the fact that they were not friends and he owed her nothing. He had told her something important, that much was clear from the way he continued to watch her so carefully, and it distressed her that something equally important seemed to depend on what she said next.

She heard herself ask in a detached manner, her voice sounding foreign and very far away, "So how did that someone work out for you?"

Robin had snuck in within just a foot of her now, the warmth that came with him almost unbearable as she fought the mad urge to lean into it.

"That remains to be seen," he murmured, and whatever theories she might have been entertaining about old flames or other stories that weren't meant to be – so long ago, he had said – instantly made her feel ten times more foolish.

That ill-advised trek to her tree hollow was beginning to feel vastly more appealing to her than the prospect of spending another minute like this, with the weight of uncharted worlds crammed into that small stretch of space between them.

"I should get going," Regina blurted out, her words awkwardly amplified by his answering silence.

To her relief or to her dismay – she couldn't allow herself to figure out which – he didn't try to dispute her, apart from a quietly probing "And where would you stay?"

Any lingering, sort-of-formed thoughts of attending the ball vanished completely, the moment now passed, nebulous and wistful and doomed as it was from the start. She found herself almost wishing to follow, to chase it a while if only to keep it that much more real in her mind.

She wondered that this wouldn't become just another memory of his that simply slipped away, into a lifetime he never saw as his.

"Regina," Robin prompted her gently, still waiting on her reply. Regina couldn't bring herself to lie, but she found it equally difficult to say aloud what he'd more than likely guessed already. She felt his stare turn disapproving when her lack of response confirmed as much, and he sighed heavily while he thought something over.

"I'll be fine," she told him firmly, grounding the balls of her feet into the cobblestone and fending off another shiver as the wind took on a crisp, clean smell.

"At least take this," Robin insisted, reaching again to untie his cloak, and he refused to hear her protests this time as he shrugged it off, sweeping the fabric in a high arc above their heads to drape snugly over her shoulders. She held herself still while he tucked the ends beneath her scarf, gloved fingers working a little clumsily to secure the ties into a knot.

"Thanks," she muttered, though the sentiment hardly sounded sufficient, even to her. His woodsy scent of campfires and pine settled in all around her, his body heat still caught in the wool, embracing her over her shoulders and back. She tried not to bury herself into it too obviously, unable to shake the creeping guilt that she'd just stolen something of his, when all of him likely belonged to another.

It was a preposterous notion, that she could steal anything he had already willingly shared, and yet.

Robin was gathering the excess fabric that hung off her much smaller frame, bundling it into the center and holding there until she lifted her hands to relieve his grip. His own hands moved to curl around her arms next, sliding up and down underneath the cloak to generate some more heat.

He frowned. "Bollocks, you're still freezing."

"I'm fine," she scowled, feeling decidedly less and less grateful as the excuse of keeping warm inched his body closer and closer.

He looked unconvinced, and unlikely to let her go anytime soon.

And at that precise moment, it finally began to snow.

The little flurries winked cheerily at them as they drifted calmly into sight, dusting sprinkles of light over her scarf and the sides of Robin's cloak. It surprised them both, the abruptly peaceful manner in which the skies had simply opened, and they twisted around for a better view, everything else briefly forgotten between them.

As much as she loathed the cold winter months, for once, Regina thought she might just make an exception.

It wasn't exactly a wonderland, here amongst Granny's trash bins and storage receptacles, but Robin had Regina so thoroughly surrounded that all she knew was the forest, steadfast and infinite and vitally green. Her breathing slowed to match the deep rise and fall of his chest, something about the sudden stillness lulling her body into a rhythm that seemed to beat in time with his.

She would adamantly deny it if asked, but it was the warmest snowfall she'd experienced since fleeing the castle so many winters ago.

Her shoulder brushed into his side as she pivoted around, the ends of his cloak haphazardly tangling their legs. Robin's hands shifted distractedly down the length of her arms to loosely encircle her wrists instead, but Regina found she couldn't be bothered to do much about that for the time being, blinking the snowflakes out of her eyes as she gazed upward.

The weak yellow beams from the alleyway lanterns glittered in a mesmerizing fashion on their way to the ground, and larger crystalline clumps took to depositing themselves on every dark surface they could find. Robin, in his cream-colored tunic and smooth leather vest, where the snow seemed unable to stick all the way, was mostly spared apart from a flake here and there that clung, twinkling, to the top of his head.

Regina slowly became aware of him watching her again, his breath coming out in warm puffs on her skin, and it felt impossible, all of a sudden, for the ice not to break just a little beneath his gaze. His eyes crinkled when she glanced back up to meet them, noting the unmistakable glint of mischief there.

"I'd wager that you won't make much headway in this," he told her seriously. "Best to stay put for the evening, I think."

"You," Regina started in, accusing, because she wouldn't put it past the man to con Mother Nature into granting him control of the weather, truly she wouldn't. She glared into his smiling eyes, but she imagined the effect of it was rather diminished by the smattering of snow that seemed to have taken up residence along her hairline and in her eyebrows, which Robin helpfully leaned in to brush clean.

His teeth were digging into the bottom edge of another grin now, and he sounded more than smug as he shrugged and reminded her, "We both knew it was going to snow, milady."

"True," she grumbled, nose wrinkling when he flicked away a bit of snow there.

"It is a shame about the ball, though," he sighed, sinking back onto his heels, and she felt the full, crooked force of his smile on her this time. "If I'd thought my chances were favorable, I might have even asked you to humor me with a dance."

Regina couldn't tell if he was mocking her or not, but his eyes were friendly, and his hands – she hadn't been keeping close enough tabs on what his hands were up to, she realized with some alarm – had already made their way past her wrists, thumbs circling absentmindedly over her palms now. He didn't appear to have any other motive than warming her up a bit more, but there was still something almost intimate about the gesture that made her look away, chest tightening again.

She blamed the snow, honestly, for her momentary carelessness regarding what was and wasn't hers to claim.

Clearing her throat, Regina carefully untangled her hands from him before they could get too comfortable. His arms dropped obligingly away, his expression smooth and perfectly amiable as he took a step back, and she told herself that the immediate chill cutting into her chest was from the loss of his body heat, nothing more.

"Consider yourself lucky that you didn't," she informed him, steely. "I don't dance."

He inclined his head at her, fingers lacing politely together in front of him. "Then I'm lucky indeed, that I would've had a friend thoughtful enough to save me the embarrassment of a lousy dance partner."

She rolled her eyes at his more than generous use of the term friend, when it came to whatever they were to each other. "Sure. Something like that."

His eyes were alight with amusement, and there was an oddly triumphant quality to his voice when he ventured next, "Would it be pressing my luck even further, then, to ask that you please come back inside with me?"

She pressed her lips into a thin, stubborn line, not trusting herself to speak for a moment though the answer was obvious to both of them now. The snow was falling thicker and faster around them, and even if she knew where else to go, it was only a matter of time before the best routes to get there closed themselves off completely.

It was only a matter of time before he wore her down at last.

"You see," Robin continued, as innocently as a man such as he could pull off, "I cannot in good conscience let you walk out into…all of that, without insisting on making the journey with you."

"Like you could keep up with me," said Regina, with much less bite than she'd been going for.

"It would be the gentlemanly thing to try."

She scoffed at that. "You're a thief, Robin. Let's not mistake that for anything remotely gentleman-like."

"Perhaps I'd like to prove myself capable of being both." His smile grew ever more lopsided. "Although, in this weather, and with my best cloak unaccounted for" – she had to refrain from rolling her eyes at him again – "I'm afraid my limited chance at survival would bring any hope of that to a premature end."

"Sounds about right," agreed Regina primly.

"Then I shall appeal to your more generous nature and ask that you spare me from such a fate." He offered his arm to her, and she indulged in a final scowling sigh before slipping a glove over his elbow, letting him escort her gingerly back the way they'd come.

The snow seemed hell-bent on delaying their return, filling into cracks between the stones and slickening their surfaces such that Regina was forced to lean half her weight into Robin for traction. She held herself as well as she could, but her foot slid sideways a step when he spoke into her ear, his tone kept carefully neutral, "Since we were on the subject of past loves, where was your less charming half this evening?"

She hid a bemused smile in her scarf, letting the silence percolate for long, irresistible seconds before she replied, face straight, "Oh, probably off bullying children, being a general terror to the town of Nottingham, that kind of thing."

Robin slowed his steps, clearly at a loss for how to interpret what she'd just said. Maybe it was the startled blankness of his features when she turned to look, her growing impatience to be indoors, or perhaps she was getting into the holiday spirit after all, but she took pity on him then, sighing as she told him in a gentler tone, "It was just mistletoe, Robin. That's all it ever was."

He didn't respond for a long moment, leaning behind her to grab up the hem of his cloak and keep her from tripping as he maneuvered them around some precariously stacked barrels. "After you, milady," was all he eventually said, and then he was nudging her easily forward again without another word.

He would keep her guessing to the last, then, why he cared, what he wanted from her, and how, exactly, he'd managed to sneak his way in to soften her heart without her being any the wiser.

Regina ducked her head against the oncoming wind, harsh and strong and intent as ever on throwing her balance. She objected only a little as Robin wrapped a firm arm around her shoulders, though she was far less patient when he pointed out a stretch of cobblestone off to their left, murmuring to her, "Careful, I've heard it's quite slippery there," with the unmistakable sound of a smile.

By the time they stopped in front of the door, Regina could barely see through the dense white flurries, restlessly shifting her weight to stay warm while Robin made a valiant effort to dust her free of the snow.

His progress was somewhat limited, the snow re-accumulating nearly as fast as he was brushing it off, and it was in the middle of a particularly determined attempt with her side braid, Regina glaring upward all the while with every intention of hurrying him along, that she saw it.

She couldn't say why, but she could say with absolute certainty, somehow, that he had known all along. Another smile broke slyly out of him as she blinked at the very top of the doorway, where a familiar spray of foliage had been jauntily fixed to the wood with a slim strip of red velvet ribbon.

"That's…" Regina trailed off, breathless for reasons she could no longer blame on the cold, and the harder she stared the sharper its edges stood out, a brightly colored beacon amidst a smudged blur of white.

Unsure what to make of anything anymore, she turned a hesitant gaze on Robin, feeling intensely unsteady as his free arm snaked around to secure her at the waist. She stared, transfixed, held there by something like fear yet also something much, much more as he dropped every pretense of grooming her hair, shifting closer until his nose nearly grazed her forehead.

He moved his hand to touch her cheek, with a shyness that threatened to undo her completely, and she turned into him, unable to look away even if she had the desire to now.

"Not just mistletoe, I'm afraid," he told her, his voice but a rasping confession, and his eyes were solemn, blue and terribly beautiful to her as he leaned in the rest of the way to ease his mouth over hers.

Regina froze for a split second, hands caught uncertainly between their bodies, but when he pulled away slightly she felt herself leaning forward on instinct, wondering hazily why he wasn't still kissing her. His lips parted in some form of a question, but she had trouble working her mind around what he could possibly be needing to ask her right now, and so she stretched to the toes of her boots, anchored her hands into his tunic collar and drew him deliberately back in.

Robin made a strangled sound low in throat before hauling her fully against him, fingers twining into her hair, lips chilled as he kissed her again. She imagined hers were no warmer, but the rest of her felt as though it had burst into flame in his arms – this low-stoked burning for things she'd never known the name for until he fairly set her on fire with his lips and his tongue, searching, tasting, tangling with hers as their mouths slanted together.

Her hands moved to his shoulders, gripping there for support as he left her weak-kneed, dizzily content to sway in his arms. His kisses were achingly rough, heated things, full of gasping moans and greedy passes of his tongue over hers while he took his time exploring, but she could sense the restraint in him still, the effort it took to hold back his hunger. She pressed herself along the length of his body, reveling in the way every inch of him seemed to surround her in response, and her lips parted on a heady sigh, inviting him further in.

She felt his arm band across her back, fingers settling over the side of her ribs, and she became vaguely aware of her feet lifting almost clear off the ground, staggering forward with a highly undignified noise of surprise while he smiled and smiled into her mouth.

She thought to scowl at him as he broke from her for a second, murmuring a hoarse Regina before he closed the distance another time, but the sound of it left her lightheaded, something inside her chest expanding to a point that made breathing feel impossible. It was all she could do, then, to sink into his embrace, strong and whole and safer than anything she'd ever known, while his kisses slowed to savor her again.

They parted once more, both in need of a moment, and he nudged their noses together, biting his lip as his eyes trailed down, down, down from hers in a heated caress of their own. Her gaze grew heavy to take in the sight of him, shamelessly wanting, uncomposed in a way that made him all the more desirable to her.

His hand left her hair to cup over the nape of her neck, angling closer until their lips hovered just within reach of each other. The air between them was warm and still despite their ragged breathing, and she felt weightless and blissfully free, suspended there with nothing but Robin to hold the world steady as she fell, and fell, and fell in his arms.

He ghosted his lips over the tip of her nose, everything about him so deliciously strained, and oh how she longed to kiss him another time, to spirit them away to a place far from this one with its mistletoe traps and misunderstandings, where the Yuletide could be whatever they wanted or nothing at all. Where maybe, just maybe, she could be convinced to allow him one dance. Just one.

But the weather was intent on making a traitor of her body, and she shivered into him before she could control the impulse. Robin frowned, hands all over her neck and back in an effort to keep the cold from edging in deeper.

"We should go inside," he murmured, reluctant, arms loosening to set her free and back onto her feet before she was quite ready. She supposed he had a point, but she couldn't bear the thought of leaving this moment behind, the soft little space they'd carved out of the snow, without something to remember it by, and so she reached upward to steal a final kiss from him.

He groaned quietly into her mouth, slipping his tongue in to ravish her some more. She let the sensation carry her away for a moment, body relaxing into his while her hands slid down to grasp at his waist, the jut of his hips, enjoying the feel of him solid and strong and endlessly warm at her fingertips.

He trailed kisses up her jawline, stubble scraping in their wake as he reached her ear and whispered, rough, "Let's get you warmed up, yeah?" His arm closed tightly over her shoulders again, shifting to envelop her further when she angled her body more firmly into his side. Regina felt him press another kiss to her temple, the distinct lines of a smirk forming there, and she was forced to contain a smile of her own as she let him lead her into the tavern at last.

…

The instant he shut the door behind them, Robin realized what a mistake it had been to come back. Zelena, at least, would not be an issue; he imagined that the sight of him in desperate pursuit of another woman, not to mention her own very harrowing experience with Little John, must have been cause enough for her to bid an early good night.

From the slaphappy look of his men, however, they had only just gotten started, migrating away from the bar to spread their whiskey-soaked revelry around the rest of the establishment. Anastasia had finally sat Will down at a table, talking cheerfully with him while the lad looked some combination of frightened and infatuated. John had gathered the other barmaids around the fire, flexing most impressively as he regaled them with tales of his many brave exploits. Tuck, meanwhile, was peacefully sipping his tea at the counter with a slightly less ill-humored Granny nearby.

On any other day Robin might have joined them all without a second thought, but as it so happened, all he longed to do, now that he knew it was possible without losing a limb, was kiss the woman standing beside him.

He wanted to kiss Regina, and kiss her, and kiss her, without the excuse of mistletoe over their heads, which was looking to be a serious problem in this place that seemed to be crawling with reasons why they shouldn't stay. There was no feasible way to sneak her upstairs either, not without alerting his men to their presence, and Robin did not relish the idea of subjecting her to their oblivious questioning and ill-mannered scrutiny.

She felt even slighter indoors somehow, curled against him and looking delicate in a way that made his hold on her tighten. The snow had started forming rivulets down his cloak, and Robin reached with his free hand to remove the last bits of slush from her braid, wishing he knew of other ways to keep the cold from getting to her. She followed his progress before turning those dark, lovely eyes to land on his, unblinking, and if he thought it safe to simply loiter in this shadowed corner of the bar with her forever, then he would have happily done just that.

As it was, he was growing quite desperate to be alone with her again, and judging from the soft, secretive way she continued to gaze up at him, the barest hint of a smile beginning to play with her mouth, he wondered that he wasn't wrong to hope she might feel the same.

"I'm pretty sure you still owe me a drink," she mentioned to him, voice husky from disuse among other things, and the realization that she was quite possibly flirting with him spilled warmth all over the inside of his chest, rendering him speechless a moment. He bit back a chuckle when she looked almost idly off to one side, where the banister looped around close enough that one might reasonably slip by undetected if he distracted his men on his way to the bar.

"I don't suppose you'll actually drink it this time?" Robin wondered, teasing, as she let him take her hand in his, twining their fingers together.

She raised a coy eyebrow, that smile peeking through more and more as she leaned into him, her tone enticingly low and conspiratorial. "Oh, I never let a drink go to waste." Her eyes drifted down to settle over his mouth, now tilted ruefully sideways into a grin, and he knew she was thinking of kissing him too.

Robin cleared his throat, bending over her until the words just brushed her ear. "At the risk of sounding forward, I'd really like to get you out of these wet clothes before you catch cold. I've some spare things I can take up to one of the rooms." He reflected a moment. "Though you may not find a ball gown to be terribly comfortable lounging attire. I admittedly did not think every possibility through before coming to find you tonight."

"Is that right," mused Regina, rocking back onto her heels to get a better look at him before asking casually, "You wouldn't happen to have an extra cloak stashed away too, would you?"

"A second-rate one, to be sure, but yes."

She seemed to ponder this a second longer, shrugging her shoulder with a satisfied sort of "That should be fine," as if that had just settled something important in her mind. Robin paused, wondering if he ought to clarify whether they were on the same page or not, when she pressed a palm to his chest, lightly shoving some space between them.

He brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear before letting his hand drop, releasing her fully. "I'll see you upstairs, then, yeah?"

Regina looked slyly askance at him through heavy-long lashes. "You know, a true gentleman would never keep a lady waiting this long," was all she said in warning, though it was a tougher act to sell than usual when he only winked at her, enjoying the way that she flushed and rolled her eyes in response.

She would pay him back for his boldness, he knew (he hoped), and the last he saw of her before turning around was that smile, fully in bloom now with the promise of something positively sinful poised at its very edge.

He made it halfway to the bar when his men turned their heads with a comically delayed sort of timing, hollering his name along with their inquiries about what had taken him so damn long, and where the bloody hell was this Regina woman they'd just heard tell of who had thrown Robin's world so thoroughly upside down?

(Will, the ungrateful gossip, at least had the decency to look contrite, blushing madly when Anastasia turned to smile at him again.)

Robin chuckled and evaded their questions as best he could, letting them crowd him from behind as he walked up to the bar with his back carefully turned toward the staircase. Granny had already set out two glass tumblers, a full bottle of whiskey waiting beside them, and he was rifling for change with an amused shake of his head when something – several things, in fact – made his movements still.

A grin of disbelief slowly spread across his face.

There was a jangle of coins as he emptied his pockets onto the counter, coins along with a handful of peanut shells that he had no recollection of ever putting there. He checked their contents needlessly over, patting his vest down just to be certain, but the folded slip of parchment was gone, as surely as the woman who'd taken it.

"She went out the back way again," Granny drawled helpfully when Robin whipped around, knowing full well that Regina would not have him catch up to her so easily this time.

He felt that devious touch to her smile as though it still pressed right into his skin – leaving kisses there to distract him from her wandering hands, inquiring after a second cloak when she had no use for another herself, whispering hints for him to try and keep up.

One invitation stolen with another one made in its place, and Robin would be damned if he let Regina show up at a ball without a proper gentleman – thief though he was, he would be anything, for her – to take her hand and escort her inside.

He hadn't planned for things to unfold quite like this, but then, it was nothing short of enchanting to him, that wildfire in her and how brightly she burned without the coldness of winter holding her back.

There was a clinking of glass as Granny gathered the whiskey and tumblers together, bringing him back to the more practical matter at hand. He had a ball to attend, after all, with a woman who might – just might – agree to finally honor him with a dance.

"I'm guessing you want me to hold onto all this until you both return?" Granny asked.

"If you would be so kind," said Robin, thinking quickly, then, "would you also mind lending me two of your horses? And perhaps your carriage as well?"

"I don't know what carriage you're talking about," said Granny cagily, suddenly preoccupied with preparing Tuck another cup of tea.

"The carriage you use on all your illegal trafficking routes." Robin smiled pleasantly while she froze mid-pour. "The one you store in your shed about half a kilometer north of here."

Granny scowled at him, working her jaw around a little before relenting with a very unenthusiastic "Oh. Right. That carriage." She rummaged in her apron, tossing him a chain of rusty old keys. "She didn't give herself that much of a head start, your girl. Or are you just that slow?"

"She's just that much faster," Robin deadpanned, "and besides, I took the liberty of storing some clothes in the backseat of said carriage earlier."

"You what?"

He slid her keys across the counter, uttering a polite "So I won't be needing those, but thank you," before he turned to make his excuses to his men.

John, with a wise look in his direction, had already begun corralling them out of his path, yelling things about some urgent bandit matter and how even the most fearless of leaders must follow the ways of one's heart on occasion.

Robin found his leading him out the back of the tavern once more, much to his men's resounding approval. They clapped their hands over his shoulders as he hurried past, barreling through the door to pause only a moment before rushing onward.

The alleyway was now heavily blanketed in snow, Regina's own recent footprints already filled halfway in and fading out of sight down the dimly lit path. Still, it was nothing insurmountable; he knew the shortcut to Granny's shed well enough, and he made impressive time in getting there, arriving within yards of the double wooden doors before another stunned sort of revelation stopped him on the spot.

It had not been his intention to track her, not yet, but there, just beyond where his own boots had stayed a brief step, a second pair of smaller, fainter imprints led brazenly up to the entrance. The door, he noticed now, had been left slightly ajar, a broken assortment of locks swinging uselessly from the handle – not one for subtlety, then, but he would tease her for that later – and with a chuckling groan, Robin closed the remaining distance to let himself inside.

The station where Granny's carriage normally sat was empty, of course, as was one of two stalls along the wall of a makeshift stable area, corresponding sets of wheels and hooves having left a trail of mud and straw toward more doors on the opposite end of the building.

A muzzle appeared over the edge of the second gate to train large coffee-brown eyes on him, exhaling loudly with a snort and a toss of her mane as though to ask him what had taken so long. As Robin strode closer, hand outstretched for the mare to sniff, he saw a familiar brocade tunic hanging over the nail post supporting her saddle and bridle, his dress boots propped against a stack of hay beside that.

His extra cloak had been dumped unceremoniously onto the ground, and when he bent to retrieve it, a corner of ivory-colored parchment slipped into view, peeking out from between folds of the fabric to wink most outrageously up at him.

Robin tucked it back into his pocket and smiled.

---

a|n: hope you enjoyed my little christmas gift to the fandom! this fic started out as a prequel to woman but sort of became its own thing after a while - still might be fun to fill in the rest someday, if people are interested :) anyway, thank you so much for reading, happy holidays, and bring on 2017!