Robin was there to hold her as the Dark One's power consumed Emma, and – strangely, miraculously – he kept being there in the days that followed.

He rubbed her shoulders and coaxed her away from the books when she was in no state to stop herself from tearing the entire library apart for answers. He peeled carrots and potatoes beside her in the kitchen and stole from bed five minutes before her alarm hummed to start the coffee. He hustled the boys to school on the mornings she just couldn't, and any time she tried to say 'thank you' or 'I'm sorry,' he simply leaned in, brushed a calloused thumb over her cheekbone, and stopped her lips with his.

Robin stayed.

Regina should be happier (she was happy; gods, she lost her heart at every reminder of his presence, at the knowledge of his hard-won constancy), but while their world had finally slowed to something more than the brief thrill that preceded a fall, another world spun madly on, and she had tasked herself with finding a way to right it.

She loved Robin, and she communicated that to him as best she could through touch, through trust, through nights by his side, but it wasn't about them right now. She wished it was, longed to give him that much in return, but they had a family to rebuild, Emma to save, and Zelena to – well, Zelena.

It was more than a week since Emma had…gone when Robin came to her, separating her a bit from Henry and the Charmings and the papers and vials scattered over the better part of the floor.

She smiled tightly at him, more irritated about being dragged away from their work than she'd like to admit. She forced herself to breathe through her temper before she asked, tonelessly, "What is it?"

He bent over her hand – it was a thing he did, taking her hand when he first saw her and not giving it back – and pressed his lips to her knuckles, looking up at her a bit roguishly through the fall of his hair.

"I'd like to take you out tonight, Regina. Just you and me."

He was courting her.

He, who she had already lived and died for, was courting her, offering the kind of relaxed and romantic evening they had rarely-if-ever been afforded before.

"You're asking me out on a date?"

Her voice rose, mock-girlish, but she couldn't deny the slow spread of the grin crossing her face.

"Yes, m'lady, I am."

She couldn't easily imagine where Robin might take her – Storybrooke had limited options as it was, and there were too many places steeped in loss for both of them, the potential for bad memories to be stirred up in every direction.

"Do I need to…change?" She gestured down to her reading-rumpled blouse and skirt, the heels she had kicked off hours ago, and she would have heated with embarrassment if she had had the energy.

Robin lazily traced a pearl button at her throat, giving her hand (the one he had yet to surrender) a reassuring squeeze. "This is perfect."

Somewhere, behind her, Henry was asking the Charmings if they could order pizza for dinner.

…

Mary Margaret gently steered Regina to the door at Robin's knock, promising to not let Henry stay up all night.

There was a slight vacancy in her eyes that Regina understood too well, and yet Mary Margaret continued to project something like hopefulness, even mustering a quiet sense of amusement at Regina's fidgeting as the clock ticked down to 7:30.

Robin guided her outside, refusing to give her any hints about what he had planned, and they walked in mostly companionable silence, hands swinging between them. The last time they had attempted a stroll in the moonlight – no, she wouldn't sour the moment with (whips of blackness cracking their way into her, a release, the dagger renamed) grief over things that were not dead, not while Robin was whole and within reach.

He began to lead her out of town, and Regina wished she had worn shoes better suited to the terrain – she kept forgetting that Robin didn't know how to drive.

"I'll have to teach you and Henry together," she told herself, half-marveling at what her life had become, at the changes that were beginning to pile up into something she hadn't dared to ask for.

She wasn't certain she had spoken out loud until Robin cocked his head towards her.

"Teach us what, exactly?"

"The manners of a modern gentleman," she teased, and laughed when he slung an arm across her back and dragged her in for a kiss.

It was soft, savoring – the kind of kiss that bespoke contentment, a sort of settling, all elements of them that felt new and as-yet-unexplored.

"And if I can't be tamed, m'lady?" Robin grinned at her – (she, submitting herself to the press of his jaws most willingly) – made animal again. "Will you object?"

"Never."

She knew where they were going now, knew what awaited beyond the twist of the path, and, even knowing, she had to draw on the comfort of Robin's touch when the Author's house leered out of the darkness before them.

A house full of lifetimes struck through, stories overwritten by a greater plot or by a madman, held nothing but foreboding for Regina where it once had held promise.

She followed Robin to the gate because she trusted everything that he was, because he noticed the way she kept worrying at the strap of her coat and stilled her hands with a you okay? that penetrated deep, and she nodded while she vowed over and over that she would be the one deciding the venue of their next date.

She had a copy of the key in her desk at the office, but Robin merely fiddled with the latch, and she got the distinct feeling he had done this (obviously, yes, but here) before. She looked the other way as the gate swung open, sure that she would find scuff marks across the key plate or a battered hinge if she cared to see them.

Robin smirked at her, and she smirked right back, for neither of them could pretend this was their first entry into a life of crime, and, though the night favored his strengths, Regina knew how to trespass just as well as he.

It was a familiar walk through unlived-in rooms and hidden passages, reminiscent of that first, fraught advance into her castle when they had been but strangers.

This time, at least, there was no need to watch where they placed their feet.

The wall dismantled itself to let them into the library, the floor still piled with books from their last visit, and Robin led her to its center, stopping beside the line of shelves with purpose.

"So…"

"I wanted to show you something."

He felt around and withdrew a paper from his vest pocket, a much-folded and creased thing that could only be page twenty-three, and Regina froze, protective instincts flaring and turning her to stone because he had no right – that was her hope, her faithlessness, each break and every clumsy amendment in her resolve that she had meant to keep safe from all, even from her love.

But the moment passed (their scars complemented each other's, after all), and she and Robin smoothed the page together, fingers passing over each join with reverence, until they held it between them, contemplating the past they had never known.

"We've met each other across so many lifetimes now," Robin said, "I can hardly keep track. How many times I have had to relearn your name, how many times you threatened me, how many times I failed you – "

"Robin…"

He quietened her with a hand to her arm, gripping fiercely. "None of that matters, Regina. Missed connections, yes, and I wish to all the gods we had found each other sooner, but our story starts here."

"We're a few chapters in, at this point," she grumbled, tasting the bitterness of flying monkey attacks and I promise you won't die alone and his hand falling from hers as the world beyond the town line claimed him, but she was only being difficult, and she softened the comment with the smile he liked best.

She understood why he had brought her here: the symbolism of choosing to write something together, the power of a new beginning, and she would swear herself to him through ink and blood, through every universe they were allowed.

She followed the train of his eyes to a shelf above their heads, to a row of identical books save one. One which didn't nestle properly among the others, a little disjointed, and which bore 'Regina+Robin' along its spine in a large, scribbled hand.

Oh, she thought, emotion unexpectedly contracting her stomach, and she must have given her wonder voice because Robin enfolded her, muttered warm things into her hair. He smelled less like forest now, and that was one more loss, one more erasure, she sought to be able to remedy in time.

He gestured for her to pull the book down, and Regina stretched for it, just able to knock her fingers against the spine if she tried.

"Here, let me."

Robin pressed into her back as he reached over her, managing to tug the book free while she braced the bottom with a few fingers, and, somehow, in the struggle to bring it down gently, they both fumbled their grips and let the book fall – stunningly, unerringly – into Robin's upturned face.

It clipped Regina over the head as it continued to the floor, but she was hardly aware of it through the spray of blood across her shoulder and a muffled series of fucks, the intensity of which she wouldn't have believed Robin capable of if she hadn't heard it herself.

She'd broken his nose – and maybe something else, but definitely his nose – and panic spiraled in her. In all the ways they had hurt each other before, it had never been this visceral, this red, and this was a different pain breaking from him, one that threatened to bewilder her before she learned how to soothe it.

But she was a mother, too, and she had tended her fair share of nosebleeds and skinned elbows with Henry, and (it wasn't the same) she swallowed and spoke calmly, firmly. "Robin, you have to let me see."

"It's nothing," he muttered, and the sharpness of it caught her in the chest. "It's fine; I'm bloody fine."

He was angry, and Regina understood that it had nothing at all to do with her, but the look sat so strangely on Robin's face that all she could do was stare. He kept scraping his sleeve under his nose, swiping at blood, as if it was doing anything other than ruining his shirt, and his eyes had closed themselves to her, inscrutable and cold.

She sighed. She knew Robin still mistrusted her magic sometimes, and she could forgive him for that (he was right), but his reaction didn't read as that. He was sulking, and if he would rather wallow in his misery than accept her healing, well, that was his choice.

"The course of true love never did run smooth," he said, growled, like the laying of a curse, and the depth of his balefulness surprised them both.

Regina wasn't sure who started snickering first, but soon they were bent over with it, left at the mercy of laughter until their lungs exhausted themselves and their eyes were wet.

She crossed the three steps between them when her legs had steadied, and took Robin's face in her hands. She stroked her thumbs over the curve of his cheekbones, down through the stubble of his jawline, to the corner of his lips, to the dimple that thimbled around her fingertip, and finally settled alongside his nose, feeling gingerly.

She could feel his jaw working under her palm, tightening against the pain, and she shook her head slightly.

"Hold still," she whispered, and channeled the lightest of her magicks through their joined skin, watching as the blood dried and cleared, as cartilage and bone shifted back to where they belonged.

Robin's mouth eased into a rueful smile, and, oh, she loved him, more ferociously for each new furrow she discovered in the play of his expressions.

"Hold still," she said again, never loosening her hold, and bobbed upwards to lay a kiss on the end of his nose.

Before she could settle back on her heels, he caught her with another kiss, enfolding her once again without any sense of urgency, with nothing but continuous movement of lips, of tongues, of hands.

They had time.

They had hundreds and thousands of pages to fill with moments as subtle as this one.

The hand he wouldn't let go of, their mutual astonishment each time they came together (each time they didn't fall apart), the way together was a word they were still learning: a memorization that they would recite most faithfully to each other in the dark, a promise of everything already written into their blood.

Together.