I own no one but my own people
Robin Hood wanted Regina to find love again.
He had smiled and felt the first bit relief since he had been cursed into this ghostly experience after his death, forced to wonder on this earth forever apparently, when she finally met a man whom Robin thought was worthy of her.
A man named Ali Baba, an honorable thief who kept the secret of the location where the less than scrupulous forty thieves hid their treasures, seemed like a good match for her. He was polite, gentle, kind and had a past of his own so he wouldn't be inclined to judge Regina for hers.
But for Regina it had been far too soon after Robin's death, five years, and after a single date where Ali didn't even get a goodnight kiss, she went up to her bedroom, wrapped herself in Robins favorite grey hoodie, and cried herself to sleep.
The weeks that followed that date were spent in a depressed state, barely getting out of bed, not showering, not eating… It had taken Henry sitting outside her bedroom reminding her that Robin would want her to go on for her to come back to reality.
Robin was forced to watch his Queen from afar for years and years; able to see her but she wasn't able to see nor hear him, the same with his daughter and son.
He watched his boy grow up and step into his role as the new leader of the Merry Men as if it were made for him, going up against a whole new sheriff and a new cruel royal, falling for Emma and Hook's daughter of all people who took surprisingly well to the outlaw lifestyle.
The day Roland's first wanted poster was put up on the trees of Sherwood Forest, Robin had never felt so proud.
He watched his daughter be raised in Storybrooke by Zelena and struggled with her identity (why on earth did she shoulder his little girl with the burden of living up to a legend?) as well as witnessed her fall in and out of love as so often teenage girls did before finally finding the one she would spend the rest of her life with.
But his Queen; she was left alone and it broke Robins heart that she had never moved on.
Sure she had her son but he had his own lovely little family now. She also had Zelena but the love of a sister and the love of a man to hold you at night was far different and Regina deserved that kind of love included in her happy ending.
And now here they were in Hyperion Heights trying to defeat a new villain and break a new curse. Only this time it was different.
There was a man here in this curse. A man who Robin SWORE looked at him and not through him like all others had. He was forced to watch this Doctor Facilier, this skeezy oily man pressure her into becoming the person she had fought so hard to be any longer.
Then one night Robin has been forced to watch as he invited her into his apartment.
"Regina, don't trust him," Robin begged, knowing full well she couldn't hear him but he had to try to protect her. The man's dark brown eyes seemed to flicker over to him for half a moment before he leaned against the door frame.
"Would you like to come in?"
"She'd never be with you again," Robin snarled at the man. "She's changed."
But the look in his queen's eyes told him that was very much the opposite.
"Definitely not," she lied, her eyes shouting the truth.
Facilier glanced over at Robin for a moment, as if he had been the one that had made her to say no, and he had to remind himself that it was impossible. No one could see him.
…
Right?
"You do what you wish, Regina," Facilier told her, his eyes raking over the Queen. "You always have."
He walked away, leaving the door wide open, an invitation to come in that he knew she would ignore. Of course she would, she would never be with this villain; not now, not after everything she's changed about herself.
So when he was forced to watch her walk into his apartment and was unable to stop her, it was the hardest thing Robin had ever been through, living or dead…
As weeks passed and Robin watched the two of them grow from friends with benefits, not that Robin EVER watched the two of them, he wasn't sure his nonexistent heart could take it, to something more serious.
It appeared that finally after years away, she had fallen for a new man. The opposite of everything Robin stood for, the opposite of everything Robin believed in, he even looked as different from the thief as a man could get with dark brown eyes and smooth brown skin instead of bright blue eyes and pale skin that was so prevalent in his area of the Enchanted Forest.
Facilier would never be her soulmate. He would never have the intense kind of true love that Regina and him had shared.
But maybe, Robin thought as he watched Facilier take her arm as they walked down the sidewalk, maybe... that was exactly what she needed. She would never have another soulmate. She would never have another true love. She would never be with someone who might, in her mind, replace Robin. So why bother trying to love someone who would be his simple substitute?
So, she had gone to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, which, he begrudgingly admitted, seemed to make her happy.
Weeks later while the former thief was looking on with a proud grin as his daughter took her new/old girlfriend out on a date he felt a sudden tug at his being, compelling him to disappear from where he was and summoning him somewhere unfortunately familiar.
The inside of Facilier's lavish apartment and the voodoo doctor himself was right in front of him with a snake oil smoke.
"Robin of Locksley, it is a pleasure to formally meet you."
Robin furrowed his brow at the man, glancing around the room, sure that he was speaking to another man with that iconic name.
"I promise you, Robin, I'm talking to you," Facilier assured him, making Robin whip back towards him.
"You-... you can actually see me?"
"And hear you."
"How?"
Facilier chuckled. A sound that was somehow warm and inviting while also filled Robins veins with ice water.
"I have a quite a few tricks up my sleeves. Being able to see and speak to unrestful souls is child's play truthfully. Especially one whose needs to move on are so obvious, it's almost comical."
Robin eyed him uncertainty as the man approached him, holding out a rather lavish glass full of a strange red swirling liquid.
"Have a drink with me, Locksley."
"I can't drink," Robin admitted. "Nor eat. I haven't been able to since-."
"Since your death? I'm quite aware of the rules. But you will be able to drink this, I promise."
When he made no move to take the offer he smiled that icy yet somehow warm smile again. "You don't trust me," said Facilier, more of a statement that a question.
"Why should I?" he challenged the witch doctor. "You're a villain, you want Regina to become the Evil Queen again."
Facilier shrugged as if Robin had simply told him his shoes were untied. "Our Queen was a villain as well. And all I want is for Regina to actually choose who she wants to be, not be pressured into being good by heroes who'll never truly accept her as one of their own, not really."
"She's made her choice," Robin argued. "She wants to be a hero, not this- this in between stage you forced her back into. She's was manipulated enough when she was a girl and a young woman, she doesn't need you doing it to her now."
Facilier laughed like Robin had said some hilarious joke. "If you l think anyone can force Regina's hand into doing anything, you don't know her as well as you think you do."
The former thief just glared at the man who once again offered him the mysterious cup.
"Drink," Facilier told him once more. "I won't take no for an answer."
While he said it with a smile, Robin had a feeling it wasn't exactly a friendly riff so he took the glass, bringing it to his nose and, strangely… he could smell the contents.
He hasn't been able to smell ANYTHING in years. Not since the overpowering smell of the beam of lightning from the Olympian Crystal so long ago.
It smelled like Regina's shampoo. It smelled like her body wash, her perfume, the candles she lit when she wanted to be intimate… It smelled like Robyn's baby shampoo and the warm woolen smell of Rolands cloak he had worn when he was a boy and the pine and earth of his home in Sherwood Forest.
It smelled like everything Robin Hood missed in his life.
"What is this?" Robin asked but not taking his face away from the glorious scents.
"That, Locksley, is a tricky little potion I know how to make," Facilier answered. "It smells different to everyone and reminds lost souls of everything they miss most in life. You're going to need that to make you want to take that next step, to make you desperate and willing enough."
"Desperate enough to do what?"
Another smile. "To possess someone. Me, specifically."
Robin finally tore his attention away from the contents inside the cup to stare slack jawed and wide eyed at the voodoo doctor. Why on earth would Robin want to possess ANYONE much less this bloody fool.
"You? …I-... wh- why-?"
"Why am I offering up my body as a means to house your spirit or why am I giving you an opportunity to possess someone?"
"Both."
Facilier smiled again. "To answer your first question, it's much easier to possess a man willing to take on another soul or whose soul isn't strong enough to push yours out than a body with a soul that'll fight the possession. Fortunately for you, my soul is thankfully far outside my body and tucked safely away at the moment. Second; because I want you to get closure with her. I want you to move on."
Robins face fell at his last sentence.
"I can't… I can't move on," Robin said softly. "I'm not even supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be obliterated. I don't know why I'm still here much less non-existent."
"You were killed by the Olympian Crystal?" Robin nodded his confirmation. "How much do you know about it, apart from what Hades told you?"
"Not much, truthfully."
"Lucky for you I know quite a bit. You see; the crystal was formed when Zeus became enraged and tried to kill a mortal woman who denied his advances because she was in love with a slave of all people. Zeus sent a lightning bolt designed to destroy her soul so that she and this man could never be together, even in the afterlife. However her lover jumped in front of her to take the blow, the bolt killed him and that streak of lightning became known as the Olympian Crystal. The Goddess Aphrodite took pity on the slaves soul, and made it so he could bypass the Underworld and simply wait for his lover in an afterlife version of the location where they met, the most significant place for the two of them. Even made it so in times of great distress he could visit her in her dreams."
"So what does that mean?"
Facilier leaned in slightly. "It means that so long as it kills someone who sacrificed their life for someone else, it won't obliterate them. When you're at peace, you'll go to wherever was most precious to you and her where you'll be able to wait for her to die, you'll be able to visit her… you and her will be together again, Locksley."
Robins face broke out into a wide grin. Tears of joy would have streamed down his cheeks had he the ability.
He was going to be with Regina again. He was going to be able to visit her in her dreams, he was going to be with her for all of eternity.
But… this also didn't make any sense. Why would her current boyfriend be willing to do this for him? Wouldn't it behoove Facilier to keep Robin on this earth, stranded by whatever was holding him back?
"Why would you tell me this?" asked Robin, struggling not to get his hopes up. "What does my moving on get you? More importantly, how does me possessing you help me at all?"
Facilier took a sip of his own, non-supernatural, wine before he answered. "You may not believe it but I DO care for Regina, Locksley. I care for her very much as a matter of fact."
Robin looked deep into the voodoo doctors eyes, almost wanting to find a lie but instead found that he was telling the truth. He did care for the Queen.
"You saying your goodbyes will be able to help you move on. You moving on will bring her happiness and you being there for her incase she passes on to the next world will help me feel at ease. I have no notion of being another soulmate," he admitted without sadness and was instead just stating facts. "I know that I'll have her physical life, you'll have what comes after. I also know she choose me because she didn't want that kind of love that you two shared in her life again."
Emotions and feelings flooded the thief at Facilier's admission. If he could cry he would have. Regina would always be his. She would always be his, even if she did move on with this vil-... this man, who even admitted himself that what they had would never compare to what the outlaw and the queen had.
Facilier chuckled at the look of pure joy on Robin's face, nodding to the goblet in his hand. "You want to take that drink now?"
Robin beamed at the man before he downed the contents of the cup and immediately felt a warm sensation spreading throughout his body.
If it smelled marvelous, its taste was a hundred times better. Regina's homemade lasagna and apple pie, Little John's rabbit stew cooked over an open flame and Robins favorite ale all danced harmoniously on his tongue and he savored the flavor as long as possible before he swallowed, moaning softly and making Facilier laugh at the elation on the thief's face.
"Do you have anymore of this?" asked Robin, frowning when Facilier shook his head.
"Unfortunately I don't. But it's not a drink of leisure, Locksley, it's to help you."
Robin gave a curt nod, setting the goblet on a stand beside him. "Right, sorry. What am I supposed to do then, I've never possessed anyone before."
God that smile was unnerving. "Concentrate on me. The same pull you felt when I summoned you here, I want you to have that same feeling towards me. Feel the part of me where my own soul resides, picture yourself taking up space in it. Imagine yourself tasting what you just tasted, smelling what you smell, talking to her, being able to touch her…
Robin closed his eyes tight, picturing being able to fish speak the woman who he loved after twenty five years, picturing his soul taking over Faciliers body. He felt that same pull he had felt when he appeared suddenly in Faciliers apartment. Closing his eyes, he stepped forward into Facilier but it had been unlike other times when he passed through people without so much as a blink of his eye. It was as if he was putting on a well fitted suit and, he realized when he opened his eyes, he was.
A thousand sensations long since forgotten filled him. Feeling a chest rose and fall with breaths, a heart thumping against a rib cage, needing to blink, running a hand over a surface and feeling it, truly feeling it…
"Enjoying yourself?" Facilier's voice asked him with a chuckle in his tone and Robin looked around confused for a moment before he realized the sound was coming from his head.
"I'm still in here," the voodoo doctor said. "You won't ever truly fully take over someone's body."
"But I'll have control over the words?" asked Robin out loud, shocking himself with the voice that flittered past his lips; smooth and silk-like with no warm accent.
"You do. And usually the host has most of the control, fighting with the soul inhabiting them but I'll allow you to run the show if you will; providing you don't do anything that would get me arrested or accosted."
Robin nodded, taking a shuddering breath as he walked out of the apartment, ready to finally say goodbye to the woman he loved.
Please Review! Three more chapters to come!