Prequel to Woman. In which two wounded bandits meet in a tavern.
Thanks
"So this is what I get for saving your life?" he questions, sounding far too amused for a man whose eye has turned several shades too blue (the center of it already blue enough to drown the sea, she thinks when she gets caught in its gaze). "Not even a simple thank you?"
Regina slides his drink across the way of the table, into his outstretched hand; then, for his wounded eye, a cold-wrapped slab of uncooked meat she'd procured from the barkeep, for one low price of a wink and an ample view of her rear as she'd swept away from the counter.
"You're welcome," she states primly, raw-red knuckles longing to stumble upon that smirk of his instead this time, when it tilts at her just so.
Still, she manages some degree of restraint; their so recent encounter with his cheekbone has left them smarting, after all – though not from any lingering notions of guilt, certainly not. In the heat of that roadside scuffle, with an army hard-pressed to bring back a heart to their Queen, before winter laid the path barren and drove the hunted deeper into hiding…well, who could blame her, really, for mistaking one idiot in green for another in black?
Robin clinks the lip of their mugs together, taking a swig before pressing the meat to his eye, and she watches with a primal sort of fascination as his throat bobs on a heavy swallow and he groans his relief. "Now that we're safely in the company of friends," he says, ignoring her silent scornful brow at his generous use of the term friends – friends don't simply turn up where they're not welcome, and she hadn't asked to be saved – "I have a proposition for you."
Regina scoffs her answer. "What could you possibly have to offer that I could possibly want to accept?"
"Hear me out," he insists. "I've a position open amongst my Merry Men, and I know just the woman to fill it."
"Why?" she wants to know, curious despite herself. "Who's leaving?"
"Oh, I'm not asking you to relieve a man of his post," he shrugs, "I've simply come to realize of late how lacking we are when it comes to particular skills."
"What," drawls Regina, "none of your men know how to throw a proper punch?" and she forcibly squelches the pop of delight in her chest at the sight of him biting back his chuckle.
The meat falls away, having absorbed too much of his warmth to serve much use anymore, and it opens up her view to her own colorful handiwork, glistening patches of green and purple blooming amidst the blue now. She almost winces on his behalf.
"Certainly not any who are willing to throw one at me," Robin allows, tipping his mug at her again, as though to salute her wilder ways.
"That's why you want me around?" she asks archly. "To blacken the other one too?"
"Have you ever looked into another's eyes," he carries on, abandoning his drink in favor of rummaging around for something crinkled into his breast pocket, "and known you were simply fated to meet them?"
"Fate is for fools," she starts to dismiss, thoughts cut short by the familiar blend of yellowed parchment, a Queen's decree for a traitor's head, unfolding to flatten on the space of table spanning between them.
"A fair likeness," Robin comments as they both stare down at her face, lips thinned into something menacing, though a nameless hand has depicted her to look rather dull in the eyes. "But I had a feeling it wanted for the fire of the real thing."
"A fire is exactly what this is missing," she grumbles in agreement, moving to crumple it into her fist, gaze already trained on the hearth crackling light into their corner of the tavern, but he intercepts her at the wrist.
"I firmly believe – should you join our ranks, that is – you'll find yourself in remarkably good company," he says, as earnestly as she's ever heard him in the short while they've now been formally acquainted, with the sun not yet set on this day their names exchanged hands. His smirk softens now, a gentle echo of the one he'd had at the ready the moment she turned from the fallen guard at her feet to find the arrow had come from her rival's bow.
Robin must know her hesitation better than she, his touch almost tender where hers had endeavored to knock his world askew, and surely she's weak from the pain and not from other things when she forgets her resolve to stay reasonably wary of his offer.
"Besides," and the full brunt of his smirk returns to distract her, "it couldn't hurt to have the extra protection."
"I don't need protecting," she's insisting immediately, falling further away from the point, deeper into that blue of his gaze.
"Perhaps not, but that hand at the very least will need looking after." He reaches for it now, without awaiting the permission she'd have never given, leaving her wrist to encircle her palm, thumbing broken skin and loosening a handkerchief from another of his pockets.
"Your face is what did this, not the Queen's Guard," she argues, half-hearted even to her own ears, and evidently deaf to his, as he winds the fabric tight around her sore and aching knuckles.
"Come with me," Robin tells her – does not ask – and like a sudden fool, she will follow.
She'll not be long with them, she promises herself, just until she's regained a horse and, she supposes, a fully functional hand; but winter makes its fast approach, and some fires are best kept in the company of those most attentive to the ways of their burning.