A black lace sleeveless knee-length dress, black stockings and black suede ankle boots, black leather gloves and a black cashmere wrap coat, with a midnight blue scarf to finish. Rosy tear-stained cheeks, rouge lipstick faded from bitten lips to keep the sobs at bay, and a red rose in hand, its petals misty from the rain.
Regina stands at the back, among the sea of black umbrellas, clutching her own, feeling like a fraud, like she doesn't belong here. Not among the people who loved him, loved him truly and loved him right.
She vaguely recognizes some of them, but she's only half paying attention, her gaze searching and searching for that one face that has never left her all these years along with his father's. Until she spots him, right at the front and much taller than when she'd last seen him.
He isn't crying. He's trying very hard not to. Not to show any vulnerability.
Just like her.
How silly she feels for such a thought. She didn't remain in his life long enough to make that kind of impact. He hasn't retained anything from her. How could he?
Two years isn't enough to leave a lasting impression, especially on one so young. He probably doesn't remember her, even if he'd tried to hold onto every memory of them together — she certainly had, still is — his father had surely dissuaded him of the notion soon after her departure. She dares not think of what he must have said about her.
The ceremony is over quickly, far too quickly — she's not ready to say goodbye; goodbye is the last thing she said to him all those years ago and she still isn't ready to truly mean it — and, as the people start to dissipate, she watches his son being led away by an old woman. The housekeeper, she remembers.
Everyone is heading to their house — his now, the boy's — just a few streets down from the cemetery and, once again, she finds herself lingering behind.
She approaches the coffin, places her rose on top of the others and allows a few more tears to fall before resting her gloved hand on the ebony coffin as if trying to feel him, feel his touch one last time, except this time nothing is touching her in return. No one is comforting her, not like he always used to, once upon a time.
She cries for the man that is no longer here, for the son that he left behind. And she cries for herself, for them, for the chance they missed.
How many times had she thought about calling him or showing up at the house, late at night, in the rain, like in the movies, and telling him that she loves him and she's sorry and she misses him and promising to never run away again when things get difficult because true love isn't easy and what they have is real and wouldn't he want to try again?
And he wouldn't need to say anything, he would just take her in his arms and kiss her, in the rain, under the moonlight, and he would never let her go again.
But she'd been too stubborn to do that. Too proud. She scoffs and cries and wants to scream because of how stupid it seems now to have let something so trivial stand in the way of their happiness. She loved him, she loves him, and now she won't ever have the chance to tell him again, to tell him everyday.
She won't get to see his answering grin, I know, and his I love you too, babe, always followed by a kiss on her lips, then on her nose, and finally on her temple when she inevitably turns slightly away and looks down blushing because even years later he would still be able to make her feel like the very first day they met.
She stands at the far end of the elongated room, away from the crowd, away from the snotty and pretentious who are more interested in being the ones to walk away with the highest priced piece than what is actually portrayed on the canvas.
She's looking at a simple painting depicting a country house in wintertime. But as she looks more closely, simple becomes quite inaccurate a word. She tilts her head and frowns as she notices every incredible detail. She can see the smoke coming out of the chimney, the frost on the windows and the candlelight shining through, the foot imprints on the snow leading up to the door, the—
"Do you like it?" a honeyed voice asks from beside her. She turns towards the stranger and has to turn away just as fast because he is insanely gorgeous and she feels a sudden need to stare at the smile directed at her and to hear that accent once more.
"No," she replies firmly, her gaze purposely fixated on the painting, but chancing a side-glance every so often. He raises his eyebrows in surprise and looks at her curiously, a hint of a smirk on his lips, a single nod thrown her way, inviting her to elaborate. "It's too structured, too precise. Art shouldn't be like that. It should be… chaotic. It should be reds and yellows and azures and every color you can think of. It should go one direction and then another, and another, until you lose yourself in it. It should be something to discover. A journey. You're not supposed to know how it ends straight away."
His smirk is not a fully blown grin, and he's biting his bottom lip and his eyes shine with humor making her feel as if she's missed something. His extends his hand then, in greeting, his teeth releasing his lip, as he says, "I'm Robin."
She frowns, thinking that name sounds familiar and he's still looking at her like he's enjoying a private joke at the moment.
Her eyes widen and she has to keep from gasping when she turns subtly to spy the name under the painting: Robin Locksley. The artist.
Oh no.
Oh, she's mortified, probably looks ridiculous with her mouth hanging open and she wants to run, run from him, but he's still standing there with his hand outstretched and his kind smile despite her having practically insulted him, so the only polite course of action is to grasp his hand in hers.
"Regina. I'm so s—"
"Don't apologize," he's quick to plead. "I appreciate someone as passionate as you." And he was looking in her eyes before, but now his gaze travels slowly down her body, from her painted lips down her slender neck, to her breasts, her waist, her legs, and up again.
Appreciation, indeed.
She blushes furiously, but cannot help but do what she's been wanting to since she met him moments go and return the gesture as she admires his jaw, his stubble, down to his well-toned chest and his muscled arms and legs, all the way up again and finally to his eyes that she hasn't properly noticed until now. They are the palest blue, but she wonders if those growing specks of gray are a constant or rather result from his previous ogling along with her own.
It's only a few weeks later that he discovers just how passionate she can be.
She pats her cheeks with her scarf, drying her tears, and turns to follow everyone down a very familiar road.
She knows Robin's friends — friends she hasn't bothered to keep up with over the years — have arranged some sort of gathering to honor his memory. She feels selfish for entertaining such thoughts on today of all days, but she's dreading the moment they recognize her and she has to face just how many people she left behind in a better life than the one she'd convinced herself she should be living.
A life she'll never have again.
She debated for a long time whether to even come here today. To allow herself to come back to this neighbourhood, this street, this house, all these memories. She didn't trust that she could handle it.
But ultimately it wasn't about her; she had to do what was best for him.
Always.
"What if he doesn't know who I am?"
"Is that really what you're afraid of?" Emma asks, hands on her hips and a raised sceptical eyebrow.
Regina should know better than to try and keep things from Emma, she knows her like no one else does. Except Robin.
Regina finds herself trying to rein in her tears again, it seems it's all she's been doing for days — for years, really, whenever she thinks of him, of them — before looking up at Emma and confessing what her friend surely already knows.
"What if he hates me?" she whispers, lips trembling and hands shaking because it's a thought that has haunted her these past seven years, kept her from picking up the phone to hear his sweet voice, to read him a bedtime story like she used to every night, to listen to him talk about school and his friends and his favourite teachers. "When I left, I didn't tell him what I should have, didn't explain why I was leaving or why we couldn't see each other again. I didn't know how to tell him that… that I had no place in his life anymore."
"You had to leave room in case Robin found someone else, someone who might help him raise his son."
She enters the house and suddenly she's taken back nine years ago.
She can see the walls, a different color then, void of pictures or paintings. Boxes are lining the living room floor and a toddler is sock sliding in the hall.
A few weeks later, the walls are painted, a light lilac — she's pleased to notice it has survived time — pictures are put up over the fireplace and drawings cover the refrigerator. A gray couch has appeared and a small carpet now hides the marker stains on the floor.
A few months after that, Robin's landscape painting has a place of honor in the entryway. Dishes overflow the sink, tiny monster trucks and plastic dragons lie on the wooden stairs and there are finger smudges on the windows.
The couch has been moved aside to make room for the tree, a real one, because Robin had scoffed at the idea of an artificial Christmas tree, stating the house would smell divinely and she'd smirked because she knew all too well how lovely pine smelled, as she'd pointed out to him with arms wrapped around his waist, nose and lips grazing his neck, and that afternoon had ended up being used for other activities than Christmas tree shopping.
A year later, a white grand piano occupies half the living room, the drawings on the fridge now have scrawled writing on it, and the voice of Thomas O'Malley is coming from the TV while they are making crepes in the kitchen, adding artificial coloring to the mix as per a little boy's request, and this isn't what she'd meant by eating the rainbow, but close enough.
Half a year later, and two years since she'd moved into the house, the living room looks deserted without the piano and the gray couch, half the pictures on the walls are gone, the cries of a child are deafening over the silence between Robin and herself as she stands at the door, one hand on the handle and the other on her suitcase.
And she walks out, leaving nothing behind but two broken hearts — along with her own — and an unfinished, untitled music sheet on the mantel above the fireplace.
Now, the couch is light green, matching the love seat in the corner, new pictures cover the walls and coffee table and, for today, wildflowers overflow the entire house in whites and soft blues, and the amount of leafage seems to have transformed the space into a beautiful meadow, something entirely reminiscent of Robin.
Her mirror, that once stood on the wall opposite the fireplace, has been replaced with a three-piece painting, not one of Robin's because he disliked having his own work into the house, except for that one piece that Regina had loved enough for him to satisfy her request of having it be the first thing people saw when they walked into their home.
(That one piece that Robin had sneaked into one of her boxes when she'd left, making sure she would always have a piece of him. Didn't he know that her heart would be reminder enough? A heart that had always belonged to him.)
The refrigerator is void of childish drawings, now it only holds grocery lists and appointments and a few tiny doodles she recognizes as Robin's.
But she notices a lot of things from their time together that haven't been replaced. The small carpet they bought together, the arrow bookends she'd given him when they'd moved in (and hadn't had the heart to take back), the narrow table in the hall and the seashell lamp at its end, the brown blanket she'd knitted and which had seen them through many a movie night is still on the couch.
As she enters the office she'd helped decorate, she sees that it too is practically unchanged. Wooden shelves filled with books, classic novels and books of art history and photography and architecture, line three walls painted a soft beige. And the last wall, behind the desk, isn't a wall at all, but rather a glass patio leading to the backyard.
Beside the door is a white couch, smaller than the one in the living room, where she would often find Robin reading. The entire furniture is made of wood, with a few potted green plants in the corners, and the light streaming in makes this Robin's favorite room. His sanctuary.
His favorite picture of the three of them is still in the same place, on his desk.
"I wondered if you were gonna show."
She gasps and turns around, noticing David leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and a sorrowful look that mirrors her own. He comes closer and she fears he's going to demand that she leave immediately, but instead he surprises her and envelops her in a hug.
She realizes this is the first time she's come in contact with someone who knew Robin as well as she did. Emma has been supportive, more than she'd expected, but it is oddly comforting to allow herself to grief alongside someone who feels Robin's loss as keenly as she does, who will miss him as she will.
David pulls away, smiles at her sadly, and surprises her once again, "I'm glad you're here."
"To be truthful, I wasn't sure if it would be right for me to be," she confesses to him easily because David had been there when things were falling apart between herself and Robin, he knows how devastated she — they — had been, had in fact been the one to insist they work it out.
He's the one she regrets not having kept in contact with the most because he hadn't just been Robin's friend, he'd become hers too in the two years she'd been with Robin and she wonders if he's angry with her for cutting all ties with him and is simply abstaining from saying anything because today shouldn't be about anything else than remembering their departed loved one, but she very much hopes, though she knows she isn't allowed to, that he understood her need to stay away.
And that maybe they can resume their friendship.
"It's right," he assures her. "Robin would have wanted you here." She wishes she could believe that. "But he isn't the only one you came for, is he?" He can read her so well, reminds her of Emma in that way, how he looks at her, eyebrows raised and daring her to lie to him. But she wouldn't, so she nods after a breath. "Go on, he's in his room."
David squeezes her hand in a show of support as she leaves the room and proceeds to walk up the stairs. They still creak.
His door is closed, but she can hear him sobbing, now that there is no one around to bear witness. Her heart clenches and she wants to burst through the door, but he came up here for privacy and the possibility that she might be a stranger to him looms over her.
Does she have a right to intrude?
Long ago she wouldn't have had to think twice about walking in. She'd have gone to him in an instant, hugged him tight and he would have wrapped his little arms around her neck and cried on her shoulder until her shirt and her hair came away wet and full of snot, but she wouldn't have cared. She'd promised him, when she'd become a permanent fixture in his life, that she would always be there for him.
(A promise she ended up breaking.)
After stalling as much as she could, she knocks on the door, a soft hesitant rasp, and waits with held breath for his permission. She hears his sweet murmur, yeah?, hard to decipher through his sobs, but all too recognizable to her.
She turns the knob and opens the door slowly, still wondering if this is a good idea or if she'd only be bringing him more pain. But Robin's little boy doesn't have many people left in his life to care for him. With his mother gone a few short months after he'd been born, Robin's parents passing away just last year and now his father too, what remains of his family?
She was his family, once.
As hard as she tries, she can't ignore the voice in her head telling her that he might have another mother figure in his life. Might have had her for years. Robin had surely moved on. Unlike herself.
But then, where was she?
She finally enters and sees him sitting up on his bed, tear-stained face, curls haphazardly arranged from lying down, clutching a giant Simba plush doll his father had given him on his fourth birthday. He's looking at her with wide eyes and a scared expression and her heart breaks once more because of course he doesn't know who she is, to him she's a stranger who just barged into his room, and him being afraid of her is worse than anything she'd imagined.
"Roland," she whispers cautiously, but it's followed by an involuntary, slight sigh of relief because she has missed him so much and here he is, still as beautiful as when she'd last seen him, and all she wants is to take back every hurt this boy has suffered (some of which because of her) and kiss it all better.
But she doesn't have that right anymore.
She takes his desk chair and sits at his bed's end, not too close. Because he still hasn't said a word to her.
"You probably don't remember me, but…" she blows a breath, trying to keep her voice steady, doesn't know how to even begin to explain who she was to him once. She settles for, "I was your dad's girlfriend a long time ago, when you were about three years old. I lived here with both of you for two years. I taught you how to swim, I used to read to you before bed, and you loved coming with me when I taught my yoga classes. Do you remember?"
She can hear how desperate she sounds, as she gets lost in such wonderful memories, but she has so many of the two of them and he has to remember some, right? Even just one would be enough.
But he still doesn't say a thing.
"Roland, I—"
"No." She frowns, confused, before tears threaten to make themselves known when she catches his meaning, having expected it, but still hoped against all hope that she might be mistaken. "I don't remember."
She swallows, looking down, her frown deepening, her hands idle in her lap, suddenly not knowing what to do with herself while she tries to accept their new reality. She moves to sit on his bed, but he sees her approaching and backs away hands held up and she can't hold back her tears anymore.
"Roland, I just—"
"I don't know you," he cries. "Please go," he pleads, no, demands, in what she guesses he attempted to be a firm voice, maybe a little threatening (but it's shaking and too congested), and it breaks her that he thinks he needs to protect himself from her.
She nods, resigned, tears now flowing freely, as she gets up to leave him be. But when her hand reaches the door, her back turned to him, she can't stop herself from turning her head to catch one last glance of her precious boy and look into his warm chocolate eyes one last time before she walks out (yet again).
"I just wanted to say, I'm sorry."
.:.
Regina comes back to her apartment (she's surprised she made it home without a scratch, with her mind still reeling and her vision clouded) and throws her umbrella on the floor before she sinks down, her back against the closed front door, her knees drawn up, her arms around her legs, and breaks down, never even bothering to turn on the lights.
She hasn't stopped crying since leaving Roland's room, but now she lets out free wails and loud sobs no one can reprimand her for. She doesn't know what she expected would happen today. Roland had reacted pretty much how she'd always imagined he would.
But no matter how much she'd pictured it, it still hadn't been enough to prepare her for the pain his reaction would bring. That feeling like she's just been punched in the gut. And kicked so hard she was left barely able to breathe.
She finally removes her coat, along with her scarf and gloves, but doesn't move from the floor just yet and knows full well she won't make it up the stairs and to her bedroom tonight. She's far too drained, feels too wretched and, as she looks up from where her forehead has been pressing on her knees, she quickly decides the couch will have to do.
She gets up slowly, knees and elbows cracking, removes her high-heeled boots (can hardly feel the pain in her toes now, but tomorrow will be a whole other story) and walks to the designated sleeping spot.
Her cries have quietened, now they're just a soft waterfall of resignation. Of guilt because she's brought this on herself.
She passes by the white piano, now in her living room, before reaching the gray couch they'd first bought together. There's a blanket on the small round ottoman and she drags that over her body as she lies down.
She won't sleep very comfortably tonight, still in her tight dress and stockings, makeup on, hair braided and twisted into an updo, slightly tilted to the side, but then again she doesn't deserve a good night's rest. And even if she could magically make her clothes and other encumbrances disappear, her night would still be filled with the events of this afternoon. With memories lived long ago, but never forgotten.
Regina pulls the blanket more tightly around her and presses her nose into their couch — she's always thought of it as such. When she'd moved here, she had debated whether to get rid of it but, in the end, it simply held too many memories for her to throw it out.
Memories that brought pain in those early months after the breakup but that, over time, brought a smile too. Memories of movie marathons, picnics in front of the fireplace, and late nights when Roland would be sleeping over at his grandparents.
Robin's hands, previously resting on her hips, find their way under her shirt and his fingers begin tracing soothing patterns on her stomach. They move upwards slowly, her shirt following, his intention clear.
His fingers leave her stomach, graze her ribs and settle on her breasts. He stays there, squeezing softly at first, tentatively running his thumbs over her pebbled nipples before finally adding his forefingers to the motion and tugging gently, twisting just enough to have her face getting warmer, her moans louder, and her thighs quaking in anticipation.
Her blasted shirt still covers her chest over his hands, all the way up to her neck, incapacitating Robin to move his lips down from her throat to her collarbone, but he's understandably distracted at the moment so her hands leave his hair where they'd been gripping firmly and go about removing her shirt as Robin's groan of protest turns into an appreciative moan as his tongue travels down exactly where she'd intended.
He kisses her collarbone, nips lightly as she throws her head back in a gasp, as her fingers resume their clutching and pulling of his hair, before his lips find their way to her breast replacing his hand that has now moved to her back and is tracing her spine, while the other still caresses one breast. He trails delicate kisses on the swell of her breast, under it, on her sternum, but not where she needs it most.
On a harsh tug of his hair, she feels him chuckle against her skin as he finally, blissfully, licks her nipple. But he is ever so patient and enjoys taking his time, teasing her, ever since they'd discovered he could make her come just from this, he enjoys driving her mad, bringing her to that edge and then pulling her back, over and over, and over again.
He always starts with just his tongue, laps at her, and then he blows on her wet skin, raising goosebumps all over her body, before using his tongue again. He bites tenderly and sucks, and then licks once more. He repeats, bites and sucks, until she feels her stomach tightening, along with the muscles of her arms and her legs, and he licks harder and longer, with the added stimulation of his hand on her other peak, until her thighs are quivering, her throat is dry, her moans are raspy, the hairs by her temple curl from the sweat, and her nails are leaving marks on his neck, shoulders, back, anywhere she can reach as she cries out and warmth spreads over her skin, yet she's shivering and shaking as he draws out her pleasure and continually licks her sensitive nipples until she can't take it anymore and he returns to light pecks on her breasts all the way up to her neck, her jaw, her cheek and, finally, her lips.
Now, of course, she couldn't see how those memories could ever make her smile again. Before Robin's death, there had always been a part of her, however deeply buried, that had held onto the hope that one day they wouldn't have just memories. They would have a future.
A future that's now gone.
.:.
The next morning, Regina wakes up — well, opens her eyes, giving them a rest after fighting all night to keep them closed — with morning breath, smudged mascara forming dark rings under her eyes, with her back hurting and her neck at an awkward angle, but she manages to get up just enough for a shower and a change of clothes.
David had called and asked if she would have lunch with him. He's lucky he's one of the few people she would get up for right now and she had left in such a hurry from Robin's the night before that she figures she owes him.
They meet at a quaint cafe right by his house — still the same white picket fenced, snug fairytale home, which he shares with the same sweet doe-eyed, almost angelic, wife who'd taken a surprising liking to her the first time Robin had introduced them — and find seats on the terrace where David wastes no time in asking about her talk with Roland.
Great, as if she hadn't relived that particular conversation enough times already.
But, still, there is one thing she has been dying to know.
"Where will Roland live now?" she asks, anxiously waiting to hear if the boy has someone in his life to care for him, if Robin had found someone else to care for his family.
"All his relatives are either in England or Belize and they haven't seen him since he was a baby," David tells her gravely while sipping his caramel macchiato with a double espresso shot before looking straight into her eyes, "As far as I know, no one has claimed him."
"So what will happen to him?" she asks in a whisper, afraid of the answer.
It's silly but, for the first time, it dawns on her, the tragedy of Roland's situation, the damning truth that he doesn't have anyone anymore.
"He'll go in the foster system."
Regina closes her eyes and takes a sharp intake of breath, her lips slightly trembling as she tries not to break down in the middle of this very public place, her irrational fear of a scolding gripping her as she thinks that, wherever she is, her mother can sense her moment of weakness.
She knows from Emma that, while some kids are lucky, many end up with a family unable or, more often, unwilling to properly care for them. To love them. She doesn't want Roland to ever feel like he is unloved, like he isn't deserving of love.
"Couldn't you take him?" David finally suggests, something that, judging by his expectant look, he's wanted to ask for some time.
"How? He doesn't know me. What would be the difference between him staying with me or with strangers?"
"The difference is you know him. And no one is going to love that boy more than you." He's right but, still, she finds herself ready to argue again, when he cuts her off, "He's scared, Regina. You just showed up, years too late," he adds, pointedly, "he's still processing."
But Regina's shaking her head; she doesn't believe it, can't believe it, that Roland would remember her and lie about it. If he did remember her, he surely didn't feel the same way about her as he once did. Robin wouldn't have let him hold onto those feelings, would he?
David, as always, senses just where her thoughts are heading, "No matter how things ended between you and Robin, he would never have sullied Roland's memories of you."
When they say goodbye, Regina makes no promises, but on the way home all she can hear are David's final words to her, please, don't give up on him, him pleading with her to go back and try again, to not walk away like she did before, to finally do the right thing. It hurts to come to terms with what she did. But David's right, she had mishandled everything back then, had left without an explanation or a proper goodbye. Doesn't Roland deserve morefrom her now?
But she can't.
She's driving, thinking about it, picturing how Roland would react at her coming back and… she can't. She can't handle him rejecting her.
She's a coward.
She was a coward then and she's a coward now.
She arrives home to find a missing call from her father. She had told him about Robin's death, had telephoned a few days after she'd heard the news, and he had rushed over to her apartment to offer whatever comfort he could. She had asked him not to say anything to her mother; her father had always liked Robin and been sorry to hear they'd broken things off and even more so when she'd told him of his death, but her mother… her mother would surely have rejoiced.
She had been glad when Regina had walked out seven years ago, had applauded her finally coming to her senses and realizing she deserved better than an artist of no great renown and a father to another woman's child.
She thinks about her father. About how much he loves her, how he would always reassure her after every bad grade, every tearful breakup, every hurtful comment of her mother's about how much of a disappointment she's turned out to be.
She thinks about how he would readily dry her tears, but never step in to make sure Cora didn't get the chance to put them there in the first place. Never tried to keep it from happening again.
He would always tell her to be brave and strong, but never actually showed her how to be. He would say Cora was wrong, that Regina was brilliant and worthy, but he had never made her feel that way. Who was she to try and stand up to her mother when the most important person in her life was unable to?
Her father loves her. But he'd never fought for her.
Just like she hadn't fought to stay in Roland's life.
Just like she isn't fighting now to repair what she should never have let break.
Before she can have time to rethink her decision, she quickly turns back to her car and drives into the familiar road towards their old place.
The housekeeper answers the door, her glasses resting low on her nose and an angry look on her face, and Regina rushes past her, not bothering with a good morning as she spots Roland curled on the loveseat with a photo album in his lap. A photo album she recognizes.
"I didn't think you'd be back," he says without looking up from a picture, his voice a little too nasal.
"I never gave you a reason to," she concedes, ashamed of just how terribly she'd failed him. That stops now, she vows. "I'm so sorry, Roland."
"You said that."
"Yes, but I need you to know how much I wish I could change how I left things with you." She points to the picture he's been staring at since she walked in, of the three of them at an amusement park, Roland on his father's shoulders with a hippopotamus hat he'd made at the crafts stand and her with her arms around Robin's waist, her head resting against Roland's dangling leg. They look so happy. "You remember me now."
"I didn't forget," he admits shyly.
"Roland, I thought about you every d—"
"I waited for you to come home," he shouts suddenly, finally looking at her, his tears now plainly visible, along with his puffy eyes and red nose. "Even when dad told me that you weren't, I never stopped believing. I kept waiting for you. Why didn't you come?" he asks, his voice dying down now, almost to a whisper, his tone pleading for a reason she can't give. Because nothing justifies her leaving the way she did.
"Baby, I wanted to. You have no idea how many times I thought about coming back to see you," she cries out, wishing she could take it all back. Wishing her being here now could be enough to fix everything, but knowing it can't. It shouldn't.
"You said you loved me. But how can you love someone and then one day just stop?" he asks, his voice defiant and his eyes accusing.
"I never stopped loving you," she tells him firmly, slowly, making sure he hears every word, every syllable, making sure he understands that, for all her faults, she loved him more than she'd loved anybody else. "The reason I left was between your father and I."
"So it was my dad you didn't love anymore."
"No, I always loved your father. I still do, " she says, a tear sparkling as it traces down her flushed cheeks.
"If you loved him, you should have stayed."
"You're right," she nods. "We were fighting so much near the end, said so many horrible things out of anger, always finding new ways of hurting each other. But we should have tried harder to fix things. We shouldn't have given up so easily. We just couldn't recognize that what we had was worth fighting for. And when I did, it was too late, much too late. But I never had any doubt that knowing you, raising you has been the best thing to ever happen to me."
"You regret it? Leaving?"
"Every day."
He nods. "I regret ever believing you when you said we were a family."
She'd been standing the entire time, but now her legs give out and she falls on the strange couch, her face in her hands. But she's not giving up. She vowed she would do right by him, and she won't go back on her word. Perhaps he doesn't want her in his life, perhaps he would be happier without her, but she will make damn sure he knows he always has a family should he need it.
"What's that?" Emma asks walking in with a bottle of tequila, bless her, to find Regina staring intently at a small object in her hands.
"When I was young, my father bought me two little porcelain monkeys from a store in Chinatown," Regina starts telling her. "They each had a magnet on their belly so when you placed them face-to-face it looked like they were hugging. Not long after I moved in with Robin, I gave one to Roland and I kept the other one and I told him that whenever he was scared and I wasn't around, all he had to do was look at it and know that I was thinking of him and loving him. I packed mine when I left and the other half stayed with Roland. I found myself looking at it so many times over the years, wishing things had gone differently," she admits, not for the first time, to Emma who had witnessed many a drunken night when Regina would speak of her deepest regret. "I was missing him so much and I could swear, sometimes, I would look at that figurine and know that sweet boy was missing me too. I don't want to find out that I was fooling myself the whole time."
"Fooling yourself about what?" Emma frowns, placing the tequila bottle and her car keys on the table, but refusing to sit beside Regina just yet, giving her the space she knows her grieving friend needs.
Regina hesitates, still unable to look at Emma for fear of her being able to discern her worries. "What if he doesn't know who I am?"
She takes the figurine out of her purse now, laying it on the coffee table besides the photo album Roland had placed there rather loudly. He's staring at it intently, opening his mouth and swallowing a few times before tentatively reaching to graze the monkey's golden hat.
He drops his hand suddenly, gets up and runs up the stairs where she hears the bang of his bedroom door closing.
Regina drops her head, releases a heavy, desperate sigh and gets ready to leave before she messes up what little progress she might have achieved. He's not amenable to trusting her now. She only hopes she'll have enough time to try again before he's taken away to some family where she won't be able to reach him.
She turns towards the door, her hand half raised to open it, when—
"Where are you going?"
She turns back to see Roland on the highest step holding his own small porcelain monkey and something she was afraid she'd never see again. A smile.
She drops her purse on the floor and makes her way to him as he rushes down the stairs, runs as fast as his legs allow him and jumps into her arms. She feels his tears on her hair and is sure he can feel hers in his, but she's laughing, laughing and kissing his hair over and over, then both of his cheeks, his forehead, and the tip of his runny nose, eliciting a soft laugh from him too.
She puts him back down, but can't look away, can't help herself but stare at his sweet sun-kissed face, her fingers grazing his cheeks back and forth, her tears still flowing as she contemplates just how lucky she is that, though she wishes it had been under much happier circumstances, they have found each other again, that she can be there to help him get through this tragedy, and that she hasn't irreparably destroyed everything she and Robin ever shared.
"Roland," she whispers uncertainly, still fearful of his reaction, "would you like to come stay with me?"
He beams at her and nods strongly before going in for a hug again, no doubt also to hide the fierceness of his tears from her, but he needn't do that, she tells him. He never has to be afraid of showing her his insecurities. He never has to fear losing her again.
"I'm not going anywhere," she assures him as she tightens her grip, lets him hold onto her for as long as he needs, until he believes she won't let go.
.:.
As soon as everything is settled, the judge agreeing with Roland's social worker's assessment, his entourage's testimony (David had been particularly adamant about the important role she had played during Roland's early years) as well as his own that staying with Regina would be best for him, they are at Robin's for one last time, packing the rest of Roland's things to be delivered over to her apartment within the day.
(They're keeping the house, could never part with it, but Regina has decided they need some time to adjust to being in each other's lives again. Time to get accustomed to each of their routines and their way of doings things, time to become a family again and, for a while, they would be staying in her apartment until going back to the house wasn't as painful as it still is now.)
She's currently in Robin's room going through drawers of personal items looking for anything that Roland might like to keep when she fishes out a crumpled music sheet. She remembers how she'd started writing that song barely a year after they'd all been living together, after she'd realized she could see herself marrying Robin, being a mother to his son.
"That's the song you wrote," she hears Roland say from the doorway, surprised that he would know that. "My dad used to hum it to me before bed."
"He did?"
Roland nods with a small smile. "He was never with anyone else, you know?" he goes on to explain, perhaps sensing how often her thoughts had taken that direction while she's been helping him pack up the house, being thrown into memory after memory at every turn. "I heard his friends asking him about it once. He just said that the love he'd known with you wasn't something he could ever find again."
"Me neither," she murmurs sadly.
"You never finished it," Roland points out, but she hears the question behind his words.
No, Robin and her had ended before she had a chance to. "We'll finish it now," she decides. "For him. Will you help me?"
"I don't know how," he replies with a frown.
"I'll show you."
She starts with teaching him each note, which he already knows the names of thanks to many viewings of the Sound of Music on Christmas Eve, and how to recognize them on the page. Then, she shows him the different keys, the major and minor scales and how each serve a different purpose, convey a different feeling.
Soon, she has him playing a few easy tunes and accompanying her on the simpler duets. Before long, Roland becomes quite the promising student and they begin working on the song dedicated to his father.
They decide not to make the song a sad one, celebrating the way Robin lived rather than how he died. No diminished chords; instead they opt for cheery, high notes.
Robin of Spring starts out rapid, joyful, and then slows, settles at a steady rhythm. It ends unexpectedly in the middle before beginning again, resuming its slow melody. Then, the rapid, high notes come back, before slowing down almost to a stop, but still lingering, giving the impression that it will begin anew, before it finally ends. Not abruptly, but with time to see it coming. And with a promise of renewal. Of rebirth.
And that's what Robin had given her. A wonderful beginning, full of passion and tenderness, of possibilities. Before coming to an end.
Before that warm feeling of hope and love had come back again. Before Roland had given her a reason to keep going, to experience joy instead of sorrow.
To never stop believing in second chances.