Day 1 - Bandit OQ happy ending.
Nice reading!
(...)
Inhaling, Regina opens her eyes slowly.
She has no idea where she is. She does not remember anything except standing up in front of that unknown boy to protect him from getting hurt. What she does remember, however, is the piercing pain that shot through her the moment the sword touched her chest and then everything is a blur.
Confused, Regina lifts her head a bit from the hard pillow but regrets the decision immediately.
Her palms turn into fists as everything around her starts to spin. She tries to breathe through uneasiness and pain that floods her body, her chest shakes with every breath she takes, making her knuckles go white from how hard she's squeezing her hands.
It's pure torture.
"Milady," she hears a voice from above her, a voice that she recognizes and her eyes snap open (she doesn't recall closing them). For a moment, everything is blurry but then her vision becomes clearer and she catches him, the man who saved her from the Evil Snow, looking at her with relief written all over his handsome face.
She tries to say something but the unbearable pain in her chest forbids her and only a gasp escapes her as she closes her eyes, trying to steady her breathing so that it wouldn't hurt so much.
"Stay calm, milady," he says in that annoyingly sweet voice that he probably uses when he talks with small children and she scrunches her nose at him, but even that takes the pain to a higher level. "You were injured pretty badly but the healer cleaned your wound and patched it up," Robin tells her and she gives him what she hopes is an understanding look, praying he'll get its meaning.
It seems Robin does get what she means because he only smiles sympathetically at her and squeezes her hand. He stands up then from his chair and walks to the nightstand, puts a washcloth into the water and then brings it to Regina's forehead.
She hisses as the cold cloth makes contact with her hot skin (she probably has some kind of infection which made her feverish, she thinks) and even that little sound makes the muscles of her body tense, reminding her why she was trying to stay so still in the first place.
"The healer said you are forbidden to leave bed for a few days," Robin continues to speak, and if Regina wasn't in so much pain, she would have laughed at his words because she's pretty sure she's not capable of lifting one single finger up. "But you'll fine, milady. I'll make sure that you'll survive all of this."
Robin's words make Regina frown and she wants to say something, to ask where she is or what happened after she got injured, how he found her but the weakness overtake her body and she falls into unconsciousness where there's no pain.
(…)
When Regina wakes up next time, she feels better. She still has to open her eyes slowly but when she does, the ceiling above her is no longer turning. Breathing has become a bit easier, only every other inhale makes her grit her teeth from pain.
She smiles to herself as she slowly lifts one hand, then another and it might hurt like a bitch but she can survive that, it's nothing compared to what she was feeling when she woke up for the first time. She shifts a bit then and tries to sit up.
It turns out to be a huge mistake.
She screams out in pain, can't help it, and falls back on bed, her whole body shaking. Every breath is an agony, every moment spent not breathing is an agony too and she fists the sheets as hard as she possibly can and tries to breathe, tries to stop the shaking of her body, tries to wait until this pain will lessen.
"Regina!"
Robin's alarmed voice is heard and it doesn't take a second until there's a zipper sound heard and Robin is rushing to her side, his face anxious. She sees a few other men walk into what she finally notices is a tent but she stays focused on Robin's eyes, those blue eyes that she thinks she was born to gaze into but her faith was cruel - he married another.
"I'm alright," she manages, her throat sore and scratchy.
It takes a while but the pain finally lessens and turns into something that she can take without squeezing sheets in her hands. She still breathes cautiously, afraid of putting herself into unbearable pain again.
"Are you thirsty?" Robin asks when the men leave the tent, zipping it up and leaving the two of them alone.
Water would be amazing right now but she shakes her head – moving does not sound amazing at all. She watches as Robin takes a chair from the other end of the tent and carries it to Regina's bed. He sits down on it then and takes her hand in his.
"You scared the hell out of us," Robin tells her with a small, unsure smile on his face. Regina arches an eyebrow at him – they knew each other for like… one day, and she definitely feels something for him but there's no way he could feel the same, after all he got married.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, her voice too weak to say words loudly. "I promise to leave your tent as soon as I am able to get out of this bed," she tells him, feeling guilty. She does not remember the last time someone took care of her and asked for nothing in return or made some cruel things to her.
She's learned her lessons the hard way and now she's able to protect herself. She's not afraid of Robin but she's not the one to take help from others, she does not trust easily and if the pain wasn't so bad, she would be on her way now.
"No worries, you can stay here for as long as you need," he assures her. After a beat, he adds, "Even though we are rivals, we can forget our differences right now, at least until you get better."
Regina stays quiet, not knowing what else to say.
For a moment they stay in a comfortable silence and Robin takes her hand in his and strokes it, and Regina blames it on some sort of drugs that must be coursing with her blood for making her so damn weak for this thief with deep blue eyes.
Trying to distract herself from the thoughts that should not be invading her mind, she asks, "What happened after I got hurt?"
"Well, the man who did this to you disappeared. The boy you saved took your blood, and you'll not believe it but he used it as an ink to write something. As soon as he finished, he, the blonde woman and some crazy man disappeared and you were left there bleeding down to death," he says, squeezing her hand. "Me and my men brought you to our camp, found a healer that saved your life."
Regina swallows hard, feeling so conflicted and confused at the same time. Her thoughts drift back to this unexplainable pull she felt towards that boy, there was an unknown need to protect him so badly that she didn't even care about her own life.
The boy is gone now and she'll never get her answers, so instead she changes the topic.
"Where is your wife?"
"She… disappeared." Robin frowns, and then explains, "She ran away right after our wedding ceremony. A few days later I got a letter from her telling me that our marriage was a mistake and that she's leaving to the West side of the land."
Regina's eyes widen in surprise. "A few days later? How long have I been staying here?"
"For about two weeks now, milady."
Regina gasps at the revelation. Two weeks. She's been here for two weeks. The air is stuck in her throat as she curses herself over and over again. She's pretty sure her little home in the middle of the forest now belongs to someone else while she's laying here hurt and homeless now.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
"I'm so sorry for putting you through all this trouble." Regina says after a moment, turning to look at Robin who tells her that it was no trouble at all. Still, she assures him, "I promise to pay you for your hospitality and as soon as I'm back on my feet I'll leave and you'll never have to see me again."
Robin doesn't seem to agree with her but he keeps his thoughts to himself and smiles at her instead, squeezing her hand again in a comforting way.
She could stare into his eyes for the rest of her life.
(…)
Recovering is a hard process.
She tries to get better as quickly as possible but it takes another two weeks for her to finally get out of the bed without screaming out in pain. She can barely eat for the pain most of the time is way too much and that awful scar in the middle of her chest doesn't make her feel any better either.
After getting out of the bed things become easier. Before she knows it, she's able to walk without support around the camp of the men who somehow became her friends, and she's able to eat properly, she can even chuckle without feeling like her insides are being torn apart. Even though getting up from bed, sitting up or standing up still makes tears collect at the corners of her eyes she's getting better.
She's finally getting strong enough to leave.
And she tells Robin so one evening when he escorts her to her tent (evenings are not the best part of the day, after a day on feet she barely makes it to bed on her own).
"I think I'm strong enough to live on my own," she says slowly and she can feel as Robin immediately tenses beside her. They've become closer during those weeks she stayed with them, they bonded while talking about thievery and their secret tricks, and Regina would be lying if she said that she's not sad to leave this camp.
She would be lying if she said that she didn't developed feelings for this thief.
"Maybe… maybe you could stay?" Robin offers, stopping their slow walk. He turns her aching body a bit so she's looking directly to his face and for a moment he just looks at her. Then he inhales deeply and stutters, "I… you became a part of our … family, Regina. You've become a friend to all of us and I would hate to see you leave us."
"What are you saying?" She asks, confused.
"You can stay with us." He tells her, making her eyes turn wide. "You're a wonderful bandit and we would be honored to have you in our band. You're also a wonderful friend to me and even if you don't see it, you helped me to survive the hardest part of my life – being left by a wife is not as simple as it looks."
"Robin, I could never-"
"Please, think about it," he asks her, "Don't give me an answer now. Just think about it."
"I…" she stares at him at a loss of words, opening her mouth over and over again but no words come out.
Robin smiles at her and wraps his arm around her again, helps her go to bed and lie down. Then he pulls the sheet over her body and takes her hand, squeezes it and tells her that he would love to have her around for the rest of his life.
That night Regina doesn't sleep. She thinks about all cons and pros of staying with the band of Merry Men, she thinks about what it means to them to take her in permanently – she's sure Snow White will be not only after Regina, but after them too.
She's good at being alone and she liked the life that she's built for herself – a life where she's a homeless person who barely gets to eat but it was still better than living in the castle with that crazy woman – but now, now she got used to the loud voices of men, to inappropriate jokes and stories around the campfire. She got used to Robin's arm wrapped around her for support while they walk around the campsite and his forest scent.
She thinks that she's good at being alone and she can always go back to it if she doesn't like being in a band of thieves.
And so she tells Robin and this band the first thing in the morning that she's staying. The reaction she gets from those men surprises her and makes tears collect in her eyes – they all applaud her and hug her and some of them squeeze her too tight making her grit her teeth in pain but she's still happy, as happy as she has never been before.
And when finally Robin approaches her, he pulls her into his arms but instead of hugging, he presses his lips against hers, surprising her. She doesn't hesitate and responds, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer, ignoring the pain that rushes through her as their chest press together.
She's dreamt about this moment for so long now, and it seems that Robin did, too.
And as a group of wild men whistle around them, Regina thinks that this is what a happy life feels like.
In the back of her head she realizes that she's found her happy ending in the middle of the woods with thieves and criminals, and she could never regret giving up the life that she once had.