I did a thing because I'm having a lot of feelings right now after those spoiler pictures. I'm sorry.

I own none of these characters. Obviously.

The tears falling from her eyes distorted her view of his face. The marble floor was hard on her knees, but that did not matter to Regina. She was crouched on the floor beside him, with his head resting on her arm while her other hand stroked the scruff on his chin, the scruff that had a hundred times scratched her chin when they kissed but would never again. It was a terrible nightmare come to life, and worse, it was accompanied with the memory of Daniel lying dead in her arms. Two loves, both dead. How many people had the luck to be loved by two people in life, only to have them both ripped away so early on? Fresh sobs rattled through her; two men, dead because they had loved her. Daniel, because of her mother's ambition, and now Robin, because he had wanted to protect her.

She had tried, oh, how she'd tried, to rip out her heart and split it in two to bring him back to her. She'd had her heart in one hand and was about to twist it before Hades had chuckled cruelly before informing her that her efforts were in vain. Nothing could bring someone back after they'd been shot with one of Zeus's lightning bolts, he'd said. She hadn't believed him, had broken her heart in two in desperation and had tried to push it into Robin's chest only to have her hand repelled. As she had knelt on the floor while Hades had laughed in the background she brought the two halves of her heart back together, surprised when they instantly connected to become whole again. She'd stared at her heart, wondering how it could so easily mend itself when she felt as though it was shattered into a million pieces and she'd never be able to find all the pieces to put it back together again. And she had started to cry.

She was aware that she was alone in her office, Hades and Zelena both gone. Her sister had been crying too, had even held her in her arms for a short while before she had disappeared in a cloud of green smoke. What she had said before she had poofed away hadn't registered with Regina.

One of her tears landed on Robin's eyelid, and Regina let out a whimper of fresh pain as she thought that his eyes would never again open, would never again gaze at her with those piercing blue eyes that betrayed all the love he had for her, would never again light up with a twinkle at a snarky comment of hers, would never roam over her face and settle on her lips before he leaned in to brush his lips against hers while he ran his fingers through her hair or cupped her cheek in his hand.

When he had said that she was his future, she had allowed herself to believe, for that brief window in time before Hades had shattered it all, that she would spend a lifetime staring into those eyes and kissing those lips. Instead, she'd had less than a year with him, a year in which they had spent more time apart than together.

And she'd never even had the chance to tell him that she loved him.

He had known, it was obvious that he had known. They'd never been shy about using the word "love" to refer to their relationship, but they had never exchanged those three words. His eyes had always had a way of looking deep into her soul, past all her layers, into the core of her being. Regina had let her love for him, a love that encompassed her whole soul, shine through her eyes whenever she looked into his.

Well, hell, if this was going to be it, if this was the last time she would ever hold her soulmate in her arms, she was going to say it, whether he could hear it or not.

Her hand moved from his chin into his hair as she tried to steady her breathing. She leaned her face a little closer to Robin's, and her hair fell like a veil around their faces.

She took a deep breath before whispering to her soulmate, "I love you, Robin." She let out a gasp of pain at the silence that followed, pressing her temple to his forehead as she held him in her arms.

A loud bang broke the silence, startling her. She heard footsteps pounding on the stairs outside her office, Zelena yell "They're in here!" and then suddenly she and Robin were no longer alone. Zelena had gone to get the others, apparently, since now the UnCharmings were standing there staring at the sight of her on her knees cradling Robin's head, while Emma let out a gasp behind them and wrapped an arm around Henry standing beside her.

Paramedics followed them into her office, pushing a stretcher. One of them kneeled down across from her, looking at her with sadness in her eyes as she spoke to Regina. Regina didn't register the sounds coming from the woman's mouth, could only see the movement of her lips through her tears, but she gathered that they were here to take Robin to – to take Robin to the morgue. Her breath hitched and she looked down again at Robin – for the last time. For the rest of time he would be lying in a cold wooden box under the ground, never to see the light of day again, never to see his son and daughter grow up or hear their laughter, never again to wrap his arms around Regina while they enjoyed a glass of scotch before going up to bed.

Another tear landed on his cheek.

"Goodbye, Robin," she murmured, her voice breaking on the last syllable of his name. She leaned down again, to give him one last kiss, to feel his lips against her own one last time. She closed her eyes and kissed him, every cell in her body screaming at his lips to respond to her own, every fibre of her being pleading for True Love's Kiss to bring him back to life, even though she was so acutely aware that even that couldn't bring back the dead.

She didn't want the kiss to end, didn't want to have to pull away and release him from her hold so that the paramedics could put him into that black bag on the stretcher, didn't want that zipper to be pulled closed over his face, wanted to prolong it to delay the moment when he would be carted away and she would be left without him in her life.

But she had to. She had to.

Slowly, she lifted her lips from his and ran her fingers down the side of his face for the last time. She'd once told Robin that she was memorizing the way he looked at her with love in his eyes, and now that those eyes would never open again to look at her, she wanted to commit every detail of his face to her memory; the slope of his nose, the curve of his jaw, the colour of his hair, the shape of his lips, the feel of his skin. She would remember him. Always.

Letting out a deep breath, she unwound her arms from their hold on him, moved his head from where it had rested against her arm on her lap, and placed him gently on the floor in front of her.

Henry rushed to her side immediately, pulling her into a hug. She let out a sharp cry as she watched the paramedics lift Robin into the body bag on the stretcher over Henry's shoulder, following their movements. She willed the tears to stop flowing from her eyes so that they would not distort the last image of her true love. She watched as Robin disappeared into the black bag, keeping the tears at bay until the zipper came to a close over his blond hair.

Then the tears flowed once more.

I love you, Robin, she thought as she took in the blurred image of the paramedics wheeling him away from her, eyes closing at the knowledge that she would never hear him say those words back to her, but our story ends tonight.

There will be one more chapter.