Author's Note: For OQ Angst Fest, Sunday, Prompt 14: Did you think I wouldn't find out?
She hadn't feared the Black Knights as much as the rest of the men, not once she and her father had crossed the border into Sherwood, and especially not after their overturned carriage was discovered in Dead Man's Pass and she was thrown a lavish funeral, the kingdom plunged into mandated mourning.
Her father had worried about them, but Regina had trusted Robin's word that the Knights rarely ventured into this part of the woods. That they would be safe here.
Instead, her nightmares had been twofold: Her mother somehow returning from her banishment, having found a way out of wherever the mirror sent her; and this.
They're standing in the middle of camp, Robin's men with bows drawn but all frozen in place by Rumplestiltskin's magic. She can feel how badly Robin wants to move, how he wants to rush to protect her, and she feels the desperate panic of knowing she brought this on him, on all of them.
They've hidden her away for months, and she'd thought, hoped, that maybe Rumple had decided she wasn't worth following. She wasn't a very apt student, he'd said it to her more than once—she'd hoped he'd decided to move on to someone more suited to the task. More interested. Someone who wanted the darkness.
She'd been foolish to hope.
He's standing there now, with his golden skin and his tarnished soul, tilting his head and giggling, "Did you think I wouldn't find out, dearie? Where you were? What you'd done?"
"What do you want?" she asks, trying to be strong, firm. He always wants something.
"Don't," Robin manages, his voice choked through the magical restraint.
She doesn't look at him, tipping her chin up instead and forcing herself to keep her hands at her sides, fisting them there as she fights the urge to cup one protectively against the tiny, secret life growing inside her. Rumplestiltskin can't know about that.
Rumple is perfectly content to ignore Robin's plea as well, eyes on Regina as he says, "I want you to return to the castle, of course. I have a plan in motion, dearie, and you've not yet played your part."
"I'm dead," she tells him tartly, just in case he's forgotten. They'd mourned her. She has an empty sarcophagus on the edge of the castle grounds. Surely she can't be expected to go back.
"They never found your body," Rumple reminds her. "You could have survived, spent all these months with some kind villager who didn't know just who they were nursing to health. Just think of the celebration—the Dead Queen revived! Why, you'd be a miracle!"
Damnit.
It's not implausible, but she's made her decision—she chose a new life, a new family, and she tells him so.
"Find someone else to fulfill your plan, Rumple; I'm sure there's a line of apprentices a mile long. I'm through with the darkness."
He moves like a shot, in front of her in an instant, until they're nose to nose, his hand tight around her throat, choking her as he hisses, "You're through with the darkness when I say you are. And I don't say."
Robin is fighting the magic, she can see him twitch out of the corner of her eye, and for a moment through the rising panic and the growing thump of her pulse in her ears, she has to admire his strength. The strength of his love for her.
Rumple sees it, too, turning his attention away and letting his hand drop with it. Regina sucks in much-needed air and tries not to cough. Tries to stay strong and stoic.
The Dark One's hand hovers over Robin, sensing something and giving a shivery little "Ooh!" of appreciation that makes her skin crawl. She wants to slap his hand away, can feel magic sparking under her skin, sizzling toward her fingertips for the first time since she left the castle walls. She can't beat him, but oh how she wishes she could try.
He turns his smile on Regina and trills, "Soulmates. How thrilling." He steeples his fingers, drumming them together as he considers and adds, "Although potentially problematic when it comes time for you to kill him. I don't imagine you'll agree readily to that."
"What?!" she nearly shrieks. "I would never."
"Well, it's him or your father, dearie," Rumple tells her and her head takes a single, dizzy spin. "You'll have to choose one day—or I can make the choice for you, here and now. It would probably be kinder."
She shouts like a scared child when his hand plunges into Robin's chest and pulls out his heart, glowing red and fierce in his hand. All she can think is Daniel, and her firm façade crumbles like dust. She can't go through it again, can't lose Robin, too, can't have another love die because of her, and so she begs, pleads with the imp, "Wait, no! Please! I'll do anything!"
Rumple tilts his head and her eyes well with tears, knowing she's likely just signed away her own warrant to returning to her imprisonment by castle walls.
"Please, don't hurt him. I just wanted to get away, I just wanted love!"
"Well, we can't have everything we want, can we?" His hand squeezes and Robin groans, and Regina weeps.
"Please! A deal! Let's make a deal!"
Robin's eyes go wide, a silent protest as Regina tips her chin up again and insists through her tears, "I'll barter for his life. Tell me your price. I'll do whatever you need me to do, just let me stay here with him. You can teach me here, I'll… I'll do whatever it is when the time comes."
Rumple's nose wrinkles, his grip loosening on Robin's heart; she can hear the little wheezing breath of relief he lets slip.
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, dearie. And the longer you stay here, the less I can trust that you will play your role."
"I will, I swear it." Her heart is beating hard, fast, imagining what dastardly deed he'll set for her (she thinks of plucking unicorn hearts, of killing that first apprentice, of her first nip of the darkness, and just prays that Robin will be able to love her despite her darkness).
"No," he sighs. "You won't. You'll have to kill the thing you love most, Your Majesty, and you'll have to do it willingly." Her hand shoots unbidden to her belly, protecting her child on instinct as Rumple muses, "Of course, I figured it would be dear old Dad not your soulma—"
His gaze flits down to her hand, and she drops it, fear chasing up her spine as he tilts his head, squints at her, his hand sinking back into Robin's chest and leaving his heart behind. He's caught a better scent now.
Regina prays. It's never done her a lick of good but she still sends up a desperate plea to the fairies that they protect her now, that they hide this child from wicked eyes that might detect it.
As usual, her prayers fall on deaf ears; it's not a moment later that Rumple points a finger at her and says, "You're with child."
"No," she denies, but he's having none of it.
He moves in close again, and quickly, taking a deep whiff of her (it makes her stomach turn to think he might be able to smell pregnancy on her). "Oh yes," he murmurs. "Yes, you are."
His hand drops to where hers had been, and she jerks, pulling her belly in before he can get one scaly hand on her. It does her no good.
"A fresh one at that," he teases, taking a step back. She can see Robin behind him, cheeks red with effort as he fights against the magic, fights to protect her—protect them—even though he's powerless to.
Their eyes lock, and hers well with tears again, fear like she's never known before slithering beneath her skin.
"Oh, now, that is a problem," Rumple murmurs. "You won't kill that for me."
"No," she bites. "I never will. I'd die myself first."
He squints at her for a moment, then says, "Hmm," and perks up, his shoulders rolling, one hand flourishing as he becomes downright jovial. "I'm feeling benevolent today. Why don't we make that deal?"
"Not my baby," she warns. "I won't give you—I want them both safe."
"Yes, yes, safe as houses," Rumple dismisses with a wave of his hand. "You do what I ask—return to the castle, fulfill your role, and then—"
"I won't kill him," she reminds. "I won't kill either of them."
"You won't have to; you won't love them anymore."
"Wait—what?"
"You won't even remember them," Rumple tells her. "Can't risk you trying to go back on our deal when you get lonely, or just want a bit of twu wuv." He mocks her, his voice going babyish and high, but Regina can't be bothered to be upset about it considering the prospect he's laid before her. "You'll have never gone into that little tavern, never met your soulmate, never left the King. Nobody will remember your little affair. It'll be as if you were never gone from the castle."
It's worse than them dying, she thinks. Never having known him, not even having the memory of their love as cold comfort on the nights she's forced to lie beneath that vile man. Feeling lonely and miserable, and like not a soul in the world loves her enough to fight for her. She doesn't think she could bear it.
"And if you play your part to the letter, once you've done what I require, I'll see to it that you find your way back to each other. You'll fall in love again as soulmates do, and all will be right as rain."
She chews her lip until she tastes blood, looking to Robin and finding him staring back at her with such desperation that she feels wretched for even considering. He manages a tight, choked, "No" and a "Regi-na… don't."
But she can't see any way around it. If she refuses, Rumple will just kill him now. Even if he doesn't and they managed to run, they'd never be free from the Dark One. He'd find them. He'd wait until the baby was born and then come back and threaten them all over again.
Her hand rises to her belly, still flat under the protective weight of her palm as she asks, "What about the baby?"
"Oh, he'll keep," Rumple tells her, like the child is a piece of jerky in the camp stores. "And he'll be right there waiting when you find each other again. When you spend your first night of passion together—" he says it with a scandalized, grinning flutter "—he'll begin to grow once more. A little reunion surprise. You just do me this one eensy-weensy favor, spend a few more years married to the King—just until the time is right—and then you'll get all of this back. I think that's more than fair, don't you?"
It sounds terribly unfair to be honest, but Regina knows the Dark One. She knows his tricks. And all that considered, this is actually incredibly fair.
She looks at Robin, his head tilting in what she's sure is a desperate attempt to shake his head, and she knows he'll hate her for this. For the few seconds until he forgets it all, he'll hate her. She shouldn't do this, but she can't see any other way.
"You'll never bear for the King, not while you're carrying the thief's child," Rumple adds, almost an afterthought, but she knows better. He'd helped her snuff out the castle's last heir, the idea of carrying that man's child unthinkable when she'd still had hope of escape. He knows how badly she wishes to not be trapped into being a broodmare for a royal line. He's trying to sweeten the deal.
He doesn't have to. She's going to take it, she has to, there's no other way out of this that keeps them all alive and together. But accepting it feels like such a betrayal—giving up on their love, on the life they've built, on those stolen moments in the castle, the quiet nights here at camp.
They'll all be gone, forever. The thought makes tears flood her eyes, grief at the loss of her second chance at love rendering her speechless.
"I don't have all day, dearie," Rumple sighs. "So do you accept, or do I—"
"I'm sorry," she warbles, eyes still on Robin's as his go desperate and fearful. "I love you, I will always love you, but there's no other way."
He lets loose a sound that breaks her, but she forces herself to look away, telling Rumple, "I accept your deal. Just do it."
After that, it's all smoke, and darkness, and vengeance.
The next time she sees Robin, she's a fallen monarch, broken with grief for her lost child, blackened heart freshly returned to her chest, her hands still shaking from letting loose a panicked (and ultimately useless) fireball in the direction of a flying monkey.
It's felled from the sky by an arrow, and there's something itchingly familiar in this tone of her savior's voice as he says, "Milady, you're injured."
She turns toward his offered hand and for a moment, she can't speak, a sensation swelling up in her middle that she can't name. A little flutter of rightness, of attraction, of… affection… that makes no sense.
It feels foreign in the midst of her grief over Henry, a little flutter of rightness that flickers in a world that feels so wrong.
She refuses his hand, mutters, "It's Your Majesty, and I'm fine," and pushes to her feet.
And then she falls in love with him all over again.