Based on the prompts waltz, wine, apple, chocolate, and melody. Particularly apt, I feel, as Isham's theme for them is a waltz. Imagine them dancing to that, if you wish. Missing year.
Snow and David have truly outdone themselves with the decorations.
Their ball is meant to mark the nearing end of winter. An excuse for revelry as much as anything else, Robin thinks privately, but as the leader of a group that often survived on very little, and had to face whatever rain, snow, ice, or otherwise unpleasant weather the forest produced this time of year, Robin's no stranger to taking advantage of merriment to boost morale.
They have set up long banquet tables against the walls of two of the larger ballrooms in the West Wing, and a series of chairs around a large dance floor. There are satin red cloths and cream linens and freshly aired-out tapestries, lit in the dim glow of firelight. Candelabras glimmer every few feet, and fires crackle in each fireplace to ward off the damp chill of the quickly cooling night.
Robin has seen such parties before, but never as one of the honestly invited guests.
The richness of the food has already been noted by his men. Fragrant roast nuts, spicy mulled wine, crisp home-brewed ciders, sharp cheeses from the Northern lands, sticky-sweet apple tarts, delicate chocolate liquors, almond-cake logs, crisp grapes, steaming coffee, glossy brown rolls laden with dried fruit and molasses.
Guests have just begun to filter into the hall when Robin does, dressed himself in a set of cotton trousers in a rich dark green, a cream tunic, and a brown brocade vest, all of which were pushed into his hands this morning by a queen whose only comment on the matter was that she would not have men on her ballroom floor who looked as though they'd mistaken it for a common tavern.
Roland's matching suit, a tunic and trousers of slightly brighter green without the vest, had delighted him. (And Robin, as well. He can barely get the boy to pause long enough to take a bath and comb his hair, let alone sit still while he fastened some dozen buttons on a vest and did up inches upon inches of leather ties.)
Roland bounces on the balls of his feet as they step fully into the room, and are able to appreciate its splendor.
With the darkened night at the edge of the cracked-open, freshly painted balcony doors of paned glass, the rustling curtains and candlelight, the effect is truly magical.
Robin is just scanning the room for dark hair and red lips when Roland tugs determinedly on his fingers, leading him towards the tables of food.
"Quite the party, eh, Robin?" John observes. He is beside the food, a fully laden plate in one of his large hands, as he munches on a wedge of creamy white cheese.
"Indeed," Robin replies, lifting Roland onto his hip and taking one of the veneer wooden plates. He takes a portion of whatever Roland points to, although he does object to a plea for a second piece of cake.
John looks them over. "Where'd you get those?" he wonders. "They're a mite finer than usual."
"R'gina gave them to us!" Roland exclaims, apparently not too absorbed in munching on a candied walnut to clear up his uncle's confusion.
John gives Robin a knowing grin. "Were you...relieved of other clothing by her hand, in order to prompt such a kind gift?"
Robin sends his friend a quelling glare, and receives a teasingly raised eyebrow for his trouble.
"She said the men at her party have to look like gentlemens!" Roland answers enthusiastically.
"Well," John tells him, ruffling his hair, "you most certainly do."
"Papa can I have that drink?" Roland asks, pointing at the bowl of mulled wine.
"No, my boy. I'm afraid not," Robin replies, sighing at how appealing the red liquid must look, with cinnamon sticks, anise, and orange peels floating on its glossy surface. He looks up and down the table for something non-alcoholic.
"How about this?"
Robin spins his head around. She certainly could've been a thief, for the stealth with which she's snuck up on them.
Regina is in a velvet dress of the deepest purple, with jet black teardrop earrings dangling to the edge of her jaw, and a beaded jet necklace glinting in the candlelight.
The dress is simple enough in its cut, angling from a shallow vee to sleeves that stop just where her shoulder and arm meet, and hug her skin closely all the way to her wrist, leaving the skin from her collarbone up bare and warmly olive-toned against the dark fabric. The skirt falls to the ground, wide enough for moving easily, but not as full as many of her dresses, and all the more elegantly stunning for it.
Her eyes are done up in smoky grey shadow, her lips blood-red. Her hair has been looped in intricate twists about her head, half of it falling in soft waves past her shoulders.
But it is not the dress or makeup that truly takes his breath away. (Or, at least, not that alone.)
It is the smile, ever-so-faint, cautious, but definitely there, that she gives his son as she offers a delicacy she's made for him on a handful of other occasions.
"Hot chocolate!" Roland exclaims, squirming until Robin releases him to scamper over to Regina and relieve her of the small mug.
Robin swallows and blinks, yanking his attention back to Roland. "Say thank you, Roland."
"Thank you!" he cries.
"You're very welcome," she tells Roland with a warm, indulgent voice.
"Thank you," Robin adds, smirking at Roland and his eager first gulp of the drink.
Regina looks at him for the first time since entering, and replies, "of course."
Robin feels eyes on them and casts a quick glance towards the room, noting that Snow White is smiling at them from halfway across the room, her hand looped through David's arm as she whispers something in his ear.
If Regina has noticed this less-than-unusual behavior, she ignores it.
At least they aren't coming over to attempt what they always seem to think of as subtle mediation.
Robin watches the ball's many guests as they filter between rooms, sipping at cider in tall cups, or at mulled wine in thin-stemmed glasses, chattering at a dull din.
There seems to be much more mixing and variety of social groups than he would normally expect. People have come in their best clothes, whatever they are, and talk to friends freely. An effect of their time in the other world, he must suppose.
Roland looks between them, standing in the two or so feet of space that separate them. He clearly does not find people-watching quite so amusing, but his hot chocolate and sticky rolls keep him decently occupied. Each time Robin tries to point something out to him, or start up some chatter, Roland looks at him through a mouthful of sweets as if to say I'm busy, Papa, so Robin gives that up.
A group of musicians walk through the hall with instruments in hand, and can be heard tuning, and then starting up dances in the next room.
Robin watches as the dwarves migrate from room to room and back, seeming slightly more inebriated at every pass, and tries not to be distracted by the fact that Regina is just beside him, absorbed, at least apparently, in similar observations.
Alan passes by once with a grin, and a wave for Roland; Granny with a curt nod.
Roland has eaten eagerly, but he's only made his way through half of the treats he'd insisted he wanted to try before he pushes the plate into Robin's hand and announces. "I'm full."
Regina shoots Robin a mildly amused look as he takes the plate before it clatters to the stone floor.
That is when the spell of almost-comfortable quiet amidst the masses is broken.
A man Robin does not know has zeroed in on Regina, and is approaching. He has sandy-blonde hair, a large forehead, wide lips, and a small nose.
Regina spots him a moment after Robin does.
"Whale," she scoffs. Robin hears decided dislike, if not outright disgust.
Regina turns and bends to Roland. "How would you like to dance with me?"
Roland nods excitedly at first, then frowns. "But...I don't know how!"
"I'll teach you," Regina reassures him, taking one of his hands.
She leads them to the smaller doorway on their right, and they pass from the main banquet hall into a room set with a smaller variety of drinks. Red velvet cushioned chairs line the walls, and a group of string players sit on a pedestal to one side.
Robin stands off to the right, watching with a helplessly affectionate smile as Regina directs Roland to place each of his feet on top of her own, and they begin to turn to a waltz.
Robin finds himself a fresh glass of cider and sips contentedly at it, finishing off the food from Roland's plate and giving him encouraging nods when he looks over.
A few moments after the end of the third waltz, the clock strikes nine. Robin makes his way over to the pair.
"Bedtime, my friend," he announces, a touch regretfully.
"But papa…"
"I promised you could dress up and have your supper here," he insists, "but it is well past your bedtime."
Regina's lips quirk, as if in sympathy at the familiar argument.
Roland pouts a little, with those dark wide eyes turned on his father, but Robin can see easily that he is drooping where he stands.
He's always been an early riser, like his father, and this is quite late for him to be up, especially amidst so much noise and excitement.
"One minute, Papa," he asks, however, and he turns to Regina with the enthusiastic air of testing out something newly learned about the adult word. He gives an adorable, and, Robin must admit, very decent approximation of a bow. He had seem them practicing the move earlier.
Regina curtsies back, a swath of her deep purple gown swaying gracefully with the movement.
"Goodnight, Roland," she says, voice deep and gentle, "thank you for dancing with me."
"Goodnight," he replies, beaming at her.
Robin watches the scene fondly, though his smile fades for a moment in seeing the fragility of Regina's.
He tries to reassure her with his gaze as best he can, but knows it is another little boy she misses. A little boy who is unseen, out of reach, who for her will not grow up.
Robin holds out his hand for Roland, and they begin to make their way out of the room. It's high time his son went to bed.
After coaxing a sleepy boy out of his fancy clothes, it takes barely two or three pages of their latest story before he's fast asleep, a warm, pleasant weight against Robin's side. He keeps going for two pages more in a soft, even voice, to ensure that the knowledge of an exciting event happening just downstairs doesn't stir Roland back from his sleep. He then shifts Roland to rest on a pillow and pulls the blankets up around him, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
"Sweet dreams," he murmurs, blowing out the candle that rests on the bedside table, and shifting carefully off of the mattress they share.
He considers wandering the castle, or the grounds perhaps, but the pull of the warm, festive rooms is too great, even for someone so little accustomed to, or frankly fond of, parties. (The pull of one person in those warm rooms, perhaps.)
He enters through the banquet room, scanning its chairs, and the groups of mingling guests, before passing into the room where he had left her. Still, he does not catch sight of those deep purple skirts or the intricate dark hair.
His eyes pass from left to right again, and that is when he spots her, standing against the wall a few feet away from the smaller selection of refreshments that had been chosen for this room.
He makes his way towards her slowly, snagging two glasses of mulled wine on his way. They are still slightly warm to the touch, and smell of orange zest and cinnamon.
"I half expected you to have left by the time I'd returned," he tells her by way of greeting, holding out the glass. She hesitates for a moment, then silently reaches out and takes it. "I almost wonder you haven't. You do not look as though you are enjoying yourself, Your Majesty."
She preens, as though in recognition of his having used what she insists is her proper title.
It is always an adjustment, though never unexpected, how different she is with him once Roland is no longer in the room. Part of it he knows to be a result of her ease with children, and the way she thinks they are somehow the only creatures capable of seeing her as a person rather than a monster. But part of it is something else entirely.
"I am royalty in this castle," she informs him, with a voice that, in its very defensiveness, falls shy of the haughty dismissal she had likely imagined, "and we are hosting a ball."
(With Roland on his hip, Robin bears also an excuse for her interest, a protection against anyone in the room, Robin and Regina herself included, imagining she has an interest in speaking with such openness to Robin alone.)
"So you're here in an official capacity?" he asks, glancing at her as he takes a sip of the wine. It warms his throat pleasantly.
"And you're here to-what?" she returns, "scope out the jewelry? See what might be worth your while?"
She sniffs her own wine suspiciously, as though Snow might have managed to brew fairy dust or golden unicorn hooves into the alcohol.
"Alas," he replies with a bemused grin that ruffles her feathers as much as her comment had not ruffled his, "I gave up that life. You could say that I am...not here in my official capacity."
She opens her mouth to reply, faltering for a moment, when David spots them, having been in contemplation of another drink. He leaves the table to come and stand before them instead.
Robin thinks the attempt to cheer her up misguided and a touch transparent, but kind, when David holds out a hand and says, "I believe it is tradition that I dance at least one dance with my mother-in-law."
Regina glares in protest at David's unassuming smile, but relents, passing her wine to Robin and allowing herself to be led to the dance floor.
Robin watches them bow formally to each other, as she had just taught Roland, and begin to turn to a simple melody. Both are competent enough, but Regina is the more graceful dancer by far.
"They have a grudging respect for each other now, I think."
Robin very nearly jumps. He seems to be having an off evening in knowing when people are sneaking up on him.
Snow holds a plate with the remains of an apple tart on it, smiling broadly at her husband and his dancing partner, and then at Robin. "I've regained a taste for apples with this baby, it seems," she tells him with a playful grin, flattening a hand on her belly. "Perhaps the little one will be quite fond of Regina as well."
Robin glances at her curiously. He knows this part, the apple part of the story, but the rest only in bits and pieces.
"She separated us many, many times," she continues, nodding towards the couple they are both watching. "She could've killed him, but she never did." Her voice softens, grows almost distant. "She cursed us to be as lonely as she was, instead. She wanted me to feel as she felt, when I told Cora the secret that killed her true love. Trapped. Betrayed. She thought death was too kind. It took me a long time to understand that, but I think David knew it long before me."
He looks at Snow, and he knows she can see in his eyes the question of why she has chosen to tell him all of this, on this night.
"All of her anger, all of her bitterness," Snow presses on, "it's a carefully constructed shell. It's her armor against being hurt again the way losing Henry hurt her."
He frowns. "I know."
She finally turns away from the dancers to look at him, and he does the same. "Be careful, when you crack that shell, that she's ready," she tells him with a kind, solemn look on her face, "because if she's not, she'll retreat so far beneath it that I don't think we'll ever get her back."
Robin takes a slow breath, in, out, and nods. Her fingers pulse against his arm, and she drifts away.
He considers asking Regina to dance with him next, but at the end of her dance with David, she speaks for a moment with Snow, and then walks towards one of the balconies with carefully-restrained eagerness. He could not wish to interrupt.
Nevertheless, after a brief, distracted interlude with John about the deliciousness of the honey-glazed orange pound cake, and the necessity of his trying some, he finds his steps drifting in that direction as well.
He finds her standing near the rails, looking out over the darkened grounds, with another glass of mostly-consumed wine in her hand.
It is more properly a terrace perhaps, for there are at least eight feet between the wall and the railing, and it is nearly twice as wide. Two tall lanterns border the space, casting at least some scant light. Enough for him to see that she is alone.
The breeze cools his fire-warmed face.
She sets the glass on the stone rail as he approaches, though she acknowledges his presence in no other way.
He joins her, a foot or so to her left, as he contemplates the same nearly complete darkness from this edge of the candlelit rooms.
For several minutes, there is only the faint rustling of wind through their clothes, and the dull hum of voices behind them.
Then, another waltz begins, slow, not quite bright, and faint at this distance.
She looks at him, her dark eyes barely visible in this light.
He holds out his hand; bows.
She slides her fingers over his; curtsies.
Robin settles his right palm on her waist, while she covers his left with her own, her fingers threading between his, her left hand coming to rest on his shoulder.
He catches her eye with his own, takes a step forward, and they begin to turn.
Her touch is warm, but cautiously light, and her movements, for all of their grace and care, are proper and even.
He matches her as he leads-if anyone, he reflects, could be said to be leading Regina Mills.
A gentle half-turn, steps large enough to be formal and small enough to be private and lacking in any kind of showmanship.
It was his own mother who taught him to dance, when he was a small boy. He remembers those thrown-together lessons with joy, and put them to use a time or two with Marian, twirling her in an unplanned step on an even swath of forest floor to music they heard only in their heads. He had not yet had occasion, even in the heist or two pulled off by himself and his men at a night of aristocratic revelry, to waltz with royalty.
After the first few turns, she lowers her gaze slightly from his face, as though to confirm that he does, indeed, know the steps. It now rests at some moving point in the distance.
The music is faint enough from here that the sounds of their leather shoes touching the ground are nearly as loud, tapping out a matching rhythm.
Robin listens to the soft rush of air each time he takes and releases a breath, much of his focus, now that he has fallen into the rhythm of the dance, on the way her skin feels against his, the warm velvet of her dress, the way it shifts over their legs as they dance.
After a minute or so, her gaze returns to his, thoughtful, but otherwise inscrutable save for the dark tear-glassed eyes that seem to carry pain at every moment, unless they have been cooled and made steely with at least partly-acted malice.
He can only just make out her features in certain moments of their turns, when she faces the party, and he, the darkened grounds, but he gives her what he hopes is a kind, yet pitiless half-smile.
She sighs and blinks heavily a few times, and it is the first moment in which he feels her trust his instincts in their steps, and give over tenseness to the ease he had always learned was key to a true waltz.
Their touch remains steady and light, but their movements become closer, more intertwined.
The breeze makes her hair flutter, finally sending a piece over her shoulder so that it brushes across his face.
He crinkles his nose against the itch, a near-silent chuckle escaping his lips as his hand momentarily leaves her waist to brush it out of the way. Her lips twitch almost imperceptibly.
The music slows, and their steps with it, before coming to a chord, another, a third of resolution, and falling into silence and the distance sound of the other guests' applause.
For a moment, both of them are completely still, the silence between them unbroken.
Regina's lips separate slightly as she stares at him, her eyes wide, and he stares back.
He takes a steadying breath that does not steady him at all, her hand warm against his despite the late winter breeze.
He sees determination bright in her eyes. Warmth.
Fear.
Robin swallows slowly, deliberately.
He lifts his palm from her waist, slowly, as if to avoid startling her, her eyes never leaving his as a barely-perceptible shiver runs up her spine.
Her hand, in turn, slides off his shoulder gracefully to rest by her side, still in the elegant arc of the dance.
Their joined hands have come to hover in the scant space between them.
This is the dance they are in; a perpetual waltz. Intimate and yet at arm's length. Vulnerable and yet safer from risk. And safety in her vulnerability, here on this night, is what she needs.
He brings her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss there.
He releases her; bows.
She curtsies.
And he leaves her with a subdued yet warm ghost of a smile, as the strains of a melody once more rise up around them.