For OQ Prompt Party. (111) Robin and Regina putting her heart back in after Zelena took it for her spell.
hold my heart
By the time he's through, her bedroom looks thoroughly ransacked – pillows overturned, dresser drawers spilled onto the carpet in silky reds and satiny blues.
He can hear Regina down in the kitchen, right where he'd left her, slicing cheese and pouring wine and looking more radiant than he thinks he's ever seen her before. Gods but how she'd positively glowed when he smiled, and kissed her, and promised that he'd only be a moment upstairs. How she'd opened her eyes to him with such trust in their once-guarded depths.
And now he's apparently gone and lost her heart.
Again.
His own heart somewhere up in his throat at this point, Robin slumps into the doorframe and surveys the mess he's just made of all her private things, half-hoping the answer will simply make itself known to him somehow.
He could've sworn he'd left her heart atop her vanity, carefully wrapped in his green wool scarf, but neither of those things are anywhere to be found at the moment. All he can see is his own useless face gazing out of her mirror at him, looking anxious and really quite miserable at the prospect of making his way back to her empty-handed.
He'd been gone for what, five, ten minutes tops? How the hell had he managed to bungle this up so colossally in so short a time? Her heart can't have sprouted legs and simply wandered off, so how is he to look Regina in the eye – this woman he's already quite hopelessly mad for – and explain to her what he's just done?
A cold sort of numbness begins to spread out from his spine to his limbs, and then a new kind of dread creeps in at the thought: what if…could Zelena have…?
"Robin," he hears Regina call up the stairs, and a fresh wave of panic spurs him into a final frantic search of her room. He's already checked beneath her bed – twice – and though it's not bloody likely her heart would have rolled under there between tries two and three, he supposes he's got nothing to lose in looking again…perhaps that shadowy thing just there…damn it, only a sock…
"Robin?"
Her voice doesn't sound any closer, but there's a hesitant edge to it now, as though she can sense that something's come up.
He stands and straightens, and answers loudly "Bathroom, be down in a moment!" in as confident a tone as he can.
His reflection winces back at him.
Robin wavers in place one desperate moment longer, the shame of his lie – of this whole sodding nightmare – churning up an unbearable heat in his chest. She'd already trusted him once with her heart when it would've been quite understandable not to, thief that she knew him to be. But now that they're going somewhere, becoming something that's never made him feel more alive, and endless, and utterly in love, he can't let her down again like this.
There must be hope, he tells himself firmly, some locator spell that she could whip up, a way to harness her light magic somehow. But the more immediate reality of facing Regina, of taking her hands into his and watching her smile fade into confusion as he tries to explain, My love, I'm so sorry. I've looked everywhere, but…
Wait.
The bathroom.
He's yet to search the bloody bathroom.
And why would he have thought to? Robin grumbles inwardly, stalking with a grim new determination toward the double doors of the master bath. It would have made about as much sense to check in here as it would've to empty her drawers and those nightstands (not that that had stopped him from doing so, several times over already).
Come to think of it, though, he's not sure he recalls that these doors had been closed earlier…
He's hovering with his hand on the knob, wary of looking inside only to find that he's well and truly run out of options, when he hears a faint scuffling on the other side of the door.
Powerfully aware of his surroundings all of a sudden, Robin holds himself very still, letting everything around him settle and sort itself out into discernible sounds. Regina closing another cabinet downstairs. The light wipsy brush of a willow to glass each time there's a breeze just outside.
And then a shuffling thump, like footsteps being muffled by stone, just beyond the threshold of the door.
"Surrender!" says a voice.
Robin, who had been bracing himself for the very real possibility of a fight with Zelena, is too stunned for a moment to do more than blink.
"Surrender!" says the voice dramatically again. There's a clatter, then a clanking sort of hollow thud making impact with the floor. The voice goes quiet for a few seconds, as though allowing his foe some time to respond.
"A likely story!" the voice declares after a beat, clearly unmoved by whatever he's heard. "By order of Regina Her Majesty—" some more sounds of a clattering racket, "I am a knight! And knights protect their majesties!"
The sudden pattering of feet, then a combative yell and a forceful, solid-sounding bang, leaving Robin with the distinct impression that there has just been some heroic leaping involved.
"Stop now, I say," orders the voice, most authoritatively, "or else I…will blast you away!"
"That does sound like due cause for alarm," Robin remarks to the door, and there's a lengthy pause on the other side as he smiles.
"Oh, no," says the voice, sounding much smaller now.
Robin schools his expression into something like blandness before nudging the doors open at last.
"I thought I'd put you down for a nap," he scolds gently, crossing his arms as he surveys the scene before him.
Roland stands frozen to the spot, one foot still pressed forward mid-lunge, some kind of cylindrical weapon brandished in his hand. It's round at one end, tapering into what appears to be a mechanical fan at the other, with a lengthy coiling sort of tail that trails all the way down to the floor.
And there just behind him, surrounded by a ring of vigilant soaps and stern-looking lotions, rests Regina's heart, still nestled between the folds of Robin's scarf.
He's too relieved at the moment to pass as convincingly reproachful when he says, "I've been looking everywhere for this. You gave me quite a fright."
His son's lower lip protrudes outward in a rather terrific pout. "I was only protecting it," he explains, but he looks down to his feet to show how sorry he feels.
Robin sighs, conceding, "Fair enough." He is, after all, the one who'd left it defenseless to begin with. "But now it's time for this little knight to get some rest, and for me to return Her Majesty's heart to her."
"Will she make you a knight too?" asks Roland as Robin bends to retrieve her heart, closing it carefully into his palm.
"She has yet to decide," comes Regina's teasing voice from the doorway, and they both glance up at her with what Robin imagines to be equally guilty-looking expressions.
She relaxes her weight into the door, with a soft little smile that has him feeling a bit light in the head for a moment. She's balanced a tray in one arm, all the things she'd washed and sliced up arranged in a feast before them. A wine bottle and two empty glasses dangle from her other hand, tinkling slightly as he moves over to her with a sheepish grin of his own.
"You've been busy," she observes, eyes warm when he meets her gaze.
"We, ah…" Robin cringes, knowing how this all must look, what with the state he'd left her bedroom in and the slightly less terrible mess his son has made here. "We had a bit of an incident, but fortunately this one here came along to save the day."
"I believe it," says Regina, with an unmistakable look of affection as Roland – puffing up slightly – gathers up soap bars and bottles by the armful, carting them back where Robin can only assume they originally came from.
It's been a trying day, but he has it now, he has her heart, and the way she's still glowing like he hasn't just ruined the start of all this is quite possibly everything to him.
Unable to resist it, he leans in to touch his lips to hers, feeling how neither of them can seem to stop smiling right now. She's barely up to his chin with her heels off, he notices, having to bend farther down than he's already grown used to with her, and the thought of it – of her all relaxed, and fitting into him so delicately like this – has something with wings taking up space in his chest.
Their foreheads touch as they part, and then he's kissing her soundly one more time, letting his free hand splay across her hip to coax her just a bit closer.
"Hi," she breathes into the space between them, and he can't help but smile and kiss her again.
"I'm very much looking forward to…all of this," Robin tells her, snaking his arm fully around her waist. He nods his head toward the cheese, the wine. Her heart, still tucked in the folds of his scarf.
Regina shifts into him, with a coy nudge of her hips against his until they're pressed side-to-side. "I am too," she says.
She looks happy, like she's found peace in this moment, and Robin thinks he wouldn't mind battling another thousand baby-snatching witches, if that's what it takes just to have this with her.
He lifts up her heart, one blackened red edge of it peeking out amongst the green wool – strong, and dark, and blindingly beautiful to him – and the smile they share now is tinged with some shyness as he holds it close to his chest.
"For safekeeping," he winks, "while your hands are otherwise occupied."
She raises her eyebrow, addressing him archly, "Try not to lose it this time?" but that smile of hers simply can't be contained.
"Oh," says Robin, very solemn, "believe me, milady, I don't intend on letting it go ever again."
She bites her lower lip, the corners of her mouth still curved enchantingly upward. "Good."
Having laid Regina's smaller possessions out in some haphazard arrangement along the edge of her counter, Roland turns to tackle that blasting contraption he'd been wielding earlier. They watch him struggle with the cord before successfully wrangling it into a very large knot.
Robin looks to Regina with a little wincing smile, but she only turns into him further, tucking her chin against his upper arm with a hum of content.
He nudges his nose into her temple, murmuring, "I'll have to convince him to take a real nap this time, before we're able to celebrate properly."
She pretends to mull it over, replying with a cheeky "I think I can spare a few moments" that has him grinning into her hair. "I have to finish setting up anyway."
"Mm," he says, and he steals a final kiss from her before relinquishing his grasp around her waist. "What did you have in mind?"
Regina gazes up at him with those dark, open eyes, something earnest yet still slightly guarded in them that makes him long to hold her again, and he wonders if this is an impulse he'll ever learn to control. "I thought we could have a picnic by the fire," she suggests, in that cautiously playful voice he already knows he'll never say no to, and he smiles at her in answer, reaching to take her hand before remembering that he can't at the moment.
"Meet me in my office when you're ready?" She tosses her hair back behind her shoulder, but a lock of it escapes to catch by the corner of her mouth. He thumbs it away, cupping his palm over her cheek as he does, and he feels her smile widen into his touch.
"Nowhere else I'd rather be," he vows to her lowly.
There's a dull, quiet thunk, then another, then again, and they turn to see Roland in a crouch by one of the bottom cabinet doors, trying – and failing – to make it stay closed. A loose bit of cord is poking out from behind the wood panel, and Robin and Regina exchange looks of amusement before he excuses himself with a chagrined sort of nod.
"Good work, my boy," and he bends down to gently ease his free hand over Roland's shoulder. "Now what do you say we go and get you back into bed?"
Roland stands with a stretch, and lets out an agreeable yawn as Regina's eyes twinkle at them both.
"I will return your heart to you soon," Robin promises her, and he can almost swear he feels a second thump-thump, thump-thump to match the one inside his chest.
"I think it will be just fine where it is," she says simply, pushing herself off of the door. She pauses with one stockinged foot on the carpeted side of her bedroom, and he catches a glimpse of her smile going soft, with something like wonder held in its very edge before she's fully turning to go.
He knows he's not imagining it this time, the sudden warmth in his hand where her heart is, the way it glimmers and brightens at him as he moves it closer to his own, drawn there by a sense of belonging.
He knows her heart, and his, and nothing has ever felt more right to him than this.