Usual blanket 'gabi is writing' warnings apply - there is blood, guts, death, angst, magic, and all things horrific and wonderful (to me at least). Every single fic I post this month will be Horror. Nothing is sacred to me. No one is safe in my hands. You've been warned. This is also a collab with Belloftheballpoint on twitter/tumblr - she made some truly gorgeous art to go with this. Go check it out.
She's been running for days. Non-stop since leaving the castle, and her bastard of a husband, and a child who calls her mother but could be her sister. She's exhausted, and terrified, and aching in places she wasn't aware she could ache but she refuses to stop. Even when Robin, or one of his men, offers up the idea of pausing for a break. Just shakes her head and pushes forward, only stopping when they stop each night to throw together a ramshackle camp.
None of her companions have any idea that she is the runaway Queen from the White Kingdom. Not even Robin, and though he knows more than the others, he swore to her that he wouldn't push. It's your story to tell, milady, I'll listen should you ever wish to tell it, but 'till then? Know that you're welcome and safe with us. It's been so long since she trusted anyone, not since Daniel, and Snow, and broken promises that left her gutted on a dusty stable floor, sobbing into the still and silent chest of her fiance, but she finds herself agreeing when he offers up safety in numbers. There's something about his eyes and the way they pause over the bruises mottling her skin that tells her that with this, with aiding her in crossing into a different kingdom, she can at least trust him with that.
She's not sure what made her go back to that tavern Tinkerbelle had taken her too all those moons ago, with pretty promises of soulmates and happily-ever-afters, but it was the first place that popped into her head once she realised that if she was going to do this, was going to get away from that Hell, then she needed to stop, and to think, and she needed to do it somewhere considerably less exposed than the forest on her husband's lands.
Robin had slipped between her and a burly man who would not take no for an answer, and offered to remove the man's hands if he didn't let go of his wife much in the same way someone enquires about the weather.
I was handling that.
You know, a simple thank you, would suffice.
I didn't ask for your help she'd muttered, ducking her head to the side to hide the marks on her skin behind her hair and the soft wool of her cloak.
You did not, he agreed with her before gesturing to the barkeep and grinning at her. But you still got it. He was still smiling at her when the barkeep returned with two tankards of ale. She accepted the drink despite herself—money was in short supply until she found somewhere to fence the jewellry she'd thought to pack along with her meager belongings—and within a short few hours found herself agreeing to follow them to the next kingdom.
She's been travelling with them for a few days when Will rushes back to them from scouting ahead muttering that we've got company comin', lads. Robin is ushering her off of the road, with an arrow nocked and ready to shoot before Regina can even register that Will's words were a warning. For a heart stopping moment she thinks that the Palace Guards have found her, that it's the King and his men on their way to drag her back kicking and screaming. But then Alan and Will are muttering about no-good sheriffs and corrupt justice systems as they work to hide the tracks they've left while Regina, Robin, and Little John disappear into the trees.
It's not hard to slip away from the Sheriff's men unnoticed. Even with them being a group of six, five of them being relatively well-built men carrying packs, and Regina being unused to the terrain, stumbling after them, awkward and stubborn with her own meager belongings. It's easy to get around the guards and take a slight detour and when the men take turns making jokes at the Sheriff's expense Regina finds herself smiling and starting to relax.
Little John sees it first.
They have been forging a new path for an hour or so when they catch up with John who had wandered off ahead to try and scout a suitable place to set up camp for the night. She doesn't understand why he's so still, so pale, at first because the forest seems to have grown around it.
A ram's skull, distorted and giant with vines and leaves curling themselves around the horns, and through the empty sockets hangs from a weathered oak tree.
Regina's blood turns to ice and she cannot, for the life of her, tear her eyes away from those black, sucking voids where the creature's eyes would have once been.
"We should move away from this place," Will says, his voice barely a whisper to be heard over the breeze. "No good can come from being here."
He's right. She knows he is, but she is all but rooted to the ground and even though every cell in her body is screaming at her, begging her to run back the way she came and to never once look back, she can't. She has no idea how long she stays there, staring into those missing eyes that seem to be watching her too, before Robin is stepping in between and disrupting her gaze.
"Regina?" He looks shaken—though only slightly—but he grasps her shoulders and looks her over, and over, and over until he is satisfied. "C'mon, we're leaving." He guides her in turning around, keeps one arm around her shoulders and walks away from the skull with her. Alan is just ahead of them, back the way they came, bow drawn and ready as he sweeps the surrounding area for threats, while Will and Alan coax Little John into putting one foot in front of the other.
She's focussing on keeping her eyes forward, on following Alan and listening as Robin and the others trade hushed theories on who would have put the mutated ram's skull amongst the trees and why, when something rocks in her periphery.
A human rib cage swings from a rope.
Her breath catches in her throat, chokes her, as she fumbles for Robin's hand and squeezes at him with shaking fingers. She can't find her voice when he asks what's wrong, she can barely even handle raising her free arm to point.
"Gods above…" Robin swallows as they stare at the ribs rocking back and forth merrily in the barely-there wind. "We need to get to the road."
"We shouldn't be too far from it," John says as he tears his eyes away from the macabre sight.
Nodding, Robin tangles his fingers through Regina's and gives them a squeeze. "Good. Sooner we find it the better—it'll be dark soon."
She didn't realise how low the sun was getting until Robin points it out, and the idea of being out here, in this part of the forest once dusk arrives sends tremors along her spine.
"We need to be as far from here as possible by sundown," says Will as he forges onwards. "Keep moving."
Regina has no idea how far they make it before stopping to rest becomes more important than walking until they are free of whatever Being haunts these parts.
But it's not far enough.
A scream rips her from the Dream Realm. Jarring her awake and up to her feet, her dagger (a weapon Robin insisted she carry after her first day travelling with them) grasped tight and ready even as she blinks the cobwebs from her eyes. Robin has his bow drawn, swinging it slow and steady about their camp, ready to loose at the slightest movement beyond the trees.
"Where the fuck is Will?" John has his back to them, staff held out, as he jerks his head towards where Will's abandoned bed roll is. "Alan's missing too."
"Fuck!" Robin's hands hold his bow steady, but Regina watches the way he tightens his grip and grinds his jaw, the way he swings to point it behind them when a twig snaps. She holds the dagger out in one hand and tries in vain to conjure a fireball in the other. But she's half asleep still, and even if she weren't, fear has its claws deep within her—fire won't be helping her tonight.
"I can't see anything," she says, wishing that her voice wasn't shaking.
"Nor can I. John, what about y—" Robin's voice cuts off as they hear a rustle and whirl back around to find John vanished too. "Shit, shit! Regina… put your back to mine," he orders.
She does it without question, moving to stand with her spine to his and holding out that trembling dagger in her useless fire-free hands, all while screaming at herself to just make it work, for goodness' sake, make it fucking work! A breeze whistles through the leaves and another twig breaks—further away this time—and for a moment she thinks that maybe this is all just a dream. A very vivid, horrid, nightmare that she will wake from soon to find Robin's friends all very much asleep, or keeping watch, from their bedrolls as dawn breaks.
Regina knows that he is gone before she hears the footsteps. She feels the presence behind her change, feels it go from solid and warm, to a bitter cold that mists the air from her lungs in front of her. She hears a soft, delighted laugh, before something cracks over her head and sends her crashing into the forest floor.
When she wakes up she wishes she hadn't.
She's cold, her cloak is now missing and her thin, simple travelling clothes are damp and doing little to stop the ice in her veins.
"C'mon Regina, wake up," Robin calls out to her, voice hoarse and thin and it's that that breaks through the last little bits of fog clinging to her brain.
She's in a cell. A cage. If she had the energy to try she doubts she'd be able to stand up even half way. Clenching her eyes shut she forces herself upright, biting back vomit as her head—pounding from the hit she'd taken—spins and she takes in deep, even (if unsteady), breaths.
"Regina," Robin sighs, calling her attention back to him and away from the misshapen bars forming her prison. He's in another roughly cobbled together cage next to hers. There's blood marring his forehead and a shadow that she thinks must be a bruise wraps around his left cheek to stretch past his jaw.
She can't quite find her voice, and she's half convinced that she would vomit as soon as she tried to speak anyway, so Regina casts her eyes around the dim room. There are four other cell-cages like the ones they've been confined too; she can just about make out Little John's cramped form in the farthest one, and Will remains unconscious, sprawled in a tangled heap with the fingers of one his hands pushed just past the bars and bent in different directions. The last one sits in shadows and she cannot get her eyes to focus long enough to see into it.
When she spies the altar she cannot help but whimper.
Will was right. No good will come from this.
"Where's Alan?" John asks, shuffling around awkwardly in his cramped confines, growing more and more frantic when he can't spot his friend. He grows even more frantic—they all do—when Regina points a shaking finger through the warped bars holding them, towards the altar table and whispers over there.
He looks fine. At first. Then her eyes adjust.
He's been ripped apart. His chest is splayed open, torn down the middle, with his red stained ribs—what's left of them—open to the atmosphere. Robin swears, and Regina swallows down the vomit, unable to tear her eyes away from the mess that is Alan-a-Dale as his corpse lies amongst candles and plants and carved runes that Regina both does, and does not recognise.
It's Magic.
Old Magic. The likes of which she has never seen, never read more than a passing mention about, never even seen the Dark One use. Magic that Regina has no idea how to use, or beat, or escape from. Magic that is keeping her, Robin, and the Merry Men caged like animals even as she tries, over and over, to dismantle or unlock the crates they're held in. She stares towards what's left of Alan, raking over every gruesome inch, refusing to blink lest she miss something that she might be able to understand—might be able to use to help—ignoring the burning in her chest and tears streaming down her face.
Rumplestiltskin would taunt her near daily about how worthless she is when it comes to the Dark Arts. But Regina has never felt as truly useless as she does right now, because nothing—not lessons with the Dark One that hurt more than they instruct, not even living under her twisted mother's tyranny—has ever prepared her to be faced with Magic from the Old World.
She can hear Robin and John working at trying to rouse Will, can hear them talking to her too, but she wraps her hands around the bars and leans forward. Desperate to spot something. To get the rest of them out of here alive. But all she sees is the blurred massacre of Robin's friend, of the man who sang limericks and told dirty jokes to try and make her flush or laugh. Blinking to clear her eyes from tears, Regina grits her teeth and glances away to scan the rest of the barely lit room and when her eyes land back on Will's cell her heart stops. And when she looks down to where her own hands are gripping around the rough bars keeping her caged she scrambles back, as far as she can get, hits those on the other side and finally loses the battle against keeping her supper down.
"Regina!" Robin shouts, brings her back to herself, to where she's knelt on muddy ground, the remains of last night's stew half beside her, and half splattered upon her thigh. "Oi, look at me, c'mon we're gonna figure out how to get out of this," he says as he reaches forward to try and gain more of her attention. "We are going to be fine," he promises.
But she can't look at him. Can't look at anything but her own vibrating hands, or the jigsaw puzzle of her prison.
"Bones," she whimpers.
"Regina, what—"
"They're made of bones," she says, her voice so hoarse that she can barely hear herself. Tearing her eyes away she turns to him and repeats, "They are made of bones, Robin." Regina watches the blood drain from his face, watches John go wide eyed and start to bang at the ones surrounding him. "I don't know how to stop this," she whispers. As she glances down, swiping angrily at more tears, she catches sight of the way Robin is leant up against the side of his cage, with his forearms—visible from his torn and bloody tunic—pressed against it.
The lion tattoo that has been seared into her memories for well over a year is glaring back at her as a door swings open, and fire light frames a slight figure in the doorway with wild, light curls, and a ram's skull headdress.
I should have walked through that damn door sooner, she thinks as the Witch tilts her head to the side, lets the door creak shut, and moves to where Will is still lying prone and unresponsive.