So sorry for the wait, dear readers. Laptop issues made this delay inevitable, I'm afraid. I hope you think it was worth the wait. :) And as always, thank you so very much for reading!
"I love you."
He had breathed the words into her neck, across her skin, needing her to believe what burned so fervently in his chest, wishing he could claim every piece of this woman now in his arms all at once.
"Oh, God. Robin."
Her cry had been unsteady and deep as hands worked to loosen ties and undo clasps. Mouths met again, working themselves across lips and bare skin with a hunger that would not be sated in any other fashion, desperate clutches morphing into intimate caresses, cold fingers warming in the grasp of heated flesh.
"I've been a fool," he had managed as red fabric slid down her limbs, pooling at her feet as an odd penance offering to a goddess. "It's you, Regina. God, it's always been you. I was an idiot to think I could live any other way."
Her neck opened to him, her hands drawing him close, allowing him to taste and worship, to savor and claim. She was ethereal yet so very real, a perfect blend of magic and earth, of fire and beauty, of the broken and the restored.
"Robin," she had whispered into his mouth as his pants dropped to the floor, the rest of their clothes following suit in a mad, dizzying rush.
Body to body, skin to skin. They stood breathless, touching, learning, mesmerized, lost to all save the other, the only sounds breaking through their private cocoon the throaty gasps and cries of passion.
"I need you. Please."
She never begged, rarely asked, but there was a plea on her features he knew mirrored his own, a plea he would honor, a need he would fill. She completed him in a way no one else ever had, burrowing into places he had kept off limits, allowing him to enter painful and well-fortified aspects of her past, even as he entered her body with a noise that bordered on inhuman.
Sweat met sweat, skin slid across skin, and they had driven each other forward, finding a rhythm that kept them unsteady and on the brink of something far beyond the physical.
"I love you," she had moaned as her walls clenched around him, her nails digging in as her head fell backwards, her mouth open yet silent.
"Regina," he had muttered over and over as his life spilled into her, and she had held him to her heart, the heart she had entrusted to his keeping, the heart that had captured his completely until he was certain it beat in time with his own.
"Don't leave me," she had whispered into the night when she believed that he slept, and he rolled towards her slowly, stricken by her mortified expression that gazed back at him wide-eyed.
"I can't," he assured her, caressing her outer thigh. "I won't." He then stroked her hair, kissed her forehead, pulled her into his chest, wrapped her in all he could offer, in all that he was. "I'm not strong enough to do that."
Cool fingers had traced his cheeks, marking him for life as brown eyes saw something he couldn't.
"You should," she breathed, making him shiver in spite of the lingering heat of spent bodies. "It would be better for you if you did."
He brought those fingers to his lips, kissing them softly, touching his nose to hers.
"You're wrong," he had stated, claiming her mouth, feeling her desperation as keenly as he felt his own. "And I won't."
And he hadn't. She had left him instead.
"Are you alright, Daddy?"
The girl's question pulls him from heated memories, ones that hurt yet insist on being revisited, ones held close and treasured, ones that grant him hindsight into the few treasured moments of happiness he and Regina had been granted.
Memories of the very night the child sitting next to him must have been conceived. His daughter. Their daughter. The perfect result of a joining he has never been able to bring himself to regret.
"I'm fine, Lark," he returns, wrapping an arm about her shoulder, tasting his lie on the back of his tongue.
"Your face looked funny," she states as she tears off another piece of her bread. "Like you were upset."
He can't help but smile at her, at that precious, blatant honesty reserved for children and the elderly.
"I was just thinking," he assures her with a squeeze. "That's all. Daddies do that sometimes."
He sees Roland's eyes bore holes into him from across the table, eyes full of confusion and a pain he knows will not simply be swept away with a few words and reassurances. This will take time—for Roland, for him, for all of them. God—all of them—his family.
His family. They must learn to be a family. He exhales mounting fears, knowing they pale in the light of this wonder now seated beside him, praying silently for the strength to hold himself together.
"Mommies do, too," Lark interjects with a mouth full of bread, oblivious to the inner workings of wounded adults. "And her face looks funny like yours does sometimes, especially when she's sad."
God—the tears Regina had fought with every ounce of strength she could muster, the raw pain creased into her face as she whispered to him in desperation, pushing away from him on an afternoon painted forever black in his memory, severing his soul as she turned on her heels and walked away.
I've told you before, Robin. You have to forget about me. There is no other way. Promise me that you will.
He had told her it was impossible, that she was a part of him now, that they were now seared into each other's framework and spirit. He could never forget her, no matter how stubbornly she had insisted he do so.
But you have to, Robin. For all of our sakes.
As if it were that easy. As if he ever could.
Had she known then, he cannot help but wonder? Had she realized she carried his baby when she left him standing alone and desperate, bleeding internally from the emotional gash of losing her yet again?
"Is she often sad?" he questions, his heart constricting in a vice as his fingers grow cold. "Your mommy, I mean?"
Lark's face falls, her walnut-hued brows drawing together until they nearly touch.
"Yeah," she answers. "Too much. That's one reason I came to find you. To make her smile again."
His chest clenches painfully, his ears ring and roar.
"You think I can make her smile again?" he asks, his lower lip quivering at the mere thought of that illusive smile. "Your mommy?"
His voice feels disembodied from the rest of him, as if it has a life of its own pulsing through space and time. Her eager grin is too much, the bobbing of tousled waves, the unwarranted trust she has in him and in abilities he now doubts he ever possessed.
"You're her true love," Lark reasons with a shrug. "Of course you can make her smile."
If only love were that easy, he muses to himself.
"I don't know, Little Lark," he sighs, not wanting to allow her to place all of her hopes on his rather stooped shoulders. "Your mother and I have a rather complicated history. But I'm certain that seeing you always makes her smile."
Roland sighs and Lark giggles.
"Usually," the girl returns. "But sometimes I make her sad. We have a complicated history, too."
He laughs at her comment, he cannot help it, the utter seriousness of her expression imprinted on a canvas of utmost innocence.
"You could say it's complicated," Roland interjects, commanding his father's attention at once. "This whole thing is one big complicated mess, and we're all acting like its fine. Like it's normal!"
He feels Lark stiffen even as his son begins to crumble before his own eyes.
"Roland—" he begins, reaching out to him across the table.
"This isn't normal, Papa," the boy insists, standing from his seat. "She just shows up and tell you that you're her Papa? That she's my sister? And you believe her?"
"It's true," Lark stutters as she shrinks back in her seat. "I'm not allowed to lie."
"Roland," Robin interjects. "Let's just sit down and talk—"
"No!" the boy insists with tears pooling in his eyes. "I'm not sitting anymore. And this is not alright!"
He then rushes from the table back to their cabin, slamming the door behind him with a strength that makes Lark wince. Robin feels his soul rip into, half running off in one direction, the other half sitting still as a statue, gasping with delicate lips he instinctively knows are trembling. He stands quickly, only to be waved off by John.
"I'll talk to him," the large man states, looking to the little girl and then back to him. "You stay here—with her."
He nods, knowing it's the only thing to do at the moment, hating that he cannot be with both of his children at once. Both of his children—how foreign the concept, yet it is now indisputable, and he looks to his youngest, his new child, as new to him as if she had just drawn her first breaths just moments ago.
"He doesn't like me."
His heart cinches as bile rises up in his throat, and he looks down into brown eyes now brimming with moisture. God—they are the eyes of her mother.
"He will," Robin assures her. "He's just confused and a bit frightened at the moment."
"Frightened of me?"
"No," he clarifies, keeping his voice low and steady. "Frightened of losing me, I think."
Her nose scrunches in complete confusion, and she turns her small body until she is facing him head on.
"Why would he be afraid of that? I haven't come to take you away from him."
He sits down and lifts her into his lap, amazed at how natural she feels there.
"I know you haven't," he reasons. "But Roland doesn't. He only knows that a few minutes ago, he thought he was my only child. But now—"
"But now he's not," the girl finishes for him, her face downcast. "He has to share you with me."
He tips up her chin, gazing into eyes that cinch his heart all too easily.
"Sharing isn't a bad thing, Lark," he assures her as he touches a lock of long hair the color of his. "But it can be difficult at first. Don't you think it might be hard for you to share your mother?"
"I already do," she shrugs. "With Henry."
"Ah," he nods, a fresh wave of anger rolling over him at her statement. Henry knows his sister, yet Roland does not. Damn it, he wasn't even given the chance to know his own daughter—his own child, his own little girl. Why in God's name has Regina kept her from him all these years? She couldn't have feared his reaction to the news—not to the news of a baby—their baby—a life conceived in a moment of raw honesty and utmost love in a vault now sealed shut and empty.
"But I don't see him much," Lark continues, her face scrunching in concentration as she tears off another bite of bread. "He only comes for visits."
He knows Henry has been living with Emma and Killian ever since Regina disappeared, but the boy seemed to know nothing of his mother's whereabouts when questioned.
God knows he questioned Henry repeatedly.
"But you love him?" Robin asks, unable to stop the smile spreading across his face as the girl scrunches her nose in a manner so like her mother's.
"Of course I do," she answers. "He's my brother." Her face then falls again as she looks towards their cabin, the place where her new brother currently hides from her.
"And Roland will come to love you, Little Lark," he assures her. "We just have to give each other time, you know. To adjust to being a family."
"Are you adjusting, too?"
He cups her small face, placing a kiss on her forehead, smelling the trace of vanilla in her hair, a scent that reminds him all too much of the woman he will never get over.
"Yes," he confesses softly. "And so are you. You just don't know it yet."
Her brows crease together, her lips protruding in a half-pout.
"And Mommy?" Lark questions. "Will she have to adjust, too?"
He lets out a sigh, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck.
"Most assuredly," he states. His insides then clench, and he looks to the girl directly. "Lark—please tell me she knows where you are? That you came to look for me?"
The child shakes her head, and his insides freeze.
"She wouldn't let me come here," Lark explains. "To find my daddy, I mean. She said it was too dangerous and that she had her reasons for telling me not to."
"Shit," he mutters, his face heating as the curse leaves his mouth. "I'm sorry, Lark. It's just that Re—your mother will be very worried about you if she doesn't know where you are." He stares up at the sky, the final vestiges of light fading quickly into night's powerful grip. "And most likely very angry."
"But she doesn't need to worry," the girl gushes. "You'll keep me safe."
"Of course I will," he tells her. "But you mommy doesn't know that, does she? She doesn't even know you are with me."
Lark's eyes widen as her mouth rounds to an "O", a look of sheer panic overtaking her small features.
"Oh, no," she whispers, gripping his shoulders with a surprising strength. "I'll be in big trouble."
It is then he notices the commotion at the edge of the camp, and he stands with Lark still in his arms, her hands clasped around his neck for dear life.
"What is it?" he calls out, receiving no answer as two or three men run towards the forest. He then hears raised voices, one he recognizes better than his own. One that cuts him to the quick.
"Out of my way," she announces, and he feels Lark stiffen against his chest as his pulse races ahead of him. "I need to know if she's here, if she's…"
Then she's just there, standing in front of him in the shadows, years apart melting away before he has a chance to catch his breath.
"..alright."
The word hangs between them, the ending of her previous thought crossing a cavern created over time and silence. Her eyes quickly take in the scene before her—Lark, safe, in his arms, and she falters, he sees it, a flash across her eyes he recognizes and reads fluently.
"Robin."
Her voice is muted and personal, laced with anger, longing, frustration and a healthy dose of fear. He reminds himself to breathe.
"Hello, Regina," he manages, taking a step in her direction he knows to be as tenuous as stepping on to quicksand.