A/N: Ok so this was supposed to be done during the Happy Ending week, but real life caught up to me and kicked me in the butt, so I had no time to finish it until now! Thanks for your reviews and follows, would love to know what you think about this one, and if you're still interested in more.

Chapter 4

Regina had often wondered what would have happened if she had met Robin in the Enchanted Forest, how her life would have turned out if she had had the courage to go into the tavern all those years ago, but there were very few scenarios, if any, that could have ended well. Between the King's possessive nature and Rumple's plans, she had been trapped by much more than her mother's enchanted vines.

However, on the third time she poured herself a glass of her special wine, she was given to see a whole new possible outcome that she had never considered before.

The latest development in their hunt for Snow White had brought Regina and her Black Guards to a village at the edge of Sherwood Forest. As her soldiers spread out to randomly search houses and interrogate villagers, Regina stood in the middle of the small market place, her deadly presence sending the denizens scurrying along, heads bent, as if it would make them invisible to her eyes.

There was one little boy though, who couldn't be more than four-years-old, and who seemed oblivious to what was happening around him as he kept picking up blossoms from flower beds until his little fist could barely close around the stems. Regina observed him closely, from his unruly mop of curly, dark hair to the bottom of his dark green cloak which threatened to trip him at any wrong turn; he looked healthy, well taken care of, and most of all happy, with an easy smile showing two symmetrical dimples on his face, humming a cheerful tune. She wondered how he had found himself here, all alone.

She tensed in anticipation as he approached her with his bouquet of surprisingly well assorted flowers, quickly studying her surroundings. She knew the sort of people that Sherwood harboured, it wouldn't be too far-fetched for this to be an elaborate trap. There was no immediate threat that her magic could sense, but it didn't mean that there couldn't be someone lurking around, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Finally, the boy was standing in front of her, extending the little arm holding the colorful arrangement towards her, with a bashful smile.

Regina frowned slightly. "Why are you giving me this?" She asked, and the little boy shrugged, looking down as he scuffed the toe of his boot against the ground.

"You're very pretty," he answered simply, taking Regina aback completely. She had gotten so used to fawning courtiers that she couldn't remember the last time she had heard an actual compliment from someone who seemed to mean it.

She crouched down to his level, the lapels of her blood red coat spreading around her, and offered him a sincere, if hesitant, smile in response, as she carefully took the bouquet, inhaling its scent.

The boy gently combed through the soft, dark tresses she had let flowing free beneath her black hat.

The moment was broken by a deep voice resounding from behind the boy. "Stay away from my son," it demanded, making Regina look up to see a hooded man aiming at her with a drawn bow and arrow.

She was about to rise up, and show him just what she thought of his threats, when the boy surprisingly burrowed himself closer to her, turning towards his father. "It's alright, Papa, she is a Queen."

"I know that Roland, and you need to come to me right now," the man said.

"But…" The boy started to protest before being cut off by his father.

"Now, Roland," his tone brooked no argument.

The tot's bottom lip trembled, and he shuffled towards his father as slowly as he could.

Regina drew herself up to her full height. "You really think that you can hurt me with those?" She asked, staring at his bow and arrow with disdain.

"It has never failed me so far," he retorted, flexing his arm, ready to fire.

"And you would attempt to kill me right in front of your son, without any provocation?"

This seemed to throw him off his game, and he looked down at the boy, who was clutching his father's breeches with wide, worried eyes.

"You're the Evil Queen," he muttered, sounding more like he was trying to convince himself than insult her.

"And I won't go down easy, are you willing to risk it?" She questioned.

He considered her for a moment, but she couldn't discern his face, his hood still obscuring it. In a move she didn't anticipate, he adjusted his aim and shot. The arrow didn't come close to hitting anything vital, and Regina caught it easily, watching as the man grabbed his son and ran.

"Do we pursue them, Your Majesty?" The captain of her guards, who had stood back silently during the exchange, asked.

"No, let them go," Regina ordered, still looking at the spot where father and son had stood. "Anything about Snow White?"

"Unfortunately, no, my Queen."

"Let's leave this wretched place then."

Back at the Dark Palace, both the lack of progress in finding Snow and her encounter with whom she now knew was the man who had been dubbed the Prince of Thieves, sent her in a fit of rage. Torn garments, fragile glass objects crashing against the walls, burned carpets and curtains, furnitures turned upside down, it wasn't until she had nothing left to destroy that Regina stopped, panting and disheveled in the middle of the room, looking around at the wreckage, the darkness inside her temporarily satiated.

Her gaze settled on the bouquet of flowers, which had miraculously survived the general destruction, and, in her hand, a ball of fire appeared. The memory of the little boy's shy smile and genuine gesture tugged at her heartstrings, and she closed her fist, extinguishing the flame. She picked up the blossoms delicately instead, and placed them under a bell jar, casting a spell to preserve them.

A couple of days later, Regina had sent her guards on what would probably turn out to be another wild-goose chase, but she would leave no stone unturned in her frantic search for Snow. With her security at its lowest and distracted by matters of State, it was little wonder that the Thief would easily find his way in.

Regina forced herself not to react when she heard him climb up on the balcony, the only outward sign was her grip on her quill tightening as she kept writing. Twice now he had surprised her, she had spared him for his son's sake last time, but she would not be so merciful if he was presumptuous enough to think that he could attack her in her own domain.

"You kept it," he said, and she finished her sentence, the final dot threatening to puncture the parchment, before slowly rising from her chair and turning around to find his attention focused on the bell jar and Roland's gift inside.

She leant back against her table, considering him: he didn't bother with putting on the hood this time, and she was rather partial to what she saw. She had expected some unkempt, rugged commoner, given what she had heard about the so-called Merry Men. She was pleasantly surprised to find that there might be some truth to the rumors that Robin Hood had once been part of the nobility.

Her silence had him looking away from the blooms and back towards her. She could see him suppress a grin at her quiet appraisal, the corners of his lips lifting up briefly letting appear the dimples his son had inherited. She didn't let it get to her though, and kept looking at him from head to toe, until he started to fidget, and only then did she catch his eyes and started talking.

"You must have a death wish," she said. "At least, last time, you had your little toy to give you some illusion of protection."

He glowered at the mention of his weapon of choice being referred to as a toy, but wisely chose not to comment. "My son hasn't been able to talk about anything else but you since you met. I wanted to know what he could possibly have seen."

"By breaking and entering, risking your life in the process?" Regina asked, arching a brow.

Robin shrugged. "It's what I do," he replied simply. "You can learn a lot about a person this way. For example the fact that you haven't burned me to a crisp leads me to believe that you are more curious about the reason of my presence than threatened by it. I have to admit that it's not what I was expecting from the Evil Queen."

She crossed her arms under her chest, knowingly drawing his gaze to her cleavage, and she smirked as his eyes raked her up and down. He gulped and looked away when he noticed that he had been caught ogling her.

"You presume that you know anything about me, Thief?"

"I wouldn't dare to presume anything where you're concerned, Milady. I only observe."

"It's Your Majesty, and you would do well to remember it, you're treading on thin enough ice as it is."

He bowed with a flourish, and she rolled her eyes at his antics.

"You are taking a lot of chances for someone who has a young son waiting for him to come home."

"Maybe I want to prove the forked tongues wrong. My son saw something in you, and he may be knee-high to a grasshopper, but he is usually quite a good judge of character."

"Men, young or old, are easily fooled by a pretty face. You should teach your son that some people do deserve their reputations, and to stay away."

"And yet, you kept his present, and here you are arguing with me instead of sending me flying over your balcony railing."

"Don't tempt me. It sounds rather entertaining."

"At least, I would have good cause to warn my son off then."

That gave Regina pause. She couldn't understand why the thought of disappointing a child that she had spent all of a minute with was so unbearable, probably because she knew all too well that disappointment hit children harder.

"Though when I remember the way you treated him, and the care you've shown to keep his present intact, I'm wondering if someone who does that can be as wicked as they say," Robin mused, but Regina didn't have to think about her answer.

"They don't know the half of it," she replied at once. "If you came all this way because you thought you could somehow redeem me, you have wasted your time." She had stopped caring about the people's approbation long ago, when she had learned that nothing she did or say would be good enough in this court stuck in the past and the cult of a dead woman and her insipid, treacherous daughter.

"I wouldn't say 'redeem', just curious about the woman behind the monstrous façade you choose to show the world. No one is born evil."

Regina's breath caught in her throat as she remembered a young girl who dreamed of a simple life far away from power plays and sorcery, before grief, neglect and desillusion made her lose what little hope she had left.

She could see that he had noticed the way his words had affected her, and he pressed through the crack in her armour.

"I know a thing or two about darkness, I know how hard it is to resist it when you have no one and nothing to pull you back. I remember the way it insidiously consumes you, so that, by the time you realise it, it's almost too late to do anything about it."

She could hardly imagine this man teetering on the brink of the abyss she had been so drawn to, and yet there was an edge to him, something just reckless enough to let her glimpse the crook behind the noble thief.

"I'm guessing you're going to say that it's your son who helped you find your way back to the path of the righteous," and he nodded. "Well, that's where you and I are different, there is nothing out there for me, revenge is the only thing keeping me going." There were no more stable boys, no fairies, no men with lion tattoos waiting for her in a tavern somewhere; it was all gone, only her burning desire to get even with Snow, with anyone who had wrecked her life, remained.

"I don't pretend to know the first thing about magic. I usually try to avoid it like the plague, but I can admit that it has its uses. What I do know is that darkness can't exist without light, it feeds on it until it has snuffed it out."

"And your point is?"

"That you're still standing, maybe not all hope is lost."

"You were right when you said that you don't know the first thing about it. Dark magic is all I know, there is no changing that."

"I wonder if that's true, or if it's the only kind you were taught. They whisper that the Dark One was your mentor. I have met the creature," and his curt tone let Regina know all she needed to about how that particular encounter went. "And I don't think that he has ever done anything that wasn't in his own interest. You want revenge and he trained you to achieve it, but at what cost? What's the price for Snow White's death? What's in it for him, have you ever asked him that?"

She had not, mostly because she did not care much about what would happen after she would eventually get her hands on her stepdaughter. It was foolish of course, she knew better than to give the Dark One any leeway, but really as long as her mind could finally be at peace, knowing that Daniel was avenged, did it really matter?

"You don't know what she took from me," Regina told Robin. "The pain she caused."

"But is it worth losing your soul? Whatever you do to Snow White, it will destroy you, and what good can that do? In the end, she will have won, even dead she will have taken everything from you."

Were he talking to a saner person, it would probably be easier for him to make her see the sense in his words, though sanity had been in rare supply in Regina's life in recent years. When you only have one desire, one goal, one aspiration, you certainly won't be talked out of it by the first stranger you meet, no matter how convincing said stranger could be.

"I think you have said all you wanted to, haven't you?"

He obviously thought that he had made some headway, if his startled look and hanging mouth were anything to go by. He recovered faster than she would have thought, and nodded.

"I guess I have. Farewell, Your Majesty," he said, and Regina couldn't help but feel a pang at the correct use of her title and the formal bow he performed before leaving the same way he came.

Her rooms couldn't take much more destruction, she thought later as she crawled into bed, exhausted after once more tearing down and putting back together her chambers. She had nearly caused an earthquake this time, the very foundations of the castle vibrating with her fury. How did this man, who was no one and nothing to her, dare to invade her privacy and confront her with all her insecurities? What did he even know?

And yet, his son's gift still stood on her nightstand, and she tossed and turned most of the night, sleep eluding her as, each time she closed her eyes, she remembered Robin Hood's crestfallen expression before he left. When she finally nodded off, her dream of Daniel soon turned into a nightmare, as her true love rejected the monster she had become, horrified at the sight of her covered in Snow's blood, killed in his name.

She wasn't sure he would come when she sent the message, though she certainly hoped he would. It had been weeks since he had risked certain death by coming to her, but she had needed that time to sort out her feelings and thoughts, and genuinely wonder if she was willing to stop her pursuit, if she could put the Evil Queen to rest in order to give Regina a chance to live.

She was leaning against a tree, at the edge of the woods, cloaked in black, watching the Dark Palace burn, her guards and servants running around trying to salvage what they could and thinking that she was still inside. Fools. A magical experiment gone wrong causing a fire that wouldn't die; it'd take more than that to bring her down.

She heard a slight rustle of leaves behind her, too close to be anything other than intentional, someone trying not to startle her.

"You're here," she said, not looking away from the rather fascinating sight in front of her.

He joined her, standing by her side, right in her space, his arm brushing against hers. "It was a near thing. Roland found your message and all but ordered me to come. I was rather certain we were done with each other after last time."

She looked down for a second, swallowing heavily and pursing her lips, she had never really been good at this. "It's not easy for me to admit, but you were right. Rumple only let me think he would help me against Snow. It turns out he has been orchestrating his own plan all along, and it did not include me getting what I want." It had taken careful spying to find that out.

"Does it mean that you have changed your mind?" Robin asked, the 'just like that' unsaid but heavily implied.

"I can't promise that, if our paths were to cross, I wouldn't hurt Snow, but I would rather it happened on my terms than on Rumple's," she replied, turning towards him. "It's the best I can offer for now."

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. "I guess you would fit right in with a bunch of people looking for a second chance," he said at last, the beginning of a dimpled smile on his lips.

She sighed in relief. They both twirled back towards the castle as it began to collapse.

"Your handiwork, I assume?"

Regina nodded. "I doubt that it will fool Rumple for long, but hopefully it will give me enough time to disappear." It would mean giving up on magic, and that would be its own kind of hell, but there would be no fresh start without it.

"The Evil Queen is dead," she whispered, and Robin squeezed her shoulder gently.

"Long live Regina," he completed.