She misses Maine.
Misses the peaceful quiet of her back porch. The rocker she'd had there, and the way she'd take her coffee out in the mornings when the weather allowed it. She'd sit and watch the sky grow light, watch the dew burn off the grass, listen to the birds wake up, and smell the flowers in her garden just on the other side of the rail.
It's just shy of six AM, and Regina is perched on Abe's fire escape, one of his flannel shirts wrapped over her own flannel shirt, her jeans zipped but not buttoned, her toes chilly and bare. She'd skipped coffee; she didn't want to wake anyone.
Instead, she'd tapped a cigarette out of the light blue pack in her purse, lit it up and watched the neon lights blink out and the hazy rays of morning try to rise above the neighboring buildings.
A garbage truck rumbles by below, picking up the trash piled high on the sidewalk. Regina inhales another lungful of smoke (she'll quit after this pack, she really will – she will not start smoking now, in her 80s), grateful that she can't smell the stink of the refuse up here on the fifth floor.
She'd rather have the sweet scent of her hydrangeas in her nose than tobacco, but she'll take tobacco over marinating trash any day.
She doesn't know why she's out here except that she'd woken in that bed, with Abe's arm slung across her, and hadn't been able to fall back asleep. Too much noise in her head. In her heart. Too deep an ache to be lying there beside him, naked and curled together, and to have him not know her, not properly anyway.
It had weighed heavily on her, dragged her mood down, down, down, until she'd had to get up. It was either that, or risk him waking to find her crying in the dark with no possible explanation for him as to why.
But she hadn't wanted to just leave , like this meant nothing to her. To Roni Cope.
So here she is, wiping the occasional stray tear from her cheek as she smokes American Spirit after American Spirit on his fire escape.
Smoking is stupid. Sitting outside in the cold just so she can smoke is stupid . How do people do this in Alaska? How do they not freeze?
When another body climbs out the window, she doesn't even look. It's Abe, she assumes.
But the legs that dangle over the edge are longer than his, and when she turns her head, the dimpled smile she gets comes from a face covered in much darker stubble – one of Abe's roommates, she realizes. This man's eyes are so brown they're nearly black, and his hair is floppy and unkempt, a pair of chunky-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He's younger than Robin. Younger than Henry even, she thinks, by the look of him (but then she'd known that; Abe had told her). There's something familiar about him, something she can't place. But then, with three identities in her head, two curses, several kingdoms, that does happen from time to time.
"I thought you might like some coffee," he tells her, settling a mug between them on the metal (she realizes then that he'd brought two with him, somehow managed to juggle them out the window without spilling).
Regina smiles at him, says, "Thank you," and lifts her cigarette slightly. "This isn't bothering you, is it? I didn't wake you? I should have closed the window."
He looks at it for a second, and she can see the little look of disapproval pinch his lips (he and his roommate have that in common, at least, even with the age gap), but he says, "No, you're fine. I'm always up with the sun. It reminds me of home."
Regina smiles at the sentiment; can't help it.
"Me, too," she tells him, and then she takes a deep drag on the cigarette. He may say he doesn't mind, but she thinks that wasn't entirely true, so she'll spend it quickly and snuff it out.
When she's mid-exhale, he says, "My name's Roland, by the way," and she chokes.
She'd gasped when she'd heard it, sucked smoke back toward her lungs in a way she was unprepared for, and her body had reacted by forcefully reversing course. So now she's sitting here, coughing in a way that barks a little bit, her throat raw, her eyes stinging, the cigarette fumbled from her fingers and fluttering down like a maple seed to the concrete below.
Roland's hand – and of course he's Roland, she should have seen it in those dimples and dark eyes and that tug of familiarity, but she hasn't seen him since he was ten, she wasn't prepared for him to be a man – settles on her back and rubs soothingly as she fights to draw a normal breath again, one that doesn't hitch and revolt and send her into another coughing fit.
"So you're awake, then," he says beside her, and Regina turns wide eyes to take him in. He's smirking at her, dimples popping just like his father's, the same tilt to his mouth, the same tickled-pink glint in his eyes, and Regina breaks into a sob she has to muffle with her hand before she can even get out an answer to his question.
It's all the confirmation he needs; that smile warms, widens, and Regina reaches her hands out to cup his cheeks. His beard is thicker than Robin's, just a little, enough to be soft beneath her palms, and he needs a haircut desperately, those curls as floppy as ever and mussed from sleep. His jaw has a squareness that had still been all baby fat the last time she'd seen him, and seeing him like this, so grown , sends a lance of pain and guilt straight through the middle of her.
All she can think to say to him is a wet, choked, "I'm sorry I stayed away so long."
Roland shakes his head at her, tells her, "It's alright, Regina, I understand. And so do they. They always have."
The sound of her name – her actual name – on the lips of a friend brings a fresh wave of tears to her eyes, and she drops her hands from Roland's cheeks to wipe at her own.
His words are a balm, although not much of one. She hasn't seen this boy since he was ten, and all for such ugly reasons. She couldn't stand to see his not-father with her other half. Couldn't bear the ache of their happy ending while she was still so… lonely. It had been alright, bearable, mostly, until Henry had left.
But then the loneliness, the emptiness , had been so vast and yawning a chasm that she hadn't been able to bring herself to widen the gap by spending time in the Evil Queen's Happy Ending. Months had become years had become "well, what would I say after so long away?" and now here she is. Freezing on a fire escape in the Seattle dawn with what's become of a boy who's held her heart since a monkey came swooping down on him at four years old, while his father sleeps a room away, oblivious to what's under his roof.
"You're so grown up, and so handsome," she marvels, shaking her head at him (he ducks his head a little, manages to look a little bit shy). "Oh, Roland…" She sucks a breath in, lets it shake its way out, and then asks, "How are you here? How are you awake?"
He jerks his head back in the vague direction of Robin's room and says, "I was looking for him. After she brought him back, Regina – the other Regina, the Queen – sent him to the realm where you were supposed to be, but when we never heard from him again, we went looking. We discovered the curse, and she sent us here to help get you two together and break it already."
"'Us'?"
"Robyn is roommate number three," he tells her, and Regina lets out a joyful little laugh. Well, that solves that mystery then – where Robyn had ended up after Roni had encouraged her abroad.
"So you finally got to spend some time together," she says gladly – that she'd let Robin's children grow up realms apart had always eaten at her, a private source of guilt she couldn't figure out how to resolve without forcing one child to uproot and move their whole life somewhere new. She should have dragged all the Merry Men back by their hair the second Storybrooke had been safe again – hired them all to do God knows what for the town, put them up in whatever accommodations they wanted, be it tents or condos, or, God, her back yard if it had meant that she'd be able to do right by Robin's kids.
She's always told herself it was too late by then, that Roland didn't deserve another upheaval. But one day in Dr. Hopper's office she'd confessed to him and him only that she wasn't sure she could look at Roland's face and not feel a constant, suffocating guilt that his father had been taken away to spare her . She didn't think she deserved it then – still doesn't now.
That they've had a chance to bond, finally, after all these years, is a balm on her heart.
Her heart eases even more when he smiles and says, "Lots of it, yeah. But we have, over the years, sometimes. Regina—the Queen—" That's never going to stop being confusing, is it? "—has been trying to bring my father back for a long time, and a lot of the things she tried needed pieces of him, or as close as she could get. And we're his children, so…"
Regina's jaw goes slack.
"How long is a long time?"
Roland shrugs and tells her, "Years. Since I was little."
"You – Robyn knew?" she questions. All these years, and… "Did Zelena know?"
Roland smirks – his face is shaped so differently than Robin's now, but that smirk, that's all his daddy. So is the pace at which he nods and tells her, "They were sworn to secrecy – we all were. Most of what Regina tried didn't go anywhere, and she didn't want to get your hopes up. And then when it did work, Papa wanted to tell you himself, so then he swore us all to secrecy."
Tears spring to her eyes again, buoyed up by a mix of love and affection and shock and guilt . She laughs, wetly, and mutters, "Idiot. Was he… was he angry with me? That it was her trying and not me? That I... gave up on him."
She'd looked into ways to bring Robin back – she knew she shouldn't have, they'd gone down that road with Hook and ultimately gotten nowhere (his resurrection was a fucking gift from the gods, but Olympus forbid Robin's sacrifice be rewarded in kind). Still, she'd sought out a way. Something that didn't require an equal sacrifice. Something doable. She'd read every book in her collection, every tome in the Sorcerer's mansion. Quietly, secretly, she'd searched for two years, three, five.
And then she'd given up. The cost was always too high or required something she could never get her hands on.
Clearly her other half had been more determined. So there's a kernel of guilt amidst the rest of her riotous emotions, but she looks into Roland's eyes again, and sees so much of Robin, and the tiny measure of guilt is quickly drowned out by elation.
It helps that he's quick to reassure her, telling her, "No, he wanted you to. He wanted you to live your life. He was a little worried you'd have found someone else in the last fifteen years, but… he wasn't angry with you." He lifts his coffee toward his lips and adds, "Not about that, anyway. He was angry that there were two of you. He was angry when he found out why."
"He would be," Regina murmurs quietly. She's always known he'd never have stood for that. She'd had dreams when they were split – nightmares that Robin had returned and spurned her for the split, that he'd chosen to love her darker half instead. Some part of her, deep down, must have known that it was wrong.
"I think he was mostly angry at everyone else for letting it happen," Roland tells her, cradling his coffee gingerly in his lap. Regina finally reaches for hers, taking a tentative sip (strong enough to walk, she thinks with a smile – and blessedly warm). "I heard him talking to Regina about it one night – your heart was broken but they should have been there for you, not told you that any part of you was to blame. Something like that. He told her he'd never have let her be convinced that any part of her should die."
Once again, Regina finds herself jealous of her other half. She'd have given anything – anything – to hear those reassurances from Robin. To be given that sort of absolution. To hear that constant, steady faith in her goodness .
She drops her gaze to the coffee cup warming her chilly fingers, her eyes suddenly swimming with unshed tears. "Losing your father…"
She wants to say it wrecked her. Ripped her up inside. Made her feel like a piece of her soul was missing, and how was she ever supposed to be okay again? How was she supposed to live with herself when someone so good loved someone as wretched as her and died for it? When his love for her orphaned children, and left his men leaderless and for what? For who? The grief of losing him had felt like a constant ripping in her chest, an unbearable tension that she'd thought maybe she could end by ending the dark part of her that surely had been punished for loving him.
But it seems too dramatic, and too… much. Too much to say to sweet, dimple-cheeked Roland, no matter how much older and wiser he might be. Her tumultuous mind back then isn't something she wants him to see, to know.
So she swallows thickly around the lump in her throat and instead she only admits, "I blamed myself. I… hated myself."
"He doesn't," Roland tells her, as if he knows how much she needs to hear it.
She blinks, and tears fall, and Regina swipes them away, her voice wobbly, her gaze still firmly on her coffee when she asks, "Do you?"
Roland reaches for her, his fingers wrapping around her wrist and squeezing. He waits until she glances up to tell her, "No. Never. Papa died to protect someone he loved. I don't remember a lot from before he died, but I remember that that's who he was. He died because of who he was, not because of who you were. I know that."
It's taken her so many hours, and so many dollars, and so much self reflection, but finally she can claim, "So do I. But it means a lot that you know."
For a minute, they don't speak. She sniffles and takes another swallow of her rapidly cooling coffee, and Roland kicks his legs absently in a way that reminds her very much of how he used to sit on her back porch. Just as she's starting to get a handle on her tears, he gives them fresh fuel when he asks, "Were you afraid I blamed you too? Is that why you stayed away?"
Regina presses her lips together hard, her throat closing for a moment, tears surging up and spilling over, and it's all she can do to admit, "Yes."
He makes this move that is so like Robin – the pitch of shoulders, the way he nicks her coffee from her fingers and plops it behind them, tucking his own mug defty there as well before he scoots close and wraps his arms around her shoulders, and assures her, "I didn't. I loved you."
She shouldn't do this, he's just a child (he's not, he's grown, and this wound has so long been left to fester), but she breaks. Her shoulders shake, and she presses her face into the solid muscle of his shoulder, wetting the cotton of shirt with her tears as Roland— Roland, sweet little Roland—rocks her gently.
His voice is soft but strong as he tells her, "When you love someone, you protect them. And he protected you, that's all. Papa was killed by a bad man, that's all I ever believed. I never blamed you, Regina, not even when I was little. He saved my Majesty, that's what I knew."
She's wrecked. She was not at all prepared for this. Robin being back was enough of a blow, but just now, in this moment, she's glad he's Abe Warner. She's glad he's cursed, because there is a depth of pain in her she didn't know was still this fathomless. She'd made peace with all of this, she thought, but here she is weeping on the shoulder of a child she was so sure she'd wounded irreparably just by wanting more, wanting to be loved, wanting his father.
Sometimes forgiveness hurts as much as it heals, and this morning it cuts deep.
If Robin was awake, if she was having this conversation with him , suddenly she's worried she might never be able to stem the tears.
As it is, it takes everything in her wrestle them back to hitching breaths and wet sniffles. When she lifts her head and says, "I'm sorry," she's not sure if she's apologizing for her absence, or her tears, or Robin's death. She just knows she's sorry down to her very bones.
Roland only smiles at her, just the way his father used to. His hands rise, fingers and thumbs wiping tears from Regina's flushed cheeks, and suddenly she feels very much like their roles are reversed. Suddenly he's the grown-up, soothing her with gentle touches, and soft words, telling her, "You don't need to be. And he's back now, so… it doesn't matter anymore, right?"
Regina nods, and pulls away from him, finally, trying to stitch herself back together. She wipes at the last dregs of tears on her cheeks, and takes a deep, cleansing breath of chilly Seattle air. She grabs her coffee again, and takes a deep swig, and only then, when she's certain she's able to speak without her voice cracking, does she ask a question that's been nagging at her for weeks: "What was the price? It had to have been steep, for bringing someone back from Oblivion."
"I don't know," Roland tells her, with a shrug. "She wouldn't say. She took everything she needed and left by herself. Came back almost a month later. Robin was… not pleased."
"I bet," Regina mutters. She can't imagine anyone taking well to their spouse disappearing on their own to do powerful magic with the sole intent of bringing back their doppelganger. Even if it was in order to reunite him with Regina. With her. With… Forget the noise, the names and copies in her life are enough to give her a headache on their own. She shoves the thought aside, and tells Roland, "I looked, for a while. I never found anything that I could… that could be done. Whatever she did, it had to be powerful."
He sips his coffee and nods. Says, "It was. I don't know what she did, but… I know she looked like hell when she came home. It took a lot out of her, whatever it was, but she bounced back."
Regina doesn't like the sound of that. Magic is violent, potent. Full of energy, wind, crackling power. And the dark stuff, that can really take it out of you. Leave you feeling shaky, and nauseous, and jittery. (She still remembers the sickly vibration of it in her veins, under her skin, when she'd had to use the Dark One's dagger to free all those fairies years ago.) But usually, you still look alright, especially in the time it would take to get back to the castle from, well… anywhere nearby with enough magical punch to get a job like this done.
Whatever the Queen had done, it had been intense, and Regina finds herself hoping that it wasn't anything she couldn't come back from. She also finds herself with one more person to worry about, it seems...
So she has a hard time selling the way she mutters, "Good. That's good…"
The sun is rising higher in the sky, and the morning feels… brighter. But somehow she feels colder. Maybe it's the tears, or the way her nose is all stuffed up from crying, or the chill of no longer being caught up in Roland's warm hug. But her toes are downright icy now (she should've worn socks; what was she thinking?), and when she reaches for her coffee, the mug is cool, the coffee headed firmly into lukewarm territory.
They should head back inside, just as soon as she's sure her face isn't splotchy from her crying jag. (She has absolutely no idea how she'd explain that one to Abe.)
"Can I ask you—" Roland says after a moment. "Why hasn't the curse broken? You've clearly kissed."
He says it casually, without judgement, but it takes until that moment for her to remember that she'd spent the night before fucking his father and not particularly quietly. Regina's eyes pop wide with horror (thank God she'd already swallowed her coffee).
"Oh god—Could you hear—How thin are these walls?" she questions with a rising sort of panic. It's one of her points of pride that never not once did she manage to have Henry walk in on or overhear her in a compromising position with a lover (his other mother can't claim the same), so this is a brand new flavor of mortification for her.
She feels her cheeks go hot when Roland offers a very droll, "No comment. Answer my question."
"Oh, my God," she groans, burying her face in her hands; she can feel how hard she's blushing. "Oh, my God ."
Just when she thinks she couldn't be any more mortified, Roland clears his throat a little and mutters, "If you could uh, not say that to me right now, that'd be great."
Regina practically chokes out her horrified " Oh my —I am so sorry." She's never going to be able to look at this child again. Oh God , Robyn is his other roommate. Robyn, her niece. Robyn, whose diapers she'd changed. Robyn who used to bake cookies in her kitchen and borrow her lipstick, and she just had to live through a night of listening to Cool Aunt Regina ride dick, Jesus Christ, she's going to fling herself off this fire escape. It's the only option that might preserve her dignity. Regina scrubs her hands down her face, looks up through her fingers but keeps her gaze trained firmly on the row of buildings across the street and not on her soulmate's son as she says, "If I'd known you were his roommates, we'd have gone back to my place."
"It's alright," Roland chuckles, and well at least someone finds some degree of humor in this. (Maybe she will, someday, but not today.) Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him lean back on his hand and squint up at the sky as he tells her almost too casually, "At least you had the decency to do it behind a closed bedroom door, not in the middle of the courtyard in daylight like some versions of you two."
Regina stifles a laugh; she doesn't even have to guess which courtyard, or where. She knows immediately which plinth her alter ego would have perched herself on for a sunny romp in the grand courtyard.
Somehow it helps ease the embarrassment a little – clearly last night was nothing he'd never seen or heard. At least this time he only had the audio track (she hopes to God he put in his headphones or something–in fact, she's going to assume that he did and not give him an opportunity to refute her).
She lets her hands fall, shaking her head and telling Roland, "I can't say I'm less embarrassed, but that does help, thank you."
Still, she can't bring herself to look at him even when he urges her back on track: "Answer my question."
It takes her a minute to even remember what the question was, she's so caught up in her quick death by embarrassment. But she manages to rewind her brain far enough eventually, and when she does she lets out a deep sigh.
Right. The curse, and why it holds. She's done plenty of thinking on this over the past few weeks, and to the best of her knowledge, it's, "Because Abe Warner doesn't love Roni Cope, much less Regina Mills. And anyway, I helped cast this curse. I don't know if I can break it. I don't think it works that way."
"You cast it?" Roland asks her. "Why? We were told it was some coven."
"It was—with my help," she exhales. "Henry was dying. Drizella poisoned him, to get me to cast the curse. Bringing him back to a land without magic was the only way to save him, and if this curse breaks… he dies."
Roland's "Oh," is about as crestfallen as she feels about the whole thing.
"Yeah."
She sneaks a glance at him then, and is struck by just how grown up he looks. He's scowling, his jaw set. No, not scowling—brooding. She's seen him pout, and tantrum, and all sorts of things that little boys do. But she's never seen him brood before, and it throws her off-kilter.
She doesn't have to wait long to hear what's weighing so heavily on this mind: "So all of this – trying to reunite you and my papa – was pointless then."
"No, I wouldn't say that," she's quick to reassure. "Having him back is not pointless to me. And I don't think it's pointless to you, or your sister. Or to him."
"I didn't mean that," Roland sighs. "I'm glad he's back. I never thought I'd get to…" He trails off, staring at his hands for a moment, his shoulders shifting in the tiniest shrug.
Never thought he'd get to know his father, she thinks, the thought making her heard ache. It cracks right down the middle when he adds, "And now I guess I won't. You'd never risk Henry, not even so my father and I could have a second chance."
Regina looks away; he's right, she wouldn't risk Henry for anything, but the idea that Roland might lose his father for it makes her belly twist with sick dread. She won't let that happen.
"I think we both know your father wouldn't want me to," she says gently, but then she's reaching for him, grasping his wrist and squeezing. "But Roland, we will find a way. Somehow. We'll work together – you and your sister, and my sister, and we'll find another solution. We'll figure out some way to wake everyone up and save Henry. Together. You'll get your second chance with him, and so will I." She waits for him to look up at her, and then she meets his eyes and swears, "I promise."
For a second he just looks at her, and then he says quietly, "Don't make promises you can't keep, Regina."
Her eyes well with tears again, but she blinks them stubbornly away. She's not sure if it's his lack of faith in her, or the sheer fact that she still has no idea how to fix all this, but he's right, she can't promise that.
"I'll try, then," she amends. "With everything in my power this time – I mean it. I won't stop until we can have both of them, awake and alive. We won't stop. All of us, together, we won't stop until we've saved your dad, and Henry."
That, it seems, he can believe.
Roland's shoulders sag, but it's relief, not defeat, and he gives her a nod, takes a deep breath.
"You should tell Regina," he says. "About Henry – the poison. She'd want to know; he's her son too. And maybe she can help. She did bring a man back from Oblivion, after all."
And she has magic, Regina thinks with a flood of hope. Real, flowing magic, and a vault of supplies, several libraries full of books. There's only one problem:
"Do you have a way to contact her in this realm?"
Roland snorts a little, shaking his head in exasperated amusement and telling Regina, "I have to check in every third day or she starts sending me crows. She wanted to come herself once she heard about the curse but Robin – the other Robin – managed to convince her that if you were cursed, her walking in with your face was probably not a great idea."
"Yeah, I don't think Roni would have taken that well," Regina scoffs. She can only imagine how well that would have gone over. "If I give you a note, you can send it to her?"
"Yeah, I can do that," Roland agrees, and suddenly everything looks just a bit brighter. That chill in her bones is warming, easing, and she doesn't think it has anything to do with the slow-growing warmth of the sun.
She reaches for Roland again, grasping his hand in hers, and telling him, "Thank you. I'm so glad you're here – you and Robyn. Ever since Drizella woke me up, I've been so lonely. It's been hell, being so close to all these people I know and love and not being able to really talk to any of them. Not honestly. I know all of them but they don't know me. They don't even know themselves."
"Well you're not alone anymore," Roland tells her, squeezing back. For the first time since she woke up, that feels like the truth. "You're on Team...Save… Bandit…?" He winces, and admits, "I don't know, Robyn and I haven't really settled on a name yet."
"Mm." Regina's brow knits. "Henry would know what to call it. It'd be one of his Operations. Operation…" She comes up empty, too. She was never very good at this sort of thing. In the end, she gives up, and finishes, "...Something clever about waking up, or breaking curses, or… something."
"Operation Rise and Shine," Roland suggests teasingly and Regina laughs at him. "That sounds like trying to get my sister out of bed before noon."
Her smiles comes easily at that, along with a sympathetic little groan. "She did always like to sleep in. Your father used to say that you would rise with the birds, no matter how late you were up the night before. But Robyn, she'd sleep the day away if you let her, ever since she was little."
"That definitely hasn't changed," Roland chuckles. "You can sometimes get her up with food, though. Papa, too. Although he's been crashed out all morning more often than not lately."
"That may be my fault," Regina winces. "Owning a bar doesn't exactly lead to healthy sleeping patterns. Or a lot of free time that works with his schedule."
"You have the day off today, then?" Roland assumes. She thinks he might even sound a bit… hopeful.
"I had last night off," she corrects. "And I have a few more hours."
He nods, looks out at the skyline for a minute, and then he asks her, "You and the Queen, you have all the same memories, right? Up until the split?"
"We do…" Regina answers cautiously, unsure where this is going. Their conversation this morning has run the gamut.
"So you know how to make those apple cinnamon pancakes, then, right?"
He smiles as he says it, his eyebrows quirking, dimples flashing, and for a moment he's four years old again, plying her for rocky road ice cream on Main Street in Storybrooke, with one of his boyish smiles and a Please, Regina? so sweet it could give her a cavity.
Her own face spreads into a grin, as she nods and tells him, "I do."
"I don't suppose I could talk you into them?"
The city is waking up around them, stretching into life. A dog barks on the sidewalk below, and Regina looks at this boy who isn't a boy anymore – a shadow of a life she'd had to walk away from, now shoved right back into the spotlight – and she says, "Whatever you want, sweetheart."
.::.
They make apple pancakes, and another pot of coffee, the kitchen fragrant and homey by the time they're finished.
She's flipping a pancake on the stove when Robyn comes stumbling in, her blonde locks in a sleep-mussed braid, bits and pieces sticking out every which way.
Regina feels a rush of rightness at the sight of her, a settling in her heart, and then the girl (she's not a girl anymore, she's practically grown), mumbles a sleepy, "Morning, Aunt Regina," before she can catch herself.
Regina sees the moment she realizes what she's said – blue eyes (Robin's eyes, too dark to be Zelena's) pop wide, and her mouth falls open a little.
Regina just smiles and says, "Good morning, sweetheart. Coffee?"
Robyn looks to Roland, who just shrugs and nods, as if that's answer enough.
And it'll have to be, because before there's any time to explain, the door to Abe's bedroom is opening, and he's wandering into the kitchen, too. He's shirtless, in a loose pair of sweats, that scar over his body still giving her pause as he stretches and yawns.
"You've all met then?" he asks, scratching at an itch on his chest.
"Yeah, we've been introduced," Robyn answers, with just enough wry amusement that Roland has to turn away to hide a snorting little laugh.
"God bless you, you made coffee," Abe mutters, leaning in to press a kiss to Regina's cheek before he reaches into the cupboard and pulls down a mug for himself.
He smells like sleep, and a bit like faded sweat, and he's clearly still a little bleary-eyed. Roland says something about her having made pancakes, too, and Abe grunts his approval, winding an arm around her waist, nosing into her hair. His voice is low and raspy and wonderful as he murmurs, "You didn't have to cook breakfast, love, but I can't say that I mind."
The little nip he gives to her earlobe is hidden by her hair, but she still feels a blush flare up the back of her neck at the idea that he's given her a love bite in front of his children .
Abe takes his coffee to the table; Robyn is already there nursing hers.
Roland holds out a plate for the pancakes, and when she glances up at him, Regina finds him smirking knowingly at her. She rolls her eyes, smiling like an idiot, because what else can she do at this point, really?
Their easy candor from the fire escape won't fly here – not in front of his father.
So they just pile that plate up with the rest of the finished pancakes, turn to join the others at the table.
The sight stuns her for a moment. The two of them, father and daughter, sitting in identical half-hunched positions, looking equally sleepy as they sip their coffee. They've even managed to choose matching mugs (the only two matching ones in the house, she's pretty certain). She's always thought Robyn favored her father, had seen glimpses of him in the shape of her face, or the color of her hair, her spirit of adventure, her curiosity.
But never has she been able to look at them in a room together and truly see it. She never thought she'd ever get the chance.
It makes her knees a little weak, and she sinks into the open chair between Abe and Roland as much to give them a break as to dive into her plate of pancakes.
Abe and Roland are already digging in, but Robyn looks up from her coffee and catches Regina staring. Her brow furrows, a silent What? And Regina just shrugs her shoulders a little and mouths, "You found him."
Robyn's brow smooths, a smile warming her face. She nods a little, and then reaches for her fork. Regina does the same, but she can't stop looking at all of them long enough to properly eat.
She wants to pinch herself; this can't be real.
And then Abe says, "Y'know I'm not sure I told you this, but it was Roland who told me I should try your bar for lunch sometime. So I guess we have him to thank for getting us together."
She thinks of arrows, and monkeys, and a toddling little boy in a floppy cape; Abe has no idea how right he is.
The memory makes her grin, and she glances at Roland; he's smiling right back at her. She knows without question he's heard that story before, and somehow she's certain he's thinking of the same thing she is.
"Well, then I'm glad I made the apple pancakes," she says, hoping Abe thinks her smile is just her being polite.
When Roland answers, "Would you believe they're one of my favorites?" she hears Robyn snort back a laugh, and suddenly it all seems terribly funny.
Sitting here, with them, with her family , or most of it anyway. She's missing a few vital pieces (missing the most vital piece), but so much of what is precious to her is right around this table – even if one of them doesn't know it.
She looks at her niece, at the man who was supposed to be her step-son, at their father who has no idea what the hell he's sitting in the middle of, and she grins.
They're all going to be just fine. Maybe it's not all sorted yet, but they have each other now, and they'll figure it out.
Together.
