At long last, an update!

Shoutout to A, who had to put up with my sometimes frantic messages about how much sex (not really) was going on in this chapter, and for indulging questions like "What kind of alcohol would Little John drink?"

And shoutout to all you readers for sticking with me through the down times. You're my raisons d'être.

Regina walled herself away, watched as the ripples of magic closed around her, and though she knew it to be impenetrable – it had to be, or they were all lost – it looked impossibly flimsy as she stood before it now. She shouldn't have left it so late, only seconds before the storm crashed down and she sparked off like lightning, but she had needed to see to Henry, had needed to warn off Robin and his men again, long after she had hoped to find them scattered and disarmed. Robin's insistent trust in her had been touching – far more than that, really – but there was fearlessness, and there was stupidity, and Robin's actions had veered dangerously towards the latter as he had lingered to kiss her once more, carefully netting his fingers in her hair, holding her there, until she had run from him for both their sakes.

He thought he had seen her at her worst, perhaps, but he had never seen her.

How foolish they were (how foolish she was) to think that the Queen had been vanquished, that Regina had changed so much as to drown out her darkness entirely, as if the two did not share a heart, and a mind, and a terrible power. She was a different woman now, she could fear the Queen as much as them, and yet the storm was coming, its electricity pricking at the hairs on the nape of her neck, its sly fingers seeking out the remnants of anger and vengeance that still nestled around her heart and jolting them into wakefulness.

Don't be scared, she had told Henry, and her voice had trembled, and they had both known the truth, though Henry had nodded and hugged her like the brave boy he was, like the believer he was.

He should be afraid. Oh, they all should be.

Because her heart was still black, because she really had never learned her lesson, because some part of her (however small it might be) would enjoy this – the destruction and the blood, the casting off of her restraints.

Heat rose along her spine, filling her until she could take no more, spilling over into the air as she shivered into nothingness, into lightning that broke open the sky, and she rose with it.

She was the storm.

…

Swan fled into the night, and the Queen followed, thinking only how sweet it would be to corner mother and daughter together and end them at last. Yes, there would be blood tonight.

Swan's footsteps faded to a distant beat – she had a solid start, though she would not be able to run forever, and the Queen always had enjoyed the hunt almost as much as the kill – and the Queen slowed her own pace, drinking in the wildness of the night. The moon gave eerie light to the strand of trees that ran against her father's mausoleum, making them look half-alive, and the Queen found herself staring even before she heard the rustle of movement (and a voice, unintelligible but with the soft edge that usually accompanied cursing) among them.

Someone else was out there. Someone else walked the night, and Snow and her daughter could wait just a bit longer, for the Queen would meet this interloper first – as if she knew, as if she tasted him somehow, bittersweet against her lips, before the rest of her could even name him – and there he was, jerking futilely against the ropes that bound him to the oak and cursing in his struggle. One wrist bent awkwardly, the dagger glinting silver when it caught the moonlight, as he tried to saw through his restraints, and he was shaking with the effort, and how she delighted in seeing him defeated like this.

"Thief," she greeted, and his eyes snapped up to meet hers, alarmingly blue despite the poor light. "Your powers of concealment leave something to be desired."

He sneered at her in turn, stilling his hands, though she could see him panting from exertion. "I have no desire to hide from you."

"Oh? Felt like spending some quality time with that tree, then?" she offered. "No wonder you always smell like forest."

He leaned his head back against the tree, sighed in mock dismay. "Oh, how you wound me, m'lady," the title as cutting on his tongue as it had been in those early days, and she frowned at his insolence.

"What are we to do with you, thief? You're just so…helpless."

"Perhaps you should free me and see how helpless I am."

His voice was dangerous, the animal in him peering out of the cage he meant to contain it in, and this was what they had always been, fire and water, each trying to consume the other, each battling back a hunger that, tonight, could finally be set loose.

She had been closing on him this whole time, inch by inch circling forward and thinking of how she could burn him at last, burn the blue right from his eyes – and it was tempting (oh, how she wanted him to feel her magic, her fire, in him again) but she was one for blood, and so was he, and it would be far more amusing to gut him with his own blade, the one he held now like a ward between them.

"I know what kind of man you are – you can't fight, you can't make up your mind, you can't kiss your own wife, and that pesky code of yours, well…"

"Do not speak of Marian," he gritted through his teeth.

"Someone ought to. Poor girl."

He barked out a bitter laugh, falling slack against the tree in his fit of humor. "You speak of love – you! Have you ever known a man without taking his heart first, and bending him to your will?"

She took the final step to close the distance between them, one hand tangling with his and, with a wrench, twisting the dagger out of his hand. "How soon you forget. Or does your 'honor' prevent you from admitting pleasure, from acknowledging that it was you who came to me?"

"Neither of us has honor, lady; let us not mistake that," he said, unblinking, as if he was not even aware that he had been disarmed.

"Then let neither of us play the victim."

"If we are weighing our crimes against one another, you must admit that I have the better claim."

"And who are you but a man who steals, who breaks his vows, who lets his wife grow cold while he shares the bed of another? Yes," she said quietly as she bared her teeth in a vicious, triumphant smile. "I could show you the color of your heart, thief."

Her hand splayed over his chest, the pads of her fingers poised to sink through skin and blood and bone, as she locked eyes with the outlaw. He had not flinched away from her threat or her touch, and he looked back at her now defiantly, lazily, and she might have missed the fatal gleam of curiosity in him if his gaze had not flicked down to where her hand joined them together, his teeth digging slightly into his bottom lip with something like anticipation.

Her grin widened. "Would you like to see?"

"Does the Queen ask permission for anything?" he said, and that was all she needed to act, fingers digging into his core as he gasped, little noises that sounded almost like laughter, and how like a thief to laugh in the face of his death.

She pulled it from him, the pulsing redness of it fitting easily into her hand, and held it up between them for inspection. It was far redder than her own – she suspected everyone's was, save for the Imp's, if what he had could even be called a heart – but there were twists of black through it, threads of corruption, that he seemed equally fascinated by, and they were not so different after all.

"A bit bruised around the edges," she said, waiting until his eyes traveled back to hers. "Like mine."

"I'm nothing like you," he bit back, but there was no venom in it, no conviction, and he looked at her with all of his hunger, dipping his gaze to the low neck of her dress and the skin that lay open to him there.

"Is that what you tell yourself?" She applied the barest pressure to his heart (imagined crushing it) until he groaned, then held it to his chest once more. "Take your heart back, thief. I have no use for it."

"Nevertheless, it is yours, m'lady."

She pressed the heart back into him, feeling him buck against her touch as it settled again, both of them slightly breathless as she whispered, "Show me."

She took the dagger to his bonds, working the blade under and over layers of rope as she leaned into him, fitting their bodies together in increments, claiming him in inches.

"I expect you'll want the use of your hands," she hissed to him, and he growled in agreement.

She nicked him across the hip as she worked, then cut into the exposed skin of his wrist – shallowly, purposefully, just enough to see him bleed. If his tattoo hadn't been hidden under his shirt, she would have cut that too, removed it as easily as a heart and freed them both from this folly, this play at love, when they both belonged to the night, and to the hunt.

She had the mad urge to lick his blood where it edged the dagger, but then the last threads of rope had fallen from him, and he was on her, forcing her back and around until she was pinned between him and the tree.

He bent her back against it, the dagger lying half-buried where it had fallen between them, and set his lips, then his teeth, against the thin, unprotected skin of her throat.

"Have you forgotten what a thief does, Queen?" His breath curled warmly around her ear, and her hands clenched into the fabric at his shoulders, biting into the muscle beneath. Blood for blood, she thought dizzily, as he lowered his head again. "He takes."

…

Regina remembered being pushed against the tree, remembered reversing their positions again, using the tree as leverage against Robin until something rocketed into the back of her head and grounded her, blood and something sharper trickling down her neck, past her ears, as angry voices rose in the background.

She remembered different hands on her throat – surprisingly gentle, she had thought, for a murder – and heavy breathing, the sounds of a fight, darkness. She remembered flashes of movement, colors flying past, everything muted and garbled as a dream.

She remembered hands in her hair, and beeping, its rhythm hanging somewhere between soothing and annoying, and that's how she knew she was waking up, that prickle of irritation that ran through her as the regrettable familiarity of the hospital set in.

When she finally managed to unstick her eyelids and blink through the glare of light that assaulted her, she saw Robin sitting beside her bed, drowsing, one side of his face already purpling and his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Conspicuously not touching her. Conspicuously keeping his distance.

Of course. He was horrified by what she had done, what she had said to him, and she turned her head away (ignoring the ache, ignoring the nausea that rolled up – this wasn't her first concussion, she knew the signs) as she tried to piece together the blurred and darkened parts of her memory, searching for the moment where she had ruined it all, where she had hurt him enough to drive him away, heart sinking all the while.

"Regina?" Her movement, slight as it was, must have woken him, and now there was a gentle hand on her arm, his voice pitched low with concern.

"If I didn't know any better, thief, I'd say you're determined to send me to the emergency room every time we find ourselves alone," she deadpanned, turning back to him reluctantly and looking past him, over his shoulder, rather than at him.

Robin chuckled, a warm and affectionate sound that set her pulse skyrocketing again, and she was thankful that, in his distraction, Robin was paying no mind to the monitors in the room, the sharp uptick in blips giving her away at once.

"In this case, I think we can pin most of the blame on Little John. And a considerable amount of barley wine," he said lightly, stroking his fingers all the way down her arm to where they settled protectively over her hand. "One bottle of which, uh, made spectacular contact with the back of your head."

That explained the blood, and the sensation of people picking through her hair, she thought, and scowled. Glass was a bitch to extract from fabric, and hair was even worse.

"Are you all right? I mean, is there anything I can do for you?" Robin began to ramble, standing and looking around at the mess of wires and machines in the room – more than half of them not even connected to her – as if he could sort them himself if he stared hard enough. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I rather wish I didn't," Regina mumbled, fixing her gaze on the ceiling tiles, choosing their grey over the blue of his eyes, over his kindness.

"What – " The bed dipped under his weight as he sat, drawn down to her hesitancy, and she snapped.

"I told you to get as far away from my vault as possible. Do you know what I could have done to you?"

"I'd say I have a pretty good idea, considering how we spent the last few hours."

"You're unbelievable," she said quietly, turning from him again, unsure if she was angrier with him or with herself.

"Regina," he said, and though his voice was exasperated, his hands were nothing but gentle as they guided her back to face him, resistant as she was, nearly keening in distress. "Look at me, please."

He waited until her eyes rose, and let his fingers wander in her hair, pulling on strands, twisting them, like an insistent little boy. "I wasn't afraid of you then, and I'm not afraid of you now."

She made as if to interrupt, and he carried on, desperately this time. "Do you think any less of me after seeing me under the curse?

"No," she whispered, "but – "

"No," he echoed, "and why should I think any less of you? I know who you are, Regina Mills, and I intend to have you."

There was a gleam in his eye as he said it, thief that he was, and she loved him for it.

There was more to talk about (there always was) and more to ask pardon for, more things she would beg to hear told from his perspective – had she licked his dagger at some point? – but for now she smiled, the playful, snaring smile that had always belonged to the Queen, and asked, "Do you, now?"

"Yes, m'lady, if it pleases you," he replied with a smirk of his own.

She reached to touch his cheek, stubble bristling along her palm, and raised a questioning eyebrow as she examined his bruises in the yellow light of the hospital room.

"Things got a bit tetchy after John struck you – impressive aim, really, for a man that deep in the barrel." He caught her hand as she swatted at him, covering her in kisses up to her wrist as she struggled to maintain her glare until they were both laughing too hard to go on.

"I got off easy. John, on the other hand, won't be forgetting this particular transgression any time soon."

Regina looked at him sharply, intrigued, but just then someone hm-hmmed from the doorway, and she and Robin turned to meet Mary Margaret's beaming face.

"The doctor's going to see if he can discharge you now, Regina, and I know Henry's waiting to talk to you, so…"

Robin took that as his cue to leave, murmuring "I need to check on Roland anyway. I'll stop by later, okay?" as he nuzzled their foreheads together, slipping one last kiss in over her ear.

The loss of his body heat had Regina shivering, pulling at the blanket that she must have kicked off earlier, and Mary Margaret hurried over to help her, taking up Robin's position next to her on the bed as they waited for the doctor to come in.

"Robin cut quite the romantic figure dashing down the street with you in his arms, calling for help."

"Don't," Regina grumbled, though the image had her biting her tongue to suppress a smile and thanking the gods that she was not the blushing type.

Mary Margaret – weirdly perceptive, sometimes, for someone so lacking in subtlety – grinned at her, clearly waiting for more details of what had preceded Robin's mad run through the town.

"I was coming to kill you and Emma, you know."

"I'll admit I was surprised you never showed up," Mary Margaret said, not unnerved in the least. Perhaps even a little disappointed. "David and I kept each other busy enough, though."

"Don't tell me you actually raised your voices." Mary Margaret rolled her eyes, and Regina pressed on with a laugh. "What did you argue about, who's prettier?"

"Things got a bit more…heated than that."

Regina quickly held up a hand, noting the way the girl's cheeks were coloring and the confessional air that had descended on the room. "I don't want to know."

Mary Margaret rattled on anyway, and Regina caught the odd detail about Charming's sword and how Emma had broken the curse with the power of sisterhood (or something equally inane), but mostly she thought of Robin, and how the thief and the man had looked at her the same: with that burning, grasping love no fire could ever hope to match.