Chapter 10: Guests

Regina stands in the forest watching her castle shudder and crumble. Not the whole thing, but enough. Her hands clench into fists at her side. Things had been going so well, she was going to get her curse and that collapsed, she had a castle and now that's collapsing.

"It looks like now might be a good time to talk Your Majesty," an unfamiliar voice says from among the trees.

She wheels on the man to see him standing a few feet away, an arrow pointed directly at her heart. "And if I don't want to talk?"

"Use your imagination," the man says with an inclination of his head. The arrow doesn't waver from its target.

"Fine. You want to talk, I'll start with a question. Who are you?" It's curiosity, not fear, that stays her hand from summoning fire and roasting the impertinent man were he stands.

"Check one of the numerous wanted posters Your Majesty. Robin of Locksley at your service."

"If you were actually at my service, I wouldn't have put you on wanted posters."

"Probably true," he admits.

"I'm assuming you aren't here to gloat about the castle," she says coldly, glancing back at her damaged home, attempting to demonstrate exactly how unconcerned she is about the arrow and the man aiming it.

"Why would I gloat about that? I don't go in for showy property damage. Imagine all the things that I could have stolen that were destroyed."

"Then what are you doing here? And why should I not incinerate you where you stand?"

"I'll start with the reasons you shouldn't kill me. I think that's a bit more pressing at the moment."

She nods agreement, a smile curling at the corner of her lips.

"First of all, I have the bow already drawn and I never miss. If you kill me the arrow is still released and there is a good chance it hits you and we both go out in a blaze of glory. It's dramatic, I'll give you that, but it doesn't get you anything you want. That, and, you're curious. Surely you don't think I'm a real threat to the great and terrible Evil Queen. I only got this close due to…" he waves at the castle, "unforeseen circumstances. So there should be no harm in letting me live long enough to figure out just what I'm doing here."

"Ok. Start talking. You have until I get bored."

"Your curse, or whatever it was that happened, had some unusual side effects. In addition to what seems to be a fairly common one, of children aging something like two years in the course of a day, your curse appears to have done the impossible. It brought back the dead. I want to find out how, and if it will last."

"If someone really has come back from the dead, that definitely has my interest." She doesn't believe it, can't believe it. Everything is collapsing right now; it is a terrible time for hope. Even so, her mind springs to Daniel, stolen from a rusted overgrown coffin. "The question is, what do you want me to do about it? Return them to their properly dead state."

"No!" Robin says, then sighs, perhaps realizing he revealed more than he meant to with his outburst. She smiles at the sudden force in his calm voice.

"So one of the Merry men went and shuffled off the mortal coil and you believe I brought them back? And your reaction is to come point an arrow at my chest."

"More or less."

"That's a strange way to show your gratitude. Have you never heard the expression 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?" Regina asks him.

"Of course I have. And as I recall, taking that advice lead to the fall of an entire city."

"True," she admits. "But either way, why come to me?"

"You're the one who has a chance of knowing what happened."

"That doesn't mean anything. Maybe I do, maybe I don't." She isn't about to tell him that she is still seething with the lack of knowledge. Still, the crumbling castle and Belle's empty cell gives her the distinct impression that Rumplestiltskin is wound up in this somewhere. "But whether I have the information or not, I'm certainly not going to tell you. Need I remind you that I'm the one who commissioned the wanted posters?"

"I'm confident some of them were the sheriff's work."

"Yes he did, but I commissioned the ones that read 'Wanted: Robin Hood's Head On a Spike'."

"Oh. Yes. Those. A rather good likeness I thought."

"It's a wanted poster. You sound proud of it."

"Under the current administration it generally means I'm doing something right. No offense Your Majesty."

"None taken," she replies haughtily. "So you're saying that you would actually be unconcerned if I were to, say, double the bounty?" she asks, somewhere between retaliation for his 'current administration' comment and genuine curiosity.

Robin looks at her for a long moment. "It's already more than the common folk will earn in their entire lives, even if they live to a ripe old age, which is hardly a certainty. It is more than most of them will even lay eyes on. They are either going to turn me in or not the same for this bounty or any amount you raise it. The sheriff will of course make a big show and bluster about doubling his efforts, but double of nothing is still nothing. You doubling the bounty changes nothing," he says evenly. "Besides, as the leader I naturally have the highest bounty, but if you were to double it all in one go I would have something to brag about so the other merry men. We are all quite proud of our bounties Your Majesty. Or they'll just wonder about it. Friar Tuck refuses to believe that Little John's higher price is anything other than an oversight and poor Much is still wondering why his hasn't changed in what may or may not have been several years."

"It hasn't?" Regina asks. "That one is an oversight," she says. "I'll have the sheriff get on that."

"He'll be gratified to hear it."

She gives a slightly derisive snort. "I assure you that isn't my intention." Regina frowns. "People have been getting out of hand since that curse. People breaking the laws of magic by coming back from the dead, outlaws wandering out of the forest to have me answer their questions, which brings us back to the question. What are you doing here thief?"

"I already have what I came for actually Your Majesty; your assurance, however much you didn't mean to tell me, that you had no active involvement in this return and therefore will not be undoing it."

"I'll do my best," she says, narrowing her eyes.

"Far be it from me to tell you how to govern the shrinking kingdom…" she nearly blasts him with a fireball on the spot for that comment. "But

wouldn't your time be better served worrying less about a revenant thief and more about a powerful sorcerer who successfully destroyed your hard work?"

She narrows her eyes, more bothered by the fact that he is right than by his impertinence.

"Leave the running of the kingdom to me," she snaps. "And don't get in my way."

"Wouldn't dream of it. I take it that means you intend to deal with the more pressing issue?"

"Yes," she says. "There is a rather pressing issue that calls for my immediate attention." She turns on the spot and vanishes in a swirl of smoke, leaving Robin Hood pointing an arrow at empty air.

The sorcerer is a problem of course, but he isn't the real problem. The real problem is, as it was before, as it always is, Snow White. The shrinking kingdom, the failed curse, Daniel, her father, all of it comes back around to the kingdom's beloved Snow White. She will deal with the sorcerer in due time, once she figures out who is to blame, but Snow White is an immediate problem.

She smiles, and it has a bitter edge. She had let the sorcerer distract her from her real quarry, but no more.

"What do you mean he won't go away?" Snow asks Grumpy. "The gate is public space."

"Yes," the Dwarf admits, "But he's being very vocal about a refusal to go away until you talk to him. We wouldn't let him in so he's just standing there, just barely not blocking the path, wearing a suspicious hat…"

"Excuse me, a what?"

"A suspicious hat. It's unsettling."

"Grumpy, I don't see how a hat can be so unsettling. If his loitering is bothering everyone so much I'll go talk to him."

"That's what he wants," Grumpy complains.

"And when he gets it, he will quit worrying you with his loitering."

"I'm not the only one worried," he grouses. "He doesn't look stable."

"Fine. You can come with me." She hands Neal to Granny. "I'll be right back when I've met our apparently dangerous hat wearing visitor. I still don't know what's wrong with that."

"Mary Margret," the man greets when he sees her.

She knows it must be him because he is in fact wearing an unsettling hat. It isn't so much the shiny velvet top hat with the tattered clothes that is the problem really, but the effect of it combined with his shifty manner and his wild eyes. But there is something bizarrely certain in his face too, as he calls her by a strange name and looks at her like she should know who he is.

"I'm Snow White," she says gently, so as not to spook the man.

"Of course. Snow White, Mary Margret, does it matter. Get used to one, you go back to the other. I am sorry by the way, for tying you up and using you as a hostage."

Her hand flies to her sword and out of the corner of her eye she catches Grumpy doing the same, but the man makes no move toward them.

"That's what already, happened," he clarifies. "You don't remember. No one remembers. I want her to remember, to remember that I came back for her, to remember growing up. She doesn't have to remember it all, but she's becoming a woman and thinks she's still twelve. She's about to be fifteen you know, not even counting the twenty eight years."

"Twenty eight years?" Snow asks, remembering something Rumplestiltskin had said about her daughter, the daughter she didn't have. "Who are you talking about?"

"My daughter, my Grace. She doesn't remember growing up because of the curse. She looks in the mirror and barely recognizes herself. I can't get to the Regina so I came here hoping, I don't know, maybe you have some sort of memory potion that I could give Grace to let her remember; maybe Emma is going to break this newest curse."

"Who's Emma?" Snow asks, but after what Rumplestiltskin said she has a sneaking feeling that she already knows the answer.

"Your daughter," he says, like her having another child is the most obvious thing in the world.

"How old is she?" Snow asks, already knowing that answer also.

"About thirty, by now."

"Come on Snow," Grumpy says. "Don't listen to the crazy person."

"You've lost things to this curse to, things you can remember even," he says in a pleading voice, still focused completely on Snow. "You have to know time has passed because your son is older. I remember the lost time. I remember everything."

Snow frowns slightly. "Come inside," she says slowly. "This sounds like it's worth hearing."

Note:

I have one more chapter almost ready that I will post tomorrow and the story hiatus begins after that. Thanks to everyone for your support for my language studies.