Sorry for the wait on this one. It's almost as long as the last one, though, so there's that. :) Please take a moment to review. It means a lot to me.
Storybrooke, Present
Her heartbeat sounds weak, faint in his ear, but it's there, it's there, she's alive, and tears fall from his face to her collar, she's alive she's alive she's alive. Tink runs forward as Robin lifts his head, both of them holding their breath. Robin takes her hand between his again, slips his fingers between hers and raises the bundle to his cheek, leaning forward. His eyes flit around her face, willing her to wake, to look at him with those deep, dark eyes again, he needs to see her soul back within them to erase the memory of the cold emptiness from three days ago, when he and Henry sobbed over her body—she's alive he repeats to himself, cutting off his panicked line of thought, not her body, she's not gone, she's alive—but he needs to see it all the same.
A moment later her eyes move beneath their lids, and then she's blinking a few times, and opening her eyes, melted chocolate as always, warm and dark and bottomless, he's falling into them, "Robin?" she croaks, her voice hoarse with disuse.
A sob escapes his lips, almost a laugh. "Hey," he breathes as her hand flexes between his.
She does not move, seems unable, and her eyes flicker, fight to close again.
He rubs his hand up and down her forearm a few times. "Stay here," he pleads, reaching for eye contact "come on, keep your eyes open."
"M cold," she hums, her brow knitted together, and a shiver runs up her body to echo her words.
He sets her hand back on her stomach gently, then rips his coat off both arms and tucks the collar around her neck, covering her torso. He glances behind him, and Tinkerbell comes forward, draping her own coat over Regina's legs.
"She's still freezing," Robin notes, his hand shaking a little as he feels her wrist again. The rhythmic pressure of her heart pushing blood through her veins for the first time in three days calms his pounding heart, but he cannot help the clawing worry, her skin seems paler than it ever has, people do not come back from the dead. "The hospital?" he asks the fairy, gratified that the coats have quelled the worst of Regina's shivers, though she seems disoriented, unable to react to what would be a horribly confusing situation to her if she were alert.
Rumpelstiltskin steps toward them for the first time since they arrived. "She'll be all right. She just needs warmth."
Robin looks at him for a moment, unsure whether he trusts this man. At least he has the grace and sense to sound vaguely apologetic for his part in the disaster, or perhaps his wife had demanded a promise that he would do his best for them, but either way it's enough for Robin, for today.
"He's right," Tinkerbell nods, watching as Regina's head turns to the side, she's somewhere between conscious and unconscious, "This is magic; this world's medicine will not be able to help her."
Regina's head turns towards his, her hand reaching to grip his arm. "Sleep," she mumbles.
He looks up at Tinkerbell and Gold, and when they nod he brings a hand to her face, yearning to rest a gentle hand on her cheek, to smooth the hair out of her face, but he stops short of the touch, he will not touch her with such tenderness, not now, not yet—you destroyed her, Tinkerbell had said, voicing a truth he'd already known in his heart, he does not feel worthy of it. "Sleep," he agrees, taking a gasping breath as she whimpers and squeezes his arm.
"I'll go call David and Mary Margaret so that they can bring her home," Gold offers, heading up the stairs to the crypt. Rumpelstiltskin may have destroyed her, but he explained how to bring her back, and he can feel somewhere within him, where her soul had taken refuge, the faith that she will be all right.
Robin nods blindly, watching every breath as it leaves Regina's lungs, she's opened her eyes and spoken and her heart beats but he hangs on each breath all the same, she's alive.
"The stone must be cold," Tinkerbell offers, and if he were to look up he would see the way she studies him thoughtfully, but he does not, "and we have to get her upstairs."
"All right," he agrees. His body, his heart, his soul thrums with the intensity of it, the ache to hold her. He pulls gently at her knees with one hand until her legs reach the edge of the table, slides an arm beneath her legs and another around her waist and lifts her into his arms, standing.
Tink fixes their coats around her, and the last time he'd held her, he'd nearly collapsed. His legs do not tremble now as he leaves behind the stark and empty room for the familiar forest. Her face turns into his chest as he walks them out into the cold night air, her hair catching between her head and his upper arm where he's supporting her neck; his warmth, he tells himself, he's the nearest warm body to her and it's instinct, but warmth fills him at the movement, she's alive.
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.
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Robin sits with her in the backseat of Snow's car, grateful that Tinkerbell and Snow did not argue or even comment when he climbed into the car with her. He lets her head fall onto his shoulder and watches as the streetlights throw patterns of light and shadow against her pallid skin. They have the heat on full blast, so high that he feels hot himself, but relief fills him, she's no longer shivering.
"David and Emma are going to bring Henry to her house," Snow tells him a few minutes into the drive. "We thought it would be better if he saw her somewhere familiar." She then allows the car to sink back into silence, and Robin knows somehow that she did not expect a response.
He has to smile at the thought, her son will see her again.
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.
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Robin tries desperately to ignore how Snow and Tinkerbell's eyes burn into his back when he enters the large house with Regina still in his arms and navigates easily and immediately to the bedroom.
Snow flicks the light switch.
He sees Regina more clearly in the stark light, her hair tangled and dry when he is used to it soft and silky, her skin pale except for small splotches of raw red, her black clothes wrinkled, her lips a dull pink.
And she's beautiful, these things make her real, human, blissfully alive, and she will heal.
She stirs but does not open her eyes as he turns towards the bed, her hands fisting into his shirt as though she wants to stay as much as he wants to hold onto her, but the bed will be warmer, she needs comfortable rest, he has brought her here and he knows that once she becomes alert again it will not be this easy, they both need space and time.
The rumpled sheets on her bed shock him at first. He has never known Regina's belongings to be anything but meticulously neat, not even on her worst days in the Enchanted Forest.
The comforter lies in a pile at the foot of the bed, the dark grey top sheet kicked beneath it. But as he finds familiarity in the way the pillows lie, two angled together and the rest thrown aside, as he sees the way the sheet covering the mattress bears the wrinkles of two different bodies, the realization sinks into his chest as a crushing weight. She has not slept in this bed since the day that he was in it with her. She has not even touched it. The Evil Queen and the Prince of Thieves. Quite the forbidden love story. The guilt makes his jaw tremble, and anger at her grows in his belly, she does not take care of herself, why does she never take care of herself? (He knows why, he feels helplessly angry at her for it, and at himself.)
Snow lifts the coats off her body, and he realizes that he has halted halfway to her bed, his jaw tight. "Lay her down," Snow instructs. Her uncertainty at his behavior comes through in her quiet tone.
He nods, leaning to place her on the bed, out of his arms, missing the comfort of her weight before he has even stood. His hands hover at her ankles as he thinks of removing her shoes to make her more comfortable. He finds he cannot continue before Snow has unzipped and eased off her black boots. Regina shivers—she has gone for several minutes without the coats, and she is already cold, concern gnaws at his stomach again. He surges forward to place a palm on her forehead, and with relief he notes that the skin feels almost warm enough to be normal, her heartbeat strong and regular when he puts a few fingers on her neck to feel her pulse. Tinkerbell steps forward and helps him to pull the sheet and comforter over her as Snow goes in search of more blankets.
Robin hears feet pounding up the stairs, and Henry rushes in moments later with Snow, David, and Emma at his heels. "Mom!" he cries, running to her. He grabs her hand, and gasps when she squeezes back, a smiling lighting up his face. "Mom," he breathes, a few tears shining in his eyes.
"She'll wake soon," Tinkerbell says confidently as she helps Snow smooth down a few extra blankets.
Robin gives Henry a tight smile, and the next thing he knows, the air has been knocked out of his lungs; Henry has embraced him. "Thank you," her son says, "I knew you could do it." Henry is gone as quickly as he came, glancing between Snow, David, and Emma. "Well, go ahead," he grandmother encourages. He grins and climbs onto the bed beside Regina.
"I want to be right here when she wakes up," he tells them.
"Of course," David agrees.
Henry looks exhausted to Robin, and Robin notices that he's in pajamas—it must be late, past midnight, beyond that he could not even guess.
"We'll wait downstairs," Snow offers, leading her daughter and husband from the room. She looks at Henry, who does not even spare her a glance, sleepy and grinning at his mom.
"You don't have to, your baby is—" Robin begins.
"He's perfectly safe with Granny." Snow gives him a smile, and it's warmer than any of the smiles he's received from her in their acquaintance. "We care about her, too, Robin. We'll be downstairs. Do you need anything arranged for—"
"Roland's with his mother," he assures her, thinking of Marian and the pain in her eyes when they last spoke, it was the right decision for both of them, and they have spoken of how they will allow Roland to spend time with each of them, but the guilt remains for how he has treated her, for how he has treated everyone that he loves, he needs time to process it all.
Snow seems to sense where his mind has gone. "Not tonight," she offers as advice. "Let yourself be here right now. There will be time for everything else."
He glances at her, a bit surprised, and nods.
"All right," she agrees, following her family out of the room.
.
.
.
When Henry finally succumbs to sleep, perhaps his first even mildly peaceful sleep in days, Robin takes one of the many blankets and pulls it over him, but Robin does not sleep, he sits in a chair several feet from the bed and stares and stares. He wants to be there offering her his own warmth, he wants to protect her, to soothe her, but he also wants to hide, not from her, never from her, but from the pain of it all. He thinks again of the tangled sheets when they'd come in, of running soothing hands over her scars, of watching her eyes darken with desire, of holding her gaze with a hand at her jaw and their foreheads pressed together as she came, her face twisting in strained pleasure and softening with release, and the guilt paralyzes him. He loves her.
Any situation which has seemed complicated before in his life could not even approach this, and they tried, they all tried, but he's hurt everyone he loves, that guilt will stay with him for a long time.
He wants—he doesn't know what he wants, he needs her to be well and happy and believe that she should have love and joy, not even from him; he needs her to believe it about herself, that she deserves it.
She is independent and strong, he did not make her good, she did that herself, but surely in order for her to feel as though she has a place in this world, there must be people around her who care for her, and would miss her, and would stay. Guilt rises within him that he has broken her infant faith in that, that a man who fate had assured her would be the one person she could trust has shown in her eyes that even fate desires her to be unhappy. He had only ever wanted to be someone in her life who never made her feel dark or undeserving, and he has failed.
His thoughts turn for a moment to Roland, he must make sure that his son has managed all of these changes, he must help Marian settle as best he can, and make sure she has support and friends.
But not tonight, Snow's words return to him, tonight he will allow the relief to fill him up, she's alive, they have both hurt each other so deeply, but they must find some way to heal, he loves her.
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Her eyes blink open just after the sun begins to break over the horizon. Robin sits up straight in his chair, holds his breath, his muscles tense and ready to spring up.
Henry feels the blankets shuffle as she turns her head and stretches her shoulders back, and when her eyes fall on him, he's wide awake for her.
"Henry," she breathes, Gods Robin has needed the sound other voice, soft and rough from disuse but warm, no longer disoriented as it was in her crypt, and he drinks in every detail of it, every tremor, leans further forward in his chair until he barely remains on it. "What happened?" she asks.
Henry lets out a sob then and buries his face in her shoulder, and she's a mother first, always, she focuses on him and ignores her own confusion as she rubs circles into his back.
"You were frozen," Henry chokes out between ragged breaths as her neck grows wet with his tears. "Elsa froze you, but I couldn't—couldn't wake you, and you were d-dead for three days, and I—"
She lifts both arms out of the blankets, ignores how they shake with cold, and pulls him to her more tightly, tears fighting to break free in her own eyes.
Regina does not really understand what has happened, but that can come later. "Shhh," she whispers, pulling the blanket back over them to try and still her trembling arms, brushing the mess of hair off his forehead and pressing a kiss there. "Henry," she says, just the word, every bit of anguish and hope and love wrapped into the low, gravelly tone.
Henry fights to reign himself in at that, though she does not know it; he cannot bear to be causing her any more pain, and he manages to even out his breathing.
Robin stays frozen a few feet away from them, feels like an intruder, prays she will not see him as such.
When Henry has calmed enough to be coherent he tries to explain again, still brief, but a little clearer. "Elsa froze you to protect you from the portal's magic, and we thought that you had—" he cannot bring himself to use the word died again, but she understands well enough, nods that he should continue as she wraps an arm around his shoulders, "but we just had to find the right way to wake you up."
And for some ridiculous reason her ridiculous heart thinks of Robin, and the way he'd wept and cried out the last time she saw him, some vague memory as if in a dream of his face hovering above hers. She pushes those treacherous thoughts away and lets her eyelids flicker shut, warm in her bed with her baby beside her, and no matter how much pain she feels, no matter how many times she's been careless with her own safety or convinced herself some dangerous action was the only choice when she knows it often wasn't, she's happy to be alive. "Did you?" she asks, tipping her head back into the pillows, "did you wake me?"
Robin cannot help himself then. "I did."
Her eyes fly open. Until the sound of his voice, she had not noticed that they were not alone. She pushes her elbows against the mattress to sit up as Henry slides back against the headboard, out of the way of their gazes, looking between them. Regina feels useless, she cannot even hold her own weight, her arms flop helplessly back down.
Robin stands the rest of the way immediately, rushing over and bringing his hands to hover just above her arms, a second from supporting her or helping her sit or just touching her. "Don't push yourself," he admonishes gently, always that lilting concern, melted-warm voice, compassionate eyes.
She melts for barely a second, because he must love her. That's how magical freezing work, it can only be broken with white magic, with love.
Panic sets in then, fear and disgust and self-hatred and guilt and anger, love isn't enough, he'd said that to her. He's been cursed with this love, he has not chosen it, he does not want it, and she has never wanted to force him.
"Leave," she breathes.
"What?" his hands still hover by her the bare skin of her wrists. His stomach would drop if her tone were cold, but he hears the shaking hurt beneath it, and that, he deserves.
"Leave," she repeats, stronger, she feels determination rise within her, "get out," she says with a little more venom. Henry grips her arm beside her and she ignores it for a moment.
Robin looks hurt and unsurprised, he has wanted her to do this, she thinks, to free him from whatever obligation Snow must have placed him under when they realized that only he would be able to break the spell.
But she misreads, she'll later learn, he looks unsurprised because he'd expected her to push him away, because he deserves it, because he's hurt her so severely she could not possibly trust him right now. In that moment he swears to himself that all he wants is to earn her trust back. He does not need to be with her, he does not need to kiss her or make love to her (he does, Gods he does) but more than that he needs her trust, he needs to repair the cracks he's made in the heart he'd sworn to protect, he needs her to love herself at least half as much as he does (as much as he does, he will weep with joy if he has the honor to see that) enough that volunteering to do what she has just done would never again occur to her.
He follows her request, but not before a quick squeeze of her hand, and of Henry's. The boy smiles at him; he has that at least.
Robin sends Snow upstairs on his way out with a promise to return whenever they might need him. She pushes people away to protect herself, but until the day when she sincerely means it, he's not going anywhere.
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Regina sends Henry downstairs with Snow, begging a few minutes alone. A reasonable request after returning from the dead, she thinks sardonically.
She takes several slow, deep breaths, gratified that they do not sap her strength as they had in the first moments of her waking. She sits up to prepare herself, then sweeps back the blankets in one swipe, turns, and slides onto her feet. Her knees wobble. She ignores them. By the time she reaches her en-suite bathroom, she stands steadily on her feet. She cups her hands under the water, drinks a few gulps, splashes her face and neck and dries them with the towel. When she has done this, she looks at herself in the mirror, eyes sunken, skin pale, hair a mess—she's still wearing the black slacks and black long-sleeved sweater she'd worn to dinner with the Charmings, she has not been home since then. A shiver ripples through her body, and her muscles weaken. All of this will have to wait. She trips back to bed, shaking with cold by the time she reaches it, and throws all of the blankets back over herself.
She is weak, so weak. But alive, and deep within her, as she has always been, she is glad of it.
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The sky has darkened when Regina next opens her eyes. She must has drifted off to sleep, she scowls resentfully, walking to her bathroom had worn her out.
Snow comes in about ten minutes later, as if she had a sense for Regina waking. Her step daughter offers a soft smile as she enters.
"Henry's asleep in his room," she says, knowing it would have been Regina's first question. She walks to a dresser, her hands hovering over the knobs, and Regina sits up in bed, tired of feeling weak in front of people. Regina narrows her eyes.
"Where are your pajamas?" Snow inquires, though at least she has enough sense not to start rooting through the drawers without permission.
Regina sighs and looks away.
"You cannot be comfortable in those," she says, shrugging a shoulder towards Regina. "You should change."
"I'll use magic."
Snow's entire body tenses. "You are not using magic just yet. Where are they?"
Regina does not miss the stress the topic has caused Snow, and sits up all the way in bed, the blankets tumbling into her lap.
"Are you afraid I'll hurt someone with it, now that you've assumed it's gone dark again? Is that why you've all been watching me like hawks for the past few weeks?" she snaps.
Snow's lip trembles like the girl she always is somewhere inside of her when she's with Regina, but she presses on. "I haven't been afraid of that in a long, long time."
Regina blinks, and she regrets for a moment the harshness of her answer.
"You cannot use magic because we…do not know if you can."
Regina becomes conscious of how rumpled she must look (Snow has seen her much worse as a girl, but she tries to forget that in moments like these). She runs a hand over her face, threads fingers through her hair and tries to put it to rights. "What?"
"The way you were—the way Robin woke you involved your own magic, and Gold thought it might be better if you waited until you regained your strength before you tried to use it again."
"Well if he thought it was a good idea, then I suppose I should trust him."
Snow's eyes meet hers, her eyebrow raised, the woman is smirking at her.
"Fine," Regina grumbles. "They're in the second drawer down on the left." Snow brings her the warmest clothes she can find without asking, silk pajamas but then wool socks and a heavy sweater and robe.
"Can I bring you something to eat?" she offers.
"I'm fine," Regina replies.
"You need to eat, something at least."
"I'm not an invalid. I'm going to go take a shower, and then I'll come down."
"All right," Snow relents. She leaves Regina to change, and takes the time to go downstairs and make the food before Regina can protest.
When Regina finally comes down the stairs, it has been far too long, almost thirty minutes, and Snow had been on the brink of heading back up the stairs in fear of finding the woman passed out halfway down the stairs.
"Sit," Snow orders, her voice quiet, and Regina turns to see David asleep on one of her chairs with Neal stretched across his chest. Smart, she thinks, Snow knows she won't argue loudly if it would risk upsetting the baby.
Regina sits, sending Snow a scowl that the woman ignores as she brushes damp hair behind her ears. "Eat," she continues, setting a plate of dry toast and a small bowl of broth in front of her. "All of it."
Regina raises an eyebrow, and Snow does so back. She relents, dipping the spoon into the bowl and taking a dainty sip. She would never admit to it, but the warmth soothes her throat.
"You're so stubborn," Snow sighs, shaking her head, "I can see where Henry gets it."
"If you think I'm stubborn just wait 'til your little boy can talk," Regina observes, swallowing a bite of bread, suddenly ravenous.
Snow smiles at her family across the room. "Mmm," she agrees, placing a glass of water at Regina's seat and sitting beside her with one of her own.
"I'm sorry if you feel that I pushed you too hard, Regina," Snow says gently a few moments later, a response to a conversation they had weeks ago at the door a few yards behind them, "all I ever wanted was your happiness."
Regina swallows her bite of bread slowly, scowling at the plate. "Well that worked out about as well as it always has, Snow." She sighs at Snow's hurt expression, and searches for the grace to be kinder and more truthful. "But you were right, about—I was happy, for a little while, I was." Her lips quirk into half a smile for a second at the thought, not even the most tragic of endings could have tarnished those memories.
Snow brushes imaginary crumbs off the table, then meets her eyes evenly. "You will be again."
Regina shakes her head. "I do not want to argue about this again."
"All right," Snow agrees, considering her thoughtfully, it wears on her warm heart to watch someone so surprised when people care.
Regina forces herself to eat slowly, despite her hunger, finishing off the bowl of soup and several slices of bread before she begins to shiver.
Snow follows her to her room, it annoys her to no end, because she has to not pass out, and when she gets there she's too tired to care, she climbs right into bed.
"We weren't afraid of what you'd do to us," Snow tells her sleeping form softly, resting a glass of water at Regina's bedside, and fixing the blankets Regina had not had the energy to move, "we were afraid of what you'd do to yourself." And we were right Snow thinks.
Regina has not quite drifted off yet, and she hears the words, puzzled for a moment before her mind drifts away into sleep.
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When she wakes, Regina's head feels clouded and dizzy. Her stomach rumbles, though her dinner with Snow could not have been more than twelve hours ago. Her kitchen had not been stocked well the last time she was here. There may not be much to find.
The Charmings would bring her food. Like she'd ever ask them. She'll have to make do.
She opens a cabinet, expecting to find a few stale scraps, thinks about some table crackers or anything else she might have had around (it's only been a few days, but it feels like months, since she last ate here), and finds she need not have asked them. Her cabinet teems with more food than she's had around since she and Henry lived alone. She opens the fridge and discovers the same, fruits and vegetables, a tupperware marked "homemade broth" in Snow's slanted cursive, it must be the same Snow fed her…yesterday? whenever that was, several types of juice, and she has to smile, Henry obviously helped. This fridge holds all of her favorites, the brands she usually buys, nectarines rather than peaches, a pile of sweet apples, the cracked wheat bread she prefers. She bends down to see the lower shelf, and a foil-covered dish reads in sharpie Mom's lasagna. Love, Henry.A bright green sticky note below adds in her son's neat hand PS Emma and Mary Margaret helped me make it. A large yellow sticky-note next to his has Emma's addition We made three before he was satisfied that it tasted like yours and Snow's David and Hook enjoyed the first two.
Regina laughs. It's ridiculous, but she does, it feels foreign, she has not laughed in so long, but it's absurd, that people exist who care enough to make three pans of lasagna for her just to make sure they'd gotten the recipe right. Henry has grown up watching her make it, but she never knew he cared enough or paid enough attention to replicate it. She laughs again, shaking her head as she cuts a piece and microwaves it for—she glances at the window into a setting sun, she had been wrong, she ate with Snow almost twenty-four hours ago—dinner.
A pile of mail rests on the counter. She sifts through it without much interest or energy as she waits for the food to heat, before a hand-folded piece of paper catches her eye among the rest. She slips her fingers under the tape and opens it to find a drawing of two stick figures, one tall and female, the other short and male. "gEt wEll SooN" it reads, and arrows point at the figures, "mE" towards the little boy, and " GiNa" towards the other. "loVE, ROlaNd". Regina chuckles.
By the time she has eaten, her limbs feel heavy with exhaustion (a wonderful tired, she feels silly, looks down against the card, and Henry baked her lasagna to cheer her up.)
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When she wakes the next morning, her head does not pound, it does not feel foggy. She lifts the blankets off of her body, and sighs in relief when she does not shiver or grow cold. She is herself again.
Henry stays with her almost constantly for the next few nights, and his presence is a balm to every wound, the sound of TV comics trails up the stairs, his books lie all over the house, and she has to make extra food for her teenager who's grown so tall. He runs up to her at random moments. hugs tight around her waist, says, "I love you, Mom," and she has to laugh with him.
For a moment, she forgets about deserving, and something like happiness settles over her being, this feels like enough.
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.
"I talked to Robin yesterday," Tink begins on one of her visits.
Regina's hand freezes where she'd been making Henry his dinner.
"He said he needed some time."
Her stomach bottoms out. "I don't want to talk about him," she snaps.
"Okay," Tinkerbell agrees, and Regina has to calm herself down for a moment before she attacks Tinkerbell for her disbelieving tone.
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About a week after her return, Regina wakes to the feeling of something soft bouncing against her mattress and the sound of quiet breathing.
She blinks her eyes open, and lifts a hand towards the space above the indent in her mattress.
Her little visitor's head turns, his eyes widening. "Gina!" he cries, catapulting into her arms, knocking the air out of her. "You're awake!"
"Roland?"
He nods into her shoulder, his stuffed monkey smushed between their bodies. She shifts to sit up in the bed; he does not let her go, just clings around her neck as she moves the stuffed animal out of the way and shuffles them awkwardly up so that her back rests against the headboard.
"How long have you been here?"
He shrugs his shoulders against hers. Right, silly question for a five-year-old. A few minutes will have felt like an age. She glances at the digital clock on her nightstand. 8:42.
Roland pulls back a little and gives her a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "I didn't want to wake you," he explains, a frown too serious for someone so young on his face. "Mama said you needed your sleep."
Regina's brow furrows, and she feels momentarily dizzy, from sitting up too fast, from thinking about any member of Roland's family. "Where is your Mama now?" she asks.
"I don't know," he answers, "she said you should call Granny when you wanted her to come get me."
"She brought you?"
Roland nods.
Regina freezes with the shock. Marian is not brazen enough to make herself comfortable in the Evil Queen's living room, but Roland is here alone with her, and she knows as a mother that if Marian did not trust her with his safety, nothing in the world would have kept her from staying.
"Roland," she breathes, not certain of the answer she wants, "is your daddy here?"
Roland shakes his head, reaching a hand out to rest on his stuffed monkey. "Daddy's staying at the camp with all the Merry Men."
She does not have the chance to process that information before a shiver runs up through her spine. The blankets had fallen to her waist when she sat with him, and she hates it, but her body is not quite back to normal yet.
"You're still cold?" Roland notices, pulling ineffectually at the edges of the blankets to bring them to her chin, "but you have so many blankets!" She helps him with the blankets; it's all right with him, to need them.
"Sometimes," she answers, "especially at night."
He stares at her for a moment, wide-eyed, before his hands fist into her shirt.
"Don't ever leave again," he orders, tears gathering suddenly in his brown eyes. "I was so sad and Papa cried and cried after you left and it was scary and—and—and—"
"Shhh," she soothes, lifting her arms out of the blankets to pull him to her, "shh, I'm here, I'm all right. I'm just a little cold, but I'll be fine, I promise"
He sags into her as she uses a thumb to wipe away his tears. The confusion he has known in the past months is more than any child should have to manage, and guilt rushes over her at her part in that.
He does not let her wallow in that for long, as he curls up next to her, his tears dried. "I will keep you warm," he declares, "like Papa and I when it's a cold night in the forest." And it does soothe, the warmth of his skin and his trust in her.
"Won't your Mama and Papa miss you soon, sweetheart?"
He shakes his head. "Not yet," he whispers, as he lifts one of her hands into his and begins to turn it over and back, playing with her fingers in the absent-minded way of a child.
"Gina?" he asks.
"Mhm?" she turns her head on her pillow to look at him.
"You remember bedtime stories in the Enchanted Forest?" he asks.
"Of course I do," she smiles, tapping his nose with her pointer finger.
"Papa never actually left," he whispers, as though telling her a long-guarded secret. "I saw him. He sat and listened outside the door."
"Did he?" she breathes.
"Yeah," Roland giggles, snuggling closer.
Regina takes a breath. "Should I call your Mama now?"
"Can I stay here? Please?" he asks, pushing his chin into her shoulder and stretching an arm across her stomach. "You can tell me a story."
"All right," she agrees, helpless to resist his dimpled smile at her answer. "How about a brand new story? You can go pick one from Henry's room."
He nods enthusiastically, squeezing his arms around her once more before he hops off the bed.
What could the child possibly mean? she wonders, Daddy's staying with the Merry Men. And he said he needed some time.
She fights down the hateful, treacherous hope.
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.
A jolt of warmth runs through her spine, then vanishes as fast as it had come.
She is nowhere, nothing. Cold. Dark. Easy here. No pain, no joy. Empty. The emptiness that she has been searching for since the night she ran from the diner, that she had sought after she lost Henry.
A wave of heat returns, strong enough to hurt this time, and it returns other kinds of pain to her as well, the pain of grief and hatred and, most of all, of hope.
For a moment she wishes for nothing but the return of the cold, it beckons to her as it always has, the fear and enticing power that is really weakness.
Regina knows on instinct from where this fire comes. Something inside of her recognizes it, this force dragging her back to the vulnerability of living. At first she tries to ignore it, to push it back, but, as has always been true of her, and of them, she is helpless to the pull and the feeling that perhaps something real and good may still exist for her in living through this pain.
She feels the cold around her burn away, leaving her with heat, uncomfortable heat. As the last bit of ice recedes, as her heart beats, she feels. Everything—pain, grief, happiness, love, relief, fear, hope, despair, all of it.
She comes back into her body, in a cold room on a hard surface. The warmth falls away, and she feels cold, so cold. It returns at her wrist with calloused hands, warm and burning, to her chest where some weight presses against her. She fights to get through the cold to that warmth.
"Robin?" she breathes, blue eyes the only thing clear to her cloudy vision.
The warmth comes around her hand again, and she reaches up, up to hold onto it, grasp it, she is so cold.
Fabric piles on top of her, but the hand has gone, and with it much of the heat.
The warmth surrounds her suddenly once more, burning all around her, her legs and back and side, and she reaches for it as much as she can, turns her face towards it, her personal sun, though not so unfailingly optimistic as sunlight, real, present, as she turns into it, more fire than sun, a place within the cold and dark that hurts and soothes all at once.
When the warmth leaves, she panics, reaches for it and holds on, squeezes that hand that had warmed her wrist, feels it squeeze back and linger before it pulls away.
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Robin knocks on her door at dawn. It has been a week since she woke, ten days since she died.
She has already dressed, grey today (not black, she needs a break from black, but not that grey dress either, she burned it weeks ago). Henry sleeps upstairs. It is Saturday; he will sleep for several hours more.
"Hello," she says, fighting to keep her voice flat. The second syllable falters when she looks into his eyes.
"May I come in?"
Her heart beings to pound. "Why?" she asks, the word slips out as a whisper, before she can temper out genuine curiosity.
He gives her a soft smile. "Because I wish to speak to you. I think you owe that to both of us."
Why do you bother doing that with me? he'd said, and he had been right, she cannot hide from him. She opens the door wider for him before she can stop herself, and leads them to her kitchen. A room safe from memories, or at least as safe as anything in her life can be.
Robin picks up the card that's still open on her counter with a grin.
"Tea?" she offers, walking to the sink to fill the kettle, anything to keep her occupied.
"Sure," he breathes, and she turns back to see him smiling at the drawing.
"Roland was here a few days ago," she tells him, she doesn't know why she's letting this happen, making small talk with Robin Hood in her kitchen, she should have pushed him right out the door.
"Mm," he hums, biting his lip, but when he grins at her it doesn't quite reach his eyes.
She looks away from him and tries to ignore the gaze she can feel burning into her back as she waits for the water to boil.
When she sets his mug in front of him, he catches her hand for the briefest of moments. "Sit," he says, shrugging his shoulder towards the stool beside him.
"I'm fine standing," she returns, wetting her lips and attempting to look into his eyes with only mild interest. "Now, say what you wish to."
His Adam's apple bobs with his swallow. The most essential thing first. "I love you."
Her hand twitches against her mug. She shakes her head. "You merely pity me."
"No," he answers, his voice cracking. He reaches for her hand, and she does not let him, looks down so that he cannot see her eyes.
"Yes," she returns, it could not be true, she will not allow her heart to believe it, not ever again, "I was dead, and you pity me."
He takes her hand firmly, ignoring her protests. "Do you really think so little of me, and of my feelings for you?"
She narrows her eyes at him, hates that tears gather in them. "You only care I died," she insists, shaking her head.
"You were gone for three days, Regina, and it was agony—"
"I know the feeling. You've been gone for months now," she snaps, interrupting him. "You are so selfish! You want me to be here, miserable for you, while you share your bed with your wife at home."
"Damn it, Regina, listen to me. Marian and I have not been right since she came back, we've changed, I've changed, we do not share a bed. We have been over for a long time, long before I met you. Regina, I love you, and your…death," he chokes on the word, and she looks into his eyes at that, sees the agony that filled them, swallows down an astonishingly strong wave of guilt, "only made it clear to me more quickly than I was managing on my own. For that, I am sorry, but I would have been begging at your doorstep soon anyway."
"I don't want pity or begging," she says, but wonder seeps into her voice at his earnestness, she cannot sound biting.
"You have never had my pity," he sighs, squeezing her hand, "but I will beg for forgiveness for how I have hurt you and you cannot stop me."
In her weaker moments, she has dreamed of him coming and saying he loved her, but it cannot be true, she refuses to believe it, it will hurt so much more when is crashes to the ground again, she knows that from experience. "You were fooling yourself, with whatever you thought you saw in me."
He shakes his head vehemently. "No, I wasn't."
Her eyes flit across his face. "What, saving your wife? And what kind of life do you think that would that have been, knowing that I'd let her die?"
"There must have been some other way," he pleads.
"None as just," she says flatly.
"Regina what you did, saving Marian…I am grateful, but please, please do not think it would have been just, if it had killed you."
"Wouldn't it have been?" She glares at the sincerity in his gaze. "You'll find out I killed someone else," she bites out, pushing, always pushing, "A friend, a cousin." She takes a shaky breath. "And we'll go through this all over again."
"No," he swears.
She stares into his determined eyes, "How can you be so certain?"
"I have held your heart, and you try so hard, you feel so deeply—that is all I have ever needed to know to love you."
She gasps as his words echo in her head, noisy and impossible, but she is not meant for this, for someone so good, she is too dark, she has always been too dark. She slips her hands from between his. "Go back to your wife, Robin," she sighs.
"Regina."
"No," she shakes her head, backing a few steps away. "That is the choice you made, because it is the right one. You made it the moment you saw her and walked away from me."
He's grasping at straws. "What if it had been Daniel who appeared out of nowhere? What would you have done?"
She chokes on a sob, he does not know that it had been, once, that she had to kill him, let him go again, her fault, again. "It wasn't the same, you know it wasn't." Tears begin to slip down her cheeks. She meets his eyes. "I was so much easier to love when he loved me. Now leave, please," she begs.
He swallows, glancing down at the table. His blue eyes burn with determination, but when they meet the pain in hers, guilt and pain filters through, Regina does not understand.
He stands to leave, I deserve that, he thinks, and for a moment she feels abandoned, lost, he knows her better than to give up so easily. Her thoughts distract her from noticing before he has raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss there. "You have time, Regina, as much time as you need, but I'm not giving up."
A shiver runs up her spine.
He threads a few fingers through her hair, pushing it behind her shoulder with a tender smile, and as he slips quietly away, her treacherous heart pounds.
Dark, I am too dark, she reminds herself, attempting to even out her breathing. Her heart pounds anyway.