Kind of angsty response to the prompt below, but I think it turned out nice. Let me know what you think.
OQ. "on the map"
He looks at the map everyday. His fingers coast over the colored paper, and he imagines, can almost see her prints at the edge. He touches and touches because she had touched this, and he has nothing of her, but he has this map, this decrepit scrap of paper that is creased and smudged from his constant ministrations, and if this is all he can have, if this is the only tangible link they will ever share then he will continue to touch it, continue to stare at it everyday of his life.
Storybrooke doesn't exist on this colorful portrayal of roads and places. The ink that had been there, clear as day, printed bold and perfectly legible before he stepped past that line, has faded, disappeared, like it was never there to begin with.
He doesn't need it to be there. He will never need a map to find his way back to her, to travel back to that moment, that place he last saw her, but it is disconcerting, frightening to think that with the ink gone from this world, so is she, his Regina, like she was all a dream, lost somewhere between his reality and his fantasy.
Each day passes slowly, blurring together into one long lifetime, a lifetime he know he'll have to live without her, and so he does. They make it work, Marian, Roland, and himself. They both get jobs, make enough to stay comfortable, and Roland grows. They send him to school, learn things as they go, but they keep to themselves. It is a lonely life, but Robin couldn't ask for anything more. The only thing he wants, is the one thing he can't have.
He pities Marian, feels sympathy and guilt every time she sends him a smile. Eventually she meets someone, and he encourages her, tells her not to waste her life with a man that can never love her how she deserves. The years go by, fade into the past, and things don't change for him. Roland changes, grows, Marian changes, finds love with another man, but Robin remains stagnant, unmoving, his soul dormant.
He feels old, and perhaps he is. His hair has turned a silvery hue, and his body has lost some stamina, but he still manages, lives on his own now in the forest, in a small cabin Roland helped him build before moving away for school.
Every night he sits, stares into the fire, flames encased in stone, and it mimics his heart, his soul set aflame long ago, but trapped in stone ever since he walked away, ever since he left her at the townline. He pulls the flimsy paper from his pocket, carefully unfolding each bend, and settles back in his chair, preparing himself for another night of dreaming, of remembering.
As his gaze travels the same old paper, the same old lines and faded colors, that is when he sees it, and he pauses, blinks, rubs his eyes before looking again. It wasn't there yesterday, nor the day before, but now it is, clear as day, like it was always there, like it never disappeared, the name of a town, a town he knows too well.
It doesn't take him long. He moves quickly, his bones creaking, and his muscles aching from a long day's work behind him, but he won't wait, can't wait. He is on the road, walking at a fast pace, and that place is only half a miles walk for him. He never went far, could never bring himself further away from the other half of his soul. He can see it as he nears the line, a dark crimson paint staining the black beneath, and then as he nears closer, there is the sign, a sign he never expected to see again.
He is breathing fast, heart pumping blood to his quickly expanding lungs, and it seems like only minutes, no, seconds, before he is knocking, his fist colliding with the wooden door powerfully, faithfully.
She opens to him, and it is her, and his eyes feast on the vision before him like a starving man who has just been provided with a banquet. She is older too, wrinkles more defined, and she looks thinner, frailer somehow, but she is beautiful, still as stunning as the moment he first saw her. She blinks, gulps, and then he can see her lips turning up, that smile he loves so much, that smile he has seen behind his eyelids when he dreams.
"Robin?" She says, uncertainty coloring her voice, and he remembers that voice. His eyes close, and he exhales, a breath of relief at the opportunity to hear her again. His feet close the distance between them, and he kisses her, a solid but gentle kiss that has the flames of his heart growing, surpassing the ever present stone that had been separating their love. The uncertainty is gone as she asks, "how is this possible?" Smiles cover both their mouths, and he lets their foreheads fall together before he responds.
"You were on the map."