This is for #OQMonth2021 and is set in episode 4x23, Operation Mongoose: Part 2. I haven't watched the episode in a while so if there are any inaccuracies with the show, we're gonna pretend that's not there ;).
Warning at the end of the story since I don't want to spoil everyone but so that you can still look if you want to :)
"It's okay, you're gonna be alright," Robin says as he strokes his fingers over hers, feeling the blood seeping from her wound below their entwined hands. He tries to smile at her reassuringly, but it might be more of a grimace as he doesn't know whether or not to believe his own words.
Regina frowns at him from her place laying on the forest floor while he crouches over her, tears in her eyes. "No. No, I'm not," she whispers, voice breaking as she does.
He looks down at her wound for a second, seeing so muchblood and he realizes; she's right. So, he tells her the one thing that might reassure her and ground her. "At least I can promise you, you won't die alone." Her eyes flit between his and he can see the little bit of relief in them as her lips up-turn in the smallest of smiles. Robin is grateful for the peace he sees in those eyes of hers; she doesn't deserve to die scared.
She doesn't deserve to die at all.
Around him, he hears people talking but Robin can only focus on Regina and the way her breaths start coming slower, her eyes beginning to look more and more vacant.
He can't help but think of how this could have been prevented, had he never married Zelena. If he hadn't married her, there would have been no ceremony this afternoon, and Regina wouldn't have been here, at this time. She wouldn't have been injured so badly that she's dying right in front of him now.
He doesn't know why, but his heart breaks as he sees her slide further and further into the abyss while he continues to stroke her hand, his other coming to rest on the ground beside her head and he runs his fingers through the hair at her temple.
"... and in this world, we don't need a dark saviour," a voice filters in from somewhere beside him as Robin tries desperately to keep Regina awake with his touches, hopes that the contact of his hand on hers and his fingers on her temple will be the thing Regina focuses on as she fights for her life. "We need a light one." It's the brown haired boy who says it -Henry, was his name?-
"Mom," Henry says as he crouches down besides Regina and him. The boy is her child? Robin thinks, his heart breaking for both mother and son.
A man's voice yells: "No, don't!" But the blonde woman, Robin doesn't know who she is (doesn't care either, in this moment), stops him when he tries to approach. What is going on here?
"Henry do it!" The woman yells.
Henry seems to have a plan. He dips the pen he is holding into the crevice between Regina's fingers, effectively smothering it with her blood. Robin doesn't know what the hell he is doing, but he is desperate for whatever it is, to work. He's met Regina only once, but the thought of her dying...
Regina's eyes, lidded with the effort it takes her to keep them open, shift to the boy weakly as he starts writing on a piece of paper, using her blood as his ink. He talks aloud as he writes: "Thanks to the hero Regina's sacrifice," he starts.
Robin looks at Regina, and just before Henry finishes his sentence, her eyes flutter closed. Robin can't help but feel that it is too late. "Isaac's villainous work was undone."
The words on the page glow, and then everything is white.
A moment later, he's back in Storybrooke. He's still sitting on the floor, but with no Regina laying beside him. He remembers everything, and sees he's back in the exact place he was before the curse-was it a curse? Robin doesn't know- hit.
There is barely any time to think about how fucked up this whole thing has been; how he'd married Zelena in some weird alternate universe. All that Robin can think about is please, let it all have been reversed. Please, let Regina not be injured. Please, let her not be dead.
He gets up off the floor as fast as he can, and he starts running. His breaths come quickly and his heart is positively pounding with his fear. He cannot lose her. He can not.
He rounds the corner on Main Street and sees people. Anyone who is not Regina, he doesn't acknowledge. He doesn't even notice them, really. Anyone without her beautiful brown, bordering on black, hair, his eyes skip over entirely.
And then he sees her.
The beforementioned beautiful dark hair, he sees last, as she is still on the floor and her limp body is the first thing he notices. But it cannot be true. She's not dead; she just hasn't woken up yet.
He sprints to her and falls to the floor beside her, his jeans ripping and knees bleeding as he skids over the harsh concrete when he comes to a halt. "Regina!" He says.
Robin leans down immediately and kisses her forehead; a warm forehead. It reassures him, even though logically he knows that even if she's dead (which she's not), her body would still be warm; it's only been minutes. Maybe even seconds. He grabs her shoulders and shakes her. "Regina," he whispers, as if him saying her name like this; almost intimately, is going to wake her up sooner.
He shakes her and he shakes her; her pretty brown eyes stay closed.
But that's okay, Robin thinks, because she is just exhausted. They were just cursed, or written into another story, or whatever the hell had happened to them, again. She just needs a little time. She's waking up in a second, and then they are going to find their boys and take them home, and he's never going to leave her side again. She just needs a little time.
"Wake up, darling," he says as he peppers kisses over her face. He pulls her onto his lap, laying across his thighs. The limpness of her body scares him. She's dead weight.
No, not dead.
He traces soothing fingers over her face, now. Stroking hair out of her face, caressing her. All the while, not a peep comes out of her throat, and she makes not a single movement. "Regina," desperately leaves his throat.
His eyes leave her face for a second, and he notices that a red stain begins to form on her purple dress. On her stomach. Where she'd been hurt.
But that hadn't been real. It was an alternate universe. And Henry, bless him, had reversed Isaac's work. So; that stain is something else. It is not blood. it is not Regina's blood. No.
"Please," he begs as he rocks her in his arms, "time to wake up, love."
A few tears start to roll from his eyes, but he quickly wipes them away. He shouldn't be crying, because Regina is not dead.
"I love you, Regina. C'mon, wake up," Robin starts talking to her. People are beginning to gather around him, but he doesn't even notice. Regina is all he can focus on, replacing her arm back in her lap after it had fallen on the cold, hard ground. Just as he is about to let go of her arm and bring his hand back to her face to trace her features, he realises something. He's holding her wrist.
If he grabs her a little tighter, he should be able to feel a pulse right now. But as he looks at her face, sickly (deathly) white, he doesn't dare try.
What if he can't find a heartbeat? What if... no.
"Regina, please," his voice breaks. "Please."
He leans down and puts his forehead to hers, and then he kisses her lips. Her cooling lips. Where is the warmth that usually radiates off of her?
Sure, she's always complaining about being cold, but she always feels warm to the touch. Robin vows to never have her be cold again. If he personally has to hug her to keep her warm with his own body heat, every second of every day for the rest of their lives, he will do it. Anything for the warmth to return to his love.
More tears fall as he sees what he has to do. He must feel for a heartbeat. If he can't find one, he figures, he'll just restart it on his own. He'll keep her heart beating for as long as it takes the idiots in this town to get her to their so-called hospital where they have all the equipment in the world to help her. She's not dying.
He feels for a few seconds, and nothing.
He goes for her jugular next, figuring he'll find a pulse there. Before he puts his finger to her neck, he pauses.
For the first time in his life, Robin prays to God. He faces up, closes his eyes, and prays. Let her be alive. Don't let her die.
Then he connects his fingers with the skin just under her jaw, and keeps still. He leans back down and kisses her face again. Her lips, her nose, her chin, cheeks, forehead. Her ever closed eyelids. Anywhere he can reach.
And he waits.
He waits to feel anything, the smallest of movements against his fingers, just to affirm to him that Regina is alive. Because she is not dead. She can't be.
But such movement never comes.
He waits, and he waits, whispering for Regina to "open your eyes, wake up. It's over now, we're home." She doesn't respond. "I love you."
Robin shakes his head in denial when he still can't find any sign of life from her, and proceeds to slide her off his legs and back to the ground. He hates that he has to do it. She'a already cold; he doesn't want her lying on the cold ground on top of it.
But he has to do it. He puts both of his hands on her chest, above her heart, and starts pumping her heart back to life. (Not back to life; she never died, Robin insists to himself.)
He's never done this before. Doesn't know how to. How many times to push and in how quick of a succession. But he does it anyways. He has to try something.
He's scared to bruise her, or worse, break her ribs. But still, he pushes her chest with such force, Robin reasons, it has to keep her heart going. It has to be enough.
Her entire body jostles with his rough movements on her chest, and he hates to see how it lifelessly it keeps falling back to place after each compression.
Why won't she just wake the hell up?!
Finally, Robin realises that there are people around him. He doesn't see Henry, and he devotes a quick and thankful thought to whoever had the sense to keep him from seeing this. Although, Regina's not dead, not dying, so he figures the boy wouldn't have seen anything too traumatising. Still, he shouldn't see this either.
But, as Robin sees all the others standing around, doing absolutely nothing, he feels a rage he had never felt before. How dare these people stand there, and not help Regina? How dare they keep looking at him with sad faces, not doing anything?
"Somebody, do something!" he screams. "Call the hospital! Wake her up!"
David is the one who moves. Satisfied that someone is going to help him, Robin shifts his gaze to the ever growing red stain on Regina's dress, but he pretends that it is not there. She's fine. She'll be fine.
He still has so much to tell her. So much to ask her, and so much to do with her.
He still has to tell her he loves her, a thousand more times. No-, a million, ten million more times. He still has to ask her to marry him. He still has to spend every day of his whole fucking life with her.
Without her, he is nothing.
He looks back to her face. Her beautiful face, even white as a sheet. There's something at the corner of her mouth, and Robin leans in closer to see it better while still keeping up with his compressions to her chest. It's red. And liquid.
It's blood.
"No, no. No, no, no," whispers frantically. He moves his hands back to her face, stopping his compressions, and swipes his thumb over the blood, trying to clear it away. All it manages to do, though, is spread it all over her lower lip and part of her chin. He didn't mean to do that. "Fuck, sorry," he apologises, even though she can't hear him.
But this, on top of all else, breaks him. Her own blood staining Regina's beautiful, perfect, angelic face, is what does him in. And he start sobbing.
"I'm sorry," he cries, "so sorry, my love." He doesn't know what he's apologizing for. For not protecting her, maybe.
He lifts her up again, holds her in his arms, and keeps her tight to his chest.
What he doesn't know is that David had checked for a heartbeat on her wrist himself, but with the amount of blood that had trickled out of her wound and the lack of a pulse, he had already given up hope. He had decided to keep close, but not interfere more as the grieving man sat on the ground with Regina in his arms.
"Don't leave me," Robin whispers brokenly. But the longer he sits there, Regina's ever cooling body in his arms, he realizes; she already has.
Warning: Major character death.