A/N: Here's a new prompt for OQ prompt month. I hope you enjoy it...

This OS happens a couple later after the end of my old verse Forever Yours.

24. Back from the death

98. canon verse from Robin's POV: Robin somehow coming back from the dead years later and finding Regina who finally moved on and looks happy with someone else (maybe even expecting to become a family) and he wants to reach out so bad but decides to save her from the heartbreak of it. And it could be just this angst one shot. But could also grow into a longer story like maybe some time later Regina accidentally finds out about it and it becomes messy and very painful.

131. Robin comes back to life

193. Robin thinks Regina has fallen out of love with him

196. Regina breaks Robin's heart

It feels like time stood still, like nothing else happened since he was sent away.

The sky is still of a bright blue, the sun rays landing on him still envelop his entire body with a more than welcome warmth. This town, no matter how foreign to him, actually reminds him of New York a lot with its cars everywhere, the buildings reaching the sky, the smell of food in the streets. People are walking past him quickly, almost running into him, too busy and focused to even notice his presence. The happy screams of children are echoing through the street, becoming louder as he heads to the playground area where he was told to go.

He takes the time to wander in the streets, to soak up the atmosphere resembling the one in which he lived for a few months with his son and the woman he thought was his wife. Nothing could ever replace the forest in which he grew up, and certainly not that place. It was as if all of New York's trees had been confined to one place, as if they were prisoners of fences beyond which the world of men extended, made of metal and glass, pollution and deafening noises. Being back in a similar town, Robin is almost nauseated by it, and the flow of information coming from the billboards on the walls and the flashing signs make him dizzy.

He forces himself to move forward anyway, fighting against the unpleasant feeling, because despite the disgust that this industrial world inspires in him, he has the chance to see it again, when it should never have happened.

He's not sure how they got him back, and in all honesty, he doesn't really care. All that matters is that he's here, in the flesh. That the injustice of the fate that struck him could be undone, allowing him to return among the living and see both his children, and her.

Regina...

Since he found Roland in the meanders of the Enchanted Forest, she is all he can think about. Knowing that his son was reassured and happy to have him back, having spent enough time with the little boy, after ensuring that his daughter, named after him to his surprise but also pride, was not in danger with her mother, Robin has not stopped wanting to find the one person missing from his life.

"She's changed a lot," Henry warned him. "She never really got over your death."

And indeed, Robin was more than shocked to learn that Regina had, within weeks of his death, left the town of Storybrooke, left her son, and in the span of almost two years, never returned. Henry visited her several times, so the now young man gave him some information about the new life his mother has made for herself. He told him about her job taking care of someone else's children, which made Robin smile. She has always been particularly good with kids, he could see that in her relationship with her own son and in her interactions with Roland. An Evil Queen with a soft spot for children, those were his words. He wasn't wrong.

He smiles at the memory of the times they spent together, from their verbal jousts in the Enchanted Forest to the tender moments stolen between battles in Storybrooke. Their story ended when it had just begun, and Robin is grateful that the end has been transformed into a new beginning, giving them the chance to live what they hadn't had a chance to live.

He spots the park where Henry told him Regina takes the children she cares for every day at exactly 4:00 p.m. and walks cheerfully towards the entrance, his eyes sweeping over the single mothers chatting on a bench while watching their children fussing and screaming on the playgrounds.

His heart speeds up, his breathing quickens, his hands clammy as the anxiety of not finding her there mixes with the happiness of finally seeing her again. To take her in his arms. To be able to share again with her this love which was torn off them.

It became visceral, this need to be close to her, to find her, to kiss her and see in her brown eyes shining with goodness the joy of their reunion. To make her happy in the way she no longer is, if he believes her son's words. And while continuing to walk in the park, he also feels the stress rising in him.

How to explain his presence here, when he is supposed to have vanished for two years? How will she react, now that she has created a new life without him? He doesn't doubt that she will be happy to have him back, but he imagines her shock, she who was not aware of her son's shenanigans to bring her lost love back to life.

An ebony hair catches his attention, thick locks coming down in light curls to the middle of the back of a woman whose face he can't see at the moment. She is talking to a child, even two given the little girl and boy who run up to her, taking her hand and following her to a bench while chatting happily.

Robin's heart leaps as the woman turns slightly, and his suspicion becomes well-founded, the delicate features he knows so well confirming her identity. Lord, how beautiful she is. He has never forgotten her face, but seeing her again triggers in him a feeling of giddiness and butterflies in the stomach, reminding him of his younger years and his teenage loves. For a moment, he stays still, in awe with her, with the way she wears her hair longer than when they were together. That was something he had asked her, to let it grow, because it was a nice feeling to card his fingers through her black locks, to be able to cup her face and brush her hair away with his thumb. As he observes her from afar, he wonders for a moment if perhaps she didn't unconsciously do it for him, as an answer to his wish…

Smiling, happy, impatient, pushed by a deep need to take her in his arms, to promise her everything she deserves and even more, ready to prove by any means that she is not dreaming, that he is really there, he is alive, he steps forward. With a light and fast pace, he reduces the distance which separates him from the woman who haunts his soul and his heart, about to call her so he can feel again the softness of her name on his tongue.

But the vision that offers itself to him forces him to slow down, and Robin observes, powerless, a man carrying a young child embracing Regina by the size, depositing a kiss on her cheek. The smile that lights up her face... it destroys the happiness and hope that had taken possession of him since his return. She is happy, he realizes. She is happy without him. Seeing her kiss the man's lips before taking the infant from his arms in such a natural way that Robin could have sworn they were a family, is more violent than an arrow piercing the abdomen. Even the pain he may have felt before his death, when the crystal hit him full force and he felt every cell in his body decompose, does not equal the intensity of the grief that overtakes him at that moment.

Yet his eyes cannot tear themselves away from the couple that includes the woman he loves. As disappointment grows in him at the realization that she has moved on and that Henry has given him hope for nothing, Robin recalls a time when he felt a similar sensation... Struck by the memory of Regina's arrival in New York and the discovery of the deception involving her sister, the former queen's face had turned into a canvas of pain and betrayal. In just a few months, he had managed to move on, while the woman he loved was certainly out of reach, but alive.

A feeling of guilt, but also of understanding, settles in him at that moment. He remembers the despair he felt at the thought that he would never see her again, and how, by holding on to his son and the possibility of a new life, he had managed to get back on track.

Except that he wasn't just out of reach for her. He was dead. Obliterated. The possibility of seeing each other again was impossible, and it has been two years. Closing his eyes for a moment before reopening them to face Regina's glowing expression, reading there the gradual healing of the wounds his death had left in her heart, he realizes that he can't take that away from her. He can't destroy that serenity she seems to have finally found, away from the battles, wizards, and the constant threats she had to deal with. He can't tear her away from a world of peace in which she seems to have finally found a balance, in which she seems to feel at home. Even if he's not a part of that world.

He loves her too much for that.

It is with a heavy, broken heart, but a soothed mind knowing that his soulmate is safe and that she has a chance to no longer lose those she loves, that Robin takes a step back.

"Hey! Watch out!"

He jumps at the scream that rings in his ears, at the shock that almost causes him to topple over and fall to the ground. He turns around, confused, apologizes to the woman he just bumped into, and as he walks away from Regina, he also leaves behind his last chance to be completely happy.

What he doesn't see, however, are the hazel eyes that land on the spot where he had been the moment before, sweeping with a look that is both confused and full of hope the crowd in which he has just disappeared.