She'd been waiting impatiently as always for when it came to her girlfriend's homecomings. She'd tried target shooting but that soon lost its appeal then she pulled out her phone to start song hunting for the perfect 'welcome home, I missed you, I love you' song but again came up uninterested as her eyes drew back to the spot Rumpelstiltskin had told her Alice would be appearing to once this latest mission was finished.
It had been a long one. The longest yet since they'd decided to officially become a couple and that was just a single day before Alice had, had to leave.
She starts pacing again half wishing she taken Henry up on letting him come with her. then she'd at least have someone to talk with while she waited.
Robin's hand closes over the pocket watch she had tucked into the pocket of her jacket. A jacket that had once belonged to her legendary father that her teenaged self had once stolen for her own after a fight with her aunt one night before the first move to the new Enchanted Forest. The ticking against her palm calmed her as it always seemed to before she was once again swept up in another terrifying wave of 'what if' possibilities.
Alice was a big girl. She was more than capable of looking after herself. Yet that didn't mean Robin couldn't worry for her right? After all, it was her right as Alice's girlfriend to worry constantly over her everything going on in her life.
She takes the ticking watch out of her pocket glancing at the time. She'd had it a full month now and she had yet to get over the fact it moved backward. So cool.
She'd just tucked the watch away when a familiar pull of pending magic filled her senses. The faint buzz pressing against her ears, the smokey tang on the air just a few of the indicators as she takes off into the trees.
The pull alone made her heart rate kick up. Yet what really made her insides sing was one oh so joyous fact.
Alice was coming back to her.
"Get down and stay down." The literal woman of her dreams barked instead of a normal kind of greeting as soon as Robin and broken the tree line. Her voice was ragged as she raced out of the rip of a portal or more playfully called 'rabbit hole' just ahead of where Robin was racing to meet her.
Robin doesn't need to be told twice hitting the deck as fast as she could while keeping an eye on her still moving girlfriend with all the coiled speed and grace of a jungle cat when she ran. So, driven. Not for the first time did Robin imagine what Alice would have been like on the track team at Storybrooke high.
Certainly, she would have left a selfish younger Robin in the dust. Not a bad place to be considering how nice her girlfriend looked from the back.
Its when Alice trips that Robin sees just how keyed up the returning girl was. She'd seen her make jumps like that hundreds of times during their travels together some at even faster speeds than what she was going now but she had to admit the scene was a little like daji'vu in a way only instead of one of Robin's tripwires the returning adventuress falls over air itself after a panicked look back over her shoulder to check for nonexistent pursuers.
Robin can only watch fearfully as the woman she loved crashed in a painful-looking skid a few feet from her. A good thing too it turns out considering not a half-second later something silver and deadly looking came flying out of the sliver of the still shrinking portal behind her.
Lucky for Alice the knife missed her embedding itself in a young sapling where seconds before the running woman's shoulder had been. Luckier for whoever had thrown it the portal had closed up completely before Robin could send it back to them with an even deadlier aim.
No one threatens her girlfriend and gets away with it. No matter what realm they are from.
"Harry Potter much?" Robin mutters tossing the blade away like it was diseased while a little wise away Alice rolls over onto her back gulping in air as she'd nearly been drowned as well as being incredibly winded from her mad dash to safety. And going by her wet-looking hair and clothes she might just have been.
What the hell had the imp talked her into this time?
Robin shakes the fairly Regina sounding question from her mind as she cautiously approaches her girlfriend.
The snap of a twig under her shoes has Alice up and spinning around on her knees her glassy gaze casting around for a threat while her hands hummed with an energy Robin had yet to see her ever actually use.
Robin stops at once her hands raised in surrender. "Easy Alice. I'm not going to hurt you." She calms or tries to at least seeing as the pulse of magic crackling around her girlfriend's fingers didn't diminish. "Hey, you're safe now baby. No one here will hurt you. Not unless they want me kicking their ass into the next alternate reality." She laughs.
Alice doesn't laugh she only blinks a few times as one of her hands moves toward her wrist. "Robin?" she asks as her hand closes over the multicolored band around her wrist.
Robin takes it as a good sign and steps closer moving slowly and keeping her hands raised and open as she closes the remaining distance between them. "Welcome back Tower Girl." She greets. "I missed you." The hum of magic hasn't completely left Alice's hands as Robin lowers herself down beside the woman who'd stolen her heart.
"Robin." Alice repeats still looking at her like she doesn't fully believe the other woman was actually solidly beside her.
True that Robin wasn't exactly wearing clothes that Alice would be sued to seeing her in but in her defense, it was laundry day back at the farm and that included most of her favored hunting clothes. Now she had chosen her more comfier laying around clothes instead. Black colored sweatpants littered with patches and hastily repaired rips in the legs paired with one of her more 'modern' tops. This one dark red and sporting what everyone in Storybrooke at least knew to be the crest of Gryffindor across the front.
"Alice." Robin whispers welcoming the static zing of magic even when it turns her arm to nothing but a stinging pins and needles feeling as soon as Alice's hand closed around her own.
"Nobin."
The archer didn't even think to groan out her usual response at the hiccupped sob of her nickname as the woman she loves half falls half curls into the circle of her arms her hands fisting as tight as possible in the fabric of her shirt holding her in place. "Robin." Alice whispers almost not believing she was there with her.
"Hey, ssshhh, baby." Robin soothes. "You're safe now. I've got you." She promises cradling the returned adventuress has closed as she dared given Alice's worked up state.
One thing was frighteningly clear. Whatever had happened on this last trip for the Dark One had managed to shake the unshakable Alice Jones.
"I swear I didn't kiss her back Nobin." Alice stammers clinging onto her for dear life. "I wasn't even supposed to be there. I chased the wrong rabbit the first time but I just-I wanted to get back here so badly. To see you and Papa and Rumpelstiltskin." Alice was crying out right now and that alone was enough to have Robin panicking as she listened.
"then Ravenna was there and she was sweet and kind and offering to help me find the right rabbit so I could come back, but then I wasn't finding the one I needed and I was getting really scared that I wouldn't be able to find it at all and then she was backing me into a tree and kissing me; but I promise I didn't initiate it."
It was heartbreaking how she seemed so fixated on this point while Robin carefully lifts her from the ground to start the walk back toward the little campsite she'd been staying at the last few nights. She'd been too anxious for Alice's return to remain a second longer than she had to at the main camp or even to wait for her back at the cabin.
"She wasn't you so I wouldn't have wanted to kiss or be with her in that way anyway, but she just wouldn't respect my rejections no matter how nicely I worded them." Alice laughs bitterly but didn't give Robin time to answer. "Then when some of the elder men in her village finally did catch her and I together it was when she was kissing me but when they demanded an answer I ws too surprised to speak so she said that I was the one that had been pursuing her since I came and when she wouldn't love me back willingly, I seduced her with magic. I tried to tell them that my magic doesn't work that way, but they wouldn't listen."
"Alice, baby you need to take a breath for me okay?" Robin suggests pressing a softer kiss against Alice's hairline both to stop her commentary on her latest trip and to keep her building anger in check. "If you keep up like this you'll go into a full panic attack and I don't want that happening to you, so I need you to match my breathing, okay, Can you do that?" she'd stopped walking lowering Alice back to the ground but still keeping her arms around her as she takes a few deep breaths for her to copy. "That's it." Robin smiles once Alice's breathing had gotten back to a normal rhythm.
"I'm not mad…." Robin started to say but Alice pulled one of her disbelieving faces before she'd finished saying it so Robin changes tact "Okay, I am upset about it but not at you Alice. Never with you." That seemed to get her anxious girlfriend to breath a little easier as Robin pairs her promise with another gentle kiss to the top of Alice's bowed head. "but how about we get you back to minicamp before you finish telling me about what this Ravenna you said her name was?" Alice nodes not meeting the archer's eyes. "Okay but first things first. I need to get you warm; dry and fed. Nook will kill me if I let you get sick."
Alice sighs burrowing into the circle of Robin's arms before she replies. "You make me the best kind of sick Nobin." She takes one of her archer's hand in her own pressing a kiss against her palm before resting it over her heart. "Would it be alright if I carried you again?" her archer asks. Alice nodes already fisting her hands in the front of Robin's shirt as she was once again swept off her feet by the woman she loved.
A swirl of black and the crunch of dry leaves under heavy boots hand both looking around in alarm. Alice for once in the few short months Robin has known her giving in to fear and hiding against the curve of her shoulder while Robin can do nothing but tense and wait.
"Robin? Starfish?"
"What happened, young rose?"
Robin smiles at the fatherly worry in the voice of the man most in this world still feared. Not that she blamed them given what she knew of his past even with what she knew of his time in Storybrooke.
"Hurt my ankle." Alice mumbles the chill setting in making her teeth chatter a little as she spoke.
That was a bit of a surprise to Robin, but she had a good enough of an 'I've got this' kind of poker face not to show it when both men's eyes met her own. Although Rumple didn't look as convinced as Nook but seemed to have decided not to comment on the lie.
"I was taking her back to ca….."
"We'll come with you." Killian insisted before Robin could finish speaking his eyes on his daughter.
"I have the…." Alice starts to say her only slightly shaking hands reaching for her satchel but 'the Dark One' was already shaking his head. "Business can wait, my young rose. Your health is far more important."
Alice gave a weak smile at that snuggling closer into Robin's hold when they start walking again.
"You didn't really hurt your ankle, did you?" the archer asks keeping her voice low as she ducked out of the way of a low hanging tree branch.
"Ssshh Nobin." Alice scolds but rather skillfully passes it off as a hiss of pain at the jostled movement, but the amusement in her eyes gives her away as their gaze meets. "They might hear you." she whispers peaking over her love's shoulder at the two men trailing after them.