A/N: This is a repost of an old fic. This is a Canon Divergent AU from the beginning of season 4. I wrote it shortly after the season 3 finale when I had a lot of feelings. I apologize for this.
WARNING: Brief infidelity
QUOD VERSUS AMOR EST ANATHEMATE
(True Love is a Curse)
Pixie dust never lies, Tinkerbell once said.
But neither does it tell the whole truth.
There is a little black secret about True Love, Regina learns. A dark truth hidden between the words "happily ever after" in Henry's book. One which could corrupt the soul of even the purest of heroes and obliterate charcoaled hearts like hers.
Because when True Love sparks to life, if affection will not keep the fated together, compulsion surely will.
She avoids him as though his mere existence has become a scourge against her every breath. She foolishly believed losing Daniel to have been agony beyond enduring, but it's a threadbare ache compared to being within reach of what should be hers and what belongs to another.
He, apparently, does not share her compunctions (or perhaps it's the tug of True Love's spell) as he barges into her office one day, blue eyes shining with outrage.
"Is it true?" he demands.
She schools the shock from her features, numbs the quake in her chest with familiar icy contempt, and with a peaked brow, speaks. "I hardly know what you're talking about. You'll have to be more specific."
His lips pinch together in a bloodless line—lips that, weeks before, marked a trail down her neck. "Don't play games with me," he warns. (Or else what? Regina wants to laugh at his paltry threat.) "Is it true that you were the one who ordered Marian killed?" He stumbles on the last word.
Because Marian is not dead, but saved by the vaulted Savior who, like her mother, soars carelessly on wings of goodness and doing what's right without thought for the consequences.
Regina gives him a brutal grin. "I had so many executed, they all tend to blur together."
She doesn't know what she hoped to gain by her calloused comment—if she wanted to chase him away, to put distance between them (there will never be enough). Or did she want this instead? The way he rushes at her, grasps her arms, and presses her hard against the desk.
"You really are a monster." He spits the words with disgust, leaning into her.
She stares up at him, smug, taunting. (He's too close and too far, and she's suffocating.) "You shared a bed with this monster, what does that make you?"
His gaze drops to her lips in an involuntary movement as if he, too, is taken with the salacious memory, and the next insult dancing precariously close to the tip of her tongue suddenly turns sour. And the one after that. With his mouth mere inches from hers, she realizes she cannot utter a word—not one that would cut him as cleanly as not having him cuts her.
(If she took out her heart again, could she? Could she crush his?)
"I didn't know what you were," he says, more air than voice.
"Don't kid yourself." She tilts up toward him with the whisper. "You knew what I was. You just refused to see it."
He snarls, hands tightening around her arms, but he doesn't argue. There is no argument. The Evil Queen was nothing more than lore to him—until she killed (or attempted to kill, the details are confused) the one he loved. The history of one of the greatest adversaries of the Enchanted Forest has now become tactile, real, and it will seep back through time until every moment they've shared is poisoned.
His fingers are in her hair, curling into taut fists, tugging her head back. He brushes his lips against hers, once, twice. Not a kiss, not quite. He inhales sharply, as if the bare contact stings him (it stings her), but it's another heartbeat before he steps back with a growl. Her body sings from the almost-taste of him, gelid chills flushing over her skin.
"Don't come near her," he threatens.
Her smile doesn't reach her eyes. "I wouldn't dream of it."
She does, of course. She dreams of a thousand and one ways to enact Marian's demise. (Her personal favorite is a sleeping curse. Because she knows he couldn't save her with True Love's kiss, not anymore. And though his endless misery would never alleviate hers, she would at least have vindication.)
She leaves Marian alone. (For Henry. Always for Henry.) But he won't leave her be. His pale gaze follows her when she comes to Granny's for coffee, when the hodgepodge band of warriors meet together to discuss defeating their newest foe. He's at her side, bowstring drawn, arrow nocked as she wields magic for their cause. He's leaning against the wall in quiet times when she rounds a corner, staring at her, into her.
He is everywhere, as ubiquitous and inexorable as the raw chasm in her chest.
She could take his heart, hold the glowing carmine thing in her hands and command him to choose her over the mother of his son. But she doesn't want coerced affection. (She had that before and knows it will never fill the emptiness.) She yearns for days past when vengeance and hatred drowned her humanity, before love brought with it the gifts of guiltand regret.
Villains don't get happy endings.
He's appointed himself her protector, and the others wear brief expressions of pity (for her) and caution (for him) before they embark on the next battle. She secretly hopes that either he or she won't survive this time—that one of them will finally be liberated from this noxious tangle between them. (Though it's a question which party would gain that prized freedom—the living or the dead.)
He's with her in the vault as she searches for something—anything—to undo the eternal winter that Elsa has brought to Storybrooke. His presence fills the room, smothering the breath in her lungs. (Why? Why won't he stay away?) She ignores his approach, ignores the tangible heat radiating from him, tells herself she senses it solely because of the pervasive frost that infects everything. He speaks with that soft, raspy timbre, but his words are lost in her sudden need to flee.
"Don't talk to me," she commands, her voice brusque to contravene the way her sinews vibrate with his proximity.
He leans against the shelves near her (too close, too close), somber and rebellious. "You want me to."
She hates this. How he takes her in and knows her with a single glance. She turns back to her task, rearranging items humming with potent magic, searching, searching, searching for an escape from him.
"What have you done to me?" His question is quiet, hollow, and like a vise, it squeezes the precarious organ behind her sternum so thoroughly, she thinks she might be irrevocably fractured.
She refuses to look at him and see if the same pain that blisters her is etched into his features. He's not allowed to hurt—not when he has everything and she has nothing. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean." She does. She knows that it's not what she's done to him, but what they've done to each other by daring to cross paths in the first place.
He moves toward her, just a hairsbreadth, but enough that she has to tramp down the urge to shove him back, to scream at him for tormenting her with his great crime of simply being.
"I have my family back," he murmurs. "You've kept your word, and I thank you for that. But…" He trails off, gaze dropping to the floor. "I can't stop thinking about you—even when I'm with her. And I feel as though I'll die if I can't be near you."
She closes her eyes against the flare of tears. Stop. Stop, stop, stop. Another word from him will destroy her. She sucks in a chilly breath and steels herself to face him with the anesthetized veneer of the Evil Queen.
"In that case," she says, both pleased and disgusted by the steadiness of her tone, "I suggest you pay a visit to Rumple. He might be able to conjure a forgetting potion for you."
His brows draw together in a frown. "I don't want to forget you."
Her mask is shattered by his naked confession. "You have to," she whispers, staring at him wide-eyed and child-like.
The moment stretches between them, thick, stifling, as his chest rises and falls in a rapid staccato. "I can't."
Then his mouth is on hers, ruthless and exacting. This isn't tenderness, but desperation, and she knows she should stop this, pull his hands away from her neck, her waist. She knows she should stop him from jerking her into him, from grinding into her in a way that makes her gasp. But she needs this as much as he does—even more.
His hands and lips are everywhere, peeling away clothing and kissing where the frigid hair pebbles her flesh with chills. She hesitates only a beat before pulling at the thick leather of his belt. Just once. Just one time as a goodbye—as closure. She tells herself other pretty little lies when he joins her, crushing her against the wall as her legs wrap around his waist.
The crescendo toward oblivion is brief, intense, and she cries out at the crest, cheeks wet with hurt and grief and old wishes that will never be granted. Because she isn't good enough to earn the favor of the Fates. She never will be.
He holds her against him afterward, mute except for the hot caress of his breath against her throat. She's glad he doesn't crack this moment with words too thin for the wrongness and the urgency of what transpired between them. They remain like this until her body quakes from the cold stone digging into her back. He doesn't meet her gaze when he releases her, but dresses with troubled lines drawn deep in his features.
He looks over at her as he pulls the strap of his quiver over his shoulder. "Regina, I—"
"Don't bother." She lifts her chin with the practiced ease of her royal grooming. "This was a mistake. It won't happen again."
He opens his mouth, but closes it, head dropping in tacit agreement.
Perhaps he'll keep his distance now. Perhaps this is finally over. (Please let it be over.)
But it's not.
He comes to her home a week later and tries to apologize, but she rebuffs him with a severe reply about flattering himself too much. (She thinks she expertly conceals how the perpetual wound behind her ribcage flays open each time he's near.) She tells him to show himself out and walks away—or attempts to. But his fingers are on her arm, his eyes pleading. She isn't capable of giving him the absolution he wants; she can't give it to herself.
"I love Marian," he says, and Regina doesn't know why he's expressing his undying affection for his wife—except, maybe, to hurt her. He places her hand against his chest and whispers. "You showed me how to love without a heart, Regina. And that's how I have to love her." His voice becomes almost inaudible as he says, "Because you have my heart."
She tears her hand away, stumbles back from him. "Stop it."
He steps toward her. "I… I can't make sense of any of this. I love her, but I need you. And I may be a common thief, but I like to believe that I'm an honorable man—a better man than this."
He demonstrates what he means by "this" with a kiss, deep and wet, and she wants to give in (again). She wants to rationalize their imminent infidelity with his confession that he does love her—as corrupt as that love has become. How can this be a transgression when his tongue grazing across her lip is made of pure light?
She breaks off the kiss, pushes him away. "Then go be that honorable man. Go back to your wife." (The irony of this is not lost on her, that she—the wholly unscrupulous antihero—is the one who feels compelled to put an end to this corrosive interlude.)
He leaves, and she can breathe once more.
But it doesn't end.
(It never will. True Love is an unbreakable curse.)
He remains at her side, refusing to relinquish his self-proclaimed role as her guardian. She gets better at ignoring him, at keeping him at arm's length with pithy replies and flat stares. But pretense doesn't turn into reality; no matter how she might claim there is nothing between them, her soul disagrees.
Her only solace is Henry, though her son isn't aware of the weight he carries for her. It isn't fair to him, to ask him to be more to her than he should be (in truth, he's always been), but if he notices, he doesn't complain. For the few hours they share together, she almost forgets that she's drowning in increments.
Almost.
She almost dies, too, encapsulated in ice resistant to her magic. She's so cold, then numb, then strangely warm. Comfortable. Sleepy.
Free.
She wakes in the hospital, Doctor Whale hovering over her. The room is filled with the relieved faces of Emma, Henry, and Mary Margaret (oh, how far they've come). Robin leans in the doorway, arms crossed, and Regina refuses to look at him. She's afraid to know if he's relieved like the others, or disappointed that the thread between them remains unsevered. Either possibility is more than she can bear.
He comes to see her when she returns home, ostensibly to check on her. She knows she shouldn't let him in, to give their encounter the kind of privacy that leads to more secrets, more shame, but she does. She keeps space between them as they navigate the perfunctory questions regarding her health (better) and if her magic is at full-strength (not yet).
In the fragile silence that follows, she asks him if he would like some tea (he does), and as he settles on a stool at the breakfast counter, she has the fleeting notion that they might find a way to become friends—to embrace a platonic, familial version of True Love like she has with Henry. She dismisses the thought in the following breath. It's a charming dream, but all dreams end.
Particularly hers.
"Sometimes," Robin begins, gaze directed at the mug in his hands, and she already knows his next words will shape a new blade with which to slice her open. "Sometimes, I wish I could hate you for nearly killing Marian." He draws in a deep breath. "Sometimes, I wish Emma hadn't rescued her." He glances up at her.
She stares back at him, unable to formulate a response.
He spins the mug in a lazy circle. "I mourned her—for years. And then I moved on." He laughs softly, bitterly. "And suddenly she's alive again, and I was happy at first."
And now? She wants to ask, but his answer would likely sow false hope in her chest—a hope he will splinter when he returns to his wife and family. Instead, she crosses her arms and glowers at him. "I'm not your therapist. Make an appointment with Doctor Hopper."
He laughs again, still dry, still humorless. "I suppose you're right. I shouldn't unburden myself on you, especially when…"
She waits for him to finish, but he doesn't. "What?"
He sighs, the corner of his mouth turning up in a pathetic imitation of a smile. "Especially when all I can think of is how very much I don't want to be an honorable man." His blue eyes shine like wet glass. "I can almost convince myself that if I had you just once more, I would be satisfied. But that's not true, is it?"
He rises from his stool, and she watches him, heart thrumming, as he steps around the counter. "I think," he says, "I think that perhaps I could overcome these rather indecent thoughts if I knew you didn't reciprocate."
The air between them stills as he waits for her answer. She draws herself up, and with an imperial glare, tells him what he wants to hear. "I feel nothing for you."
He presses his lips together before murmuring, "You're lying."
Fevered tears blur her vision as she shakes her head. "I'm not."
"You are." He steps toward her. (Does he know he does this? Encroach on her as though they have become polarized forces of nature?) "I don't know how to make this right, Regina."
It's her turn to give him a sour laugh. "You can't."
He takes another step. "I want to, though. I have to."
His confessions are measured doses of arsenic, and she can't swallow any more. "What are you going to do?" she asks, acid lacing her tone. "Ask me to be your mistress while you play house with your wife and child?"
"No, I—"
"Don't waste your breath," she says over him, unwilling to hear another word. "I may be many things, but I refuse to be your backup plan."
She walks to the front door and yanks it open, indicating for him to leave. "In fact, I'm taking myself out of the equation. What we had was a nice little distraction, but I could never spend the rest of my life with a common bandit." (She's never despised herself more than in this moment.)
Shock and pain wash over his features, and she's tempted to take back her insult (because there is an unholy symbiosis between them—his suffering is her suffering), but she holds her tongue as he crosses the room toward her, eyes cast to the floor. "I know I've been behaving poorly, and it hasn't been fair to you." He pauses before looking up at her. "But you can't mean that, Regina."
(How does he always see right through her?) "You don't get to decide what I mean." She gestures to the doorway. "Now, get out."
He does—with a final lingering glance imbued with regret and longing.
She closes the door, leans against it, slides to the floor, and weeps.
(It's not over. It'll never be over.)
It's days before she receives another visitor, and it's not him. (She should be relieved; she's not.) On the other side of the threshold stands the latest in a line of women who have stolen some piece of happiness from Regina: his wife. Marian is quite stunning (oh, how that word has become a prickly burr in her memory) with unblemished olive skin and dark wide eyes.
Regina searches her face, tries to recall it from her time in the Enchanted Forest when vengeance against Snow was her only guiding light. She hadn't lied to Robin, though; too many fell as faceless victims to her wrath. And confronted with one who would have been among the numberless fatalities (who should have been), Regina finds herself strangely disconnected from the past deeds of the queen who razed realms in search of her step-daughter.
"How can I help you?" She wears a falsely genial smile.
A tremor passes through the other woman, almost imperceptible. The monarch who led an army of merciless black knights is obviously still fresh in her mind, a fear which Regina had once reveled in, but now finds irritating.
"If you're here to complain about the ice," she says, "as Mayor, I can assure you that we have our best men and women on it."
Marian's lips part with a flash of surprise, as though she expected Regina to portray the catty mistress. "You don't know who I am." It's not a question, but a realization tinted with some emotion that seems to fall between relief and disappointment.
"Marian Locksley." Regina dispels the erroneous assumption. "It is Locksley, isn't it? Or is that where you're from? I've heard your husband called Robin Hood, but I never could be bothered to find out if that was his actual surname." Lies. She knows neither are his true last name.
Her flippant words seem to be the impetus Marian needs to screw up her courage and get on with their impending clash. "He told me about you—everything."
Regina smirks. (Everything?) "I'm surprised you didn't find out long before now." Her tone is cold, mocking. She may have to force herself to be cruel to Robin, but she has no such trouble with his wife. "It's hard to keep secrets in a small town."
"I heard things, but…" Marian falters.
"But you couldn't believe such an honorable man could fall for the great and terrible Evil Queen." She plows forward with a sneer before Marian can utter a single word. "You came to see if I've put a spell on him, if I have his heart locked in my vault. Well, I hate to disappoint you. I haven't done anything to your precious thief." Except unintentionally trigger the bane of True Love.
Marian shakes her head with disbelief. "You're lying."
Regina gives her a frigid smile. "You can tell yourself that, if it'll help you sleep better at night." She grasps the door handle. "Now, if that's all."
"You just stay away from him," Marian says, and Regina laughs.
"Or you'll do what, exactly?" She steps toward the other woman, glaring. "Don't be fooled. I may not be evil, but I'm no saint, and you don't want to cross me." To drive the point home, she flicks her wrist, and flames blaze to life just above the palm of her hand.
Marian's eyes are round with fear as she stares at the fiery orb. "He'd never forgive you."
Neither would Henry. But Regina will not admit how these truths steal the bite from her warning—not to her. "Maybe not," she says with acrimony. "But I wonder if you've ever asked yourself if he's forgiven you—for being alive."
She's rewarded with the sudden horror that washes over Marian, and she's glad for the chink her malicious remark leaves in the other woman's happy ending. (It's shades of the old queen, but Regina doesn't care. This is the end of her retribution, not the beginning.)
She retreats back inside, and before closing the door, offers Marian one final word of advice: "You threatened the wrong person, Miss Locksley. I'm not the problem. He is. Tell your husband to keep his distance from me."
He doesn't, of course. (He can't.)
He sits next to her when the "war council" gathers again. His thigh brushes against hers, and she pretends that the casual contact doesn't inspire an unwelcome thrill in her stomach. When the meeting devolves to the Charmings and Hook arguing with Emma over her rash plan which would put her in harm's way (typical), Robin leans toward Regina and murmurs in her ear.
"You threatened my wife."
"She threatened me first," she returns.
"She's desperate to keep her family together," he replies. "Don't hurt her." It's not a warning, not exactly a plea, either. More a reiteration of what he already knows she will and won't do.
"I wouldn't dream of it," Regina says carelessly, and he smiles. It's the first genuine smile he's worn since before everything became complicated, and her heart clenches. Because she's suppressed the memory of when possibilitiesand second chances hung between them like sweet perfume. And—oh—it's as if she's choking on the renewed knowledge that all of it will never be.
She rises abruptly and joins in the debate, yelling at everyone to back off and let Emma do whatever the hell she wants. Emma throws her a look of gratitude, but Regina didn't do it for her. She wants an end to the circular argument. (She wants to get away from Robin.)
It's a different story when he takes a turn at nearly dying.
She knows now, in their sordid tale, that it is only the departed who are free. The living are granted no such peace. (A forgotten lesson from Daniel made a thousand times worse with Robin.)
He's in the hospital, slumbering in a coma, and not being at his side is like death and resurrection and death all over again. She has no place there; it's reserved for his family—his wife, if not his soul mate. She makes a valiant effort to stay back, to live on the scraps of news on his unchanging condition passed around in hushed whispers, but the curse will not be denied. Since he is no longer capable of answering its call, she falls prey to it instead.
It's the middle of the night when she finds herself traversing the sterile hospital corridors, heels clacking noisily against the linoleum in the silent building. She waited until Marian left with little Roland (Regina doesn't allow herself to think of the boy; there is only so much bruising disappointment she can contain in the jagged space around her heart), but she still stops short of Robin's room, anxiety quickening in her chest. (She is exhausted from caring what others think; she misses her days of hatred-induced sociopathy.)
Beyond the threshold he lays in quiet repose, sallow, gaunt, less without his understated wit and dimpled smiles, and her knees threaten to buckle. Because as deeply as his existence haunts her, she knows she will not survive in a world where he never is again. She measures each step toward him, too aware of the hum and beeps of the machinery monitoring his vitals. Aside from the oxygen tube at his nose (at least he's not on a respirator, the others murmured; it's a good sign), he looks as though he's merely sleeping. She reaches for his hand, but pauses short of feeling his rough fingers beneath hers. She is a blight, virulent, septic—she has been as long as she can remember—and she's afraid of tainting him further with her touch.
But she wants, needs more than she is willing to sacrifice (isn't this always the way with her kind, the miscreants?), and she takes his hand in hers. It's cold, dry—limp. She swallows the tightness in her throat, blinks back tears. She caresses his weathered palm.
"Come back," she whispers. "Find a reason."
She knows that reason should be Marian, Roland, the band of Merry Men he leads. But Regina is not so altruistic. She wishes the impossible: that the reason will be her.
She leans forward, presses her cheek against his. He doesn't smell like the great outdoors and reckless adventure, but he's saturated in the pungent lye meant to keep infection at bay, and it's indescribably wrong.
"Please," she breathes, tears spilling onto his stubbled skin. "Come back to me."
(He won't come back, of course—not to her. Not the way she wants.)
She squeezes his hand, closes her eyes, and presses her lips to his, inhaling the pang of electricity that sparks between them whenever they touch. And then she slips away as quietly as she came.
Henry is the one who breaks the joyful news to her the next morning, that Robin woke—sometime in the middle of the night—and she won't let herself believe that she was the catalyst for this miracle. (The Evil Queen doesn't heal, but wounds.) She's not at Granny's days later when the others gather to celebrate his return home.
She doesn't belong. (She's never belonged.)
Like a grim omen, she senses his coming long before he raps his knuckles against her door. She rests her forehead on the dark wood, but refuses to touch the handle.
"Regina," he says on the other side. "I know you're in there. Let me in, or I'll be forced to use my rather exceptional skills at breaking and entering."
She lets out a choked laugh at his light-hearted tone (she wants so desperately to stop loving him). She takes in a breath and another to steel herself before answering, "Go home to your family."
"Regina, please." His voice is softer, beseeching. "I heard you—that night. Calling me from the darkness."
"Don't, Robin." She's not sure that she says it loud enough for him to hear, not until he grows quiet. "There's nothing for you here anymore." Nothing he can take without losing himself, without destroying everything he cares about.
"I'm sorry," he says with resignation. "I didn't mean to be a bother."
She sags against the door as his footsteps trail down the porch. He'll be back. In a day, or a week, caught once more in the tide of this relentless exigency. Her fingers dig into her chest, grip her pulsing heart (to remove or to crush, she doesn't know which), but she leaves it where it is.
For Henry. Always for Henry.
(And Robin.)
Ultimately, she has to kill Marian (again).
Elsa, they discover, is not the enemy they believed her to be, but a lost child who cannot control her gift. It's the source of that gift which must be defeated—contained. As Rumple lays out the only feasible course of action, vacuous horror swells in the pit of Regina's stomach.
"I'm afraid it has to be you, dearie," Rumple explains. "The original portal used blood magic—your heart."
Robin steps to her side. "And she has to undo everything Emma and Killian did?"
Rumple gives the bandit a grave nod.
Everything.
Including saving Marian from the Evil Queen.
Regina looks at Robin through a wet veil of anguish. She can't do this—not to him, even though it gives her back her happy ending. She shakes her head. "No," she says. "No, we'll find another way."
But there isn't another way.
One life for hundreds. It's not a choice.
He shouldn't be, but he's there hours later with the others as she stands at the apex of design Zelena scrawled into the dirt floor of the barn. Regina tries not to remember their last visit here—the only time she ever used light magic (because of Robin's faith in her). Her eyes meet his, red-rimmed and weary. He holds her gaze for several beats before dropping his head in numbed acceptance. (She wonders if he told Marian, or if his wife cuddles their son in blithe ignorance.)
She mouths two words before finally tearing her heart from her chest.
I'm sorry.
It's a simple matter to prevent Emma and the pirate from falling into the past. Anti-climactic compared to the pain and terror of the last several months, and as Regina is pulled back into the black void, she thinks she would rather remain in its barren embrace than return to the righted future.
Because she'll remember. All of it. And the secrets she must shoulder are too crippling.
But, of course, True Love will not be so easily impeded.
(It's an unbreakable curse, after all.)
She wakes in her bed, a body pressed against hers—his body. And she regrets that he's inextricably bound to the one who stole everything from him (twice). But she'll never tell. Because it doesn't matter.
If affection won't keep them together, compulsion will. Forever.
(It will never be over.)
~FIN~
A/N: Thank you for suffering with me. Feel free to air your grievances in the review box below. I deserve it, I know.