A/N: This is the final part of the main story (and it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride). There's a coda following this that completes the work.

PART THREE

No masters or kings
when the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean

"Turn it off."

Disoriented, Robin peels one eye open and squints at the early morning light peeking through the curtained windows of their hotel suite. There's a hand on the back of his shoulder, shoving at him quite insistently.

"Wha—?" he begins, but then he hears it. His phone rattles against the nightstand, and he gropes for it with uncoordinated fingers. Blinking, he tries to decipher the unfamiliar number on the screen. After the device vibrates again, he decides to answer. Could be Jean. Or…someone. Robin isn't awake enough for a train of thought that goes anywhere, really.

"Hang on a moment." It feels as though his larynx is made of rocks.

Regina hushes him with a scowl before rolling over, taking all the blankets in retaliation for rousing her, and he snorts a laugh.

He thinks about telling the person on the other end of the line to sod off so he can jump on the bed until Regina takes a swipe at him. And he'll pin her down and… Well, that particular train of thought has no trouble arriving at its destination. Unfortunately, she's already lost to slumber again—rather atypically. He'd like to believe he'd done as fine a job wearing her out last night as she did him, but he thinks that this has more to do with the half of her life he has no part in. (He'd like to, though.)

He sighs, picking up his trousers and manages to pull them on with one hand. The bedroom door closes behind him with a soft click as he crosses the suite to settle on the sofa. With a sigh, he casts a glance through the glass at the lump on the bed, hoping this call will be brief. Already he wants to be back in there with her, arms wound around her supine form.

"If you're still there," he says into the phone, stifling a yawn, "I apologize for the wait."

There's no reply at first, and then a rush of words. "Robin? I hope it's you. Will gave me this number, but if I've dialed it wrong, I'm so sorry for the early phone call."

That voice. That voice. It wicks the air from his lungs, compresses his ribcage. "Marian?" He's not certain he speaks the stunned question aloud until she answers.

"Yes!" she exclaims, sounding relieved. "It's me. I know it's been a long time and so much has happened, but when I learned you were in Boston, or Cambridge, I just…" She trails off with a shaky laugh. "I'm so nervous, I'm rambling."

He tries to smile, but he's not quite over the shock of speaking with a ghost from his past. "You're here, then?"

She makes a noise of agreement. "I am. I have been for almost four years."

Four years? Four? She's been minutes from him this entire time? Ache, long repressed, floods the hollow chambers of his heart with countless what-should-have-beens. The next tide that follows is suffused with anger—outrage—at the powers which have kept them separated.

Marian is talking again and he's missed part of her question. "…together sometime?"

He rakes his fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry, what?" he asks and sheepishly adds, "I'm afraid I'm still a bit gobsmacked."

She laughs again, and this time it's more like the unfettered melody he remembers. "You should have seen me when I heard you were at Harvard. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I kept bumping into walls. My roommates threatened to take me in for a psych eval." She sucks in an audible breath. "So, would you like to get together sometime and catch up?"

"Right now works for me," he answers without hesitation. He doesn't want to be apart from her for a minute longer.

"Give me a couple hours," she says with an obvious smile in her tone.

They agree on some hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse she favors, and after giving him directions, she rings off. He sinks back into the sofa, mouth stretching in a wide grin of incredulity. She's here. Marian. The love of his life which had been ripped from him nearly five years ago. Memories like crystalline water pour over him. The way she nudged him with her shoulder during their late night rooftop conversations about everything and nothing. The feel of her smooth palm against his calloused one. Her absolute faith in his ability to escape the generations of chains tying him to the family trade; her belief that he could—would—craft his own future. The abject reverence in her sable eyes as they consummated the purity of their unrivaled connection.

And he's mere hours from a reunion he never thought they'd have. His Marian.

His gaze meanders to the bedroom, and the excitement levitating within his chest smashes against his momentarily forgotten reality. Treason sinks like septic lead in his gut, though he doesn't know who it is that his conflicted feelings betray most. Regina? Marian? Himself? All three of them.

He has to go back in the room, has to see Regina's face and know if his reluctant revelation from the night before was true. He's quiet when he enters, careful not to wake her. Because he doesn't think he'll have the strength to keep his newly-made appointment should she look up at him with that genuine smile—his smile. She appears so small, so fragile cocooned in the blanket, free of the cynicism that has flourished beneath the crushing weight of her difficult life. And yes, he loves her. Ardently.

But he loves Marian, too. He's loved her longer in memoriam.

He shakes his head, chides himself over his puffed-up sense of self-importance. He knows nothing of Marian's life in the intervening years, whether she's found another to take up residence in her affections or if she even has a desire to rekindle what was stolen from them (does he?). And Regina—she's never given any indication that she wants more than this tenuous arrangement he shares with her.

He's a fool over nothing. (That feels strangely like a lie.)

He dresses in silence, gathers his things, and leaves a hastily scrawled note for Regina. The ambiguity in his message with a promise to call later tastes acrid on his tongue, but he fears the truth will chase her away before he has an opportunity to sort through the unrest that Marian's surprise return has triggered.

Robin arrives at the coffeehouse early, jittery anticipation crackling under his skin. The place has a cozy décor, warm with mismatched plush furniture. The curtains are drawn against the bright morning light, inviting the patrons to linger, to ponder, to whisper secrets.

He orders a cappuccino—extra dry—and seats himself at a table near the back. His heart leaps at the jangle of bells hanging from the door, but it isn't her. After a few more false starts, he begins to question the wisdom of sipping a caffeinated beverage when he's already horribly keyed up. He studiously ignores any thoughts that drift in the direction of the hotel, to where a shard of his soul dwells.

The door jangles again, and it's her. She's as beautiful as he remembers. More so. Long chestnut locks frame her long face in soft waves. Her features have lost some of the roundness of youth, chiseled by time, but she still wears the aura of angelic innocence that once inspired him to be better than he was. He was undeserving of her then. (He's undeserving of her now.)

She scans the room, and he wants to sink deeper into the shadow, to stretch this moment of furtive admiration before their reunion jostles the house of cards he's carefully built these past few months. But he doesn't hide. Instead he stands, gives her an irresolute wave, and her face splits into a watery smile as she crosses the room to him.

She breathes his name as if it's the first time in years she's been able to fill her lungs with air. He pulls her into a tight embrace, tears pricking in his eyes. Nostalgia crashes over him as he inhales the long forgotten scent of her favorite perfume. She's here. Hail and whole.

He pulls back, wipes his thumb over her smooth cheek to capture the wetness there. "Marian," he murmurs, shaking his head to dislodge the disbelief still clinging to him.

"Look at you. You're all grown up." She brushes her fingertips across the coarse hair peppering his jaw. "It suits you."

He swallows back the inexplicable antipathy at hearing Regina's compliment from the night before falling from Marian's lips. "Thank you." He grins, ushering her toward the chair opposite his at the table. "Let me get you something to drink."

"Oh, they have the best mochaccinos here," she says, and he huffs a laugh. She always had a weakness for chocolate.

"A mochaccino it is, then."

He feels the press of her gaze follow him as he makes his way to the counter, but he doesn't look back. The stir of emotions her phone call inspired has become a battling tempest, and he needs a beat to quell the storm. He wants to believe this reunion is no more significant than the one he shared with Jean yesterday—simply a meeting between old friends too long parted. But it's not. This is more. Marian is more.

She glows with naked joy when he hands her a steaming mug and takes his seat. "I can't believe we're really here—after all these years."

"Me neither." Had he only known that she's been practically under his nose this entire time. How different his life might have been. But that thought gives him pause. Because it doesn't awaken regret as he expects, but another emotion disturbingly close to relief. "You were shipped off to some boarding school in Switzerland, last I heard."

She bobs her head in agreement, taking a sip of her coffee. "Italy, actually." She sighs, hands curling around her mug. "I tried to find you after I graduated, but you disappeared. Just like you said you would one day. God, that accent—you sound so different." Her expression is cast with sudden wistfulness. "You're not my Irish boy anymore, are you?"

The murmured question makes his throat constrict with a filmy sadness. She's right. He isn't the teenager railing against the oppression of his family, the teenager who saw his salvation in her unblemished devotion to him. He can't say the words, though. He's not ready yet to admit to her or to himself that the past has become like sand slipping between his fingers—that maybe he no longer desires the future they were both deprived of.

He reaches across the small table, extracts one of her hands from her cup and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Tell me everything I've missed."

"I don't know where to begin." She takes a deep breath and launches into a recounting of her year in Italy, of applying to Northeastern University to spite her grandfather, to be closer to her sister. She shares silly anecdotes from school; she tells him about her sister's diagnosis of breast cancer, and the fear that her nephew would grow up without a mother. She talks about spending Spring Break in the homeland to pay her final respects to her granddad—and her chance meeting with Will Scarlet, a mutual childhood acquaintance. One of the rare few whom Robin still chats with on occasion.

"I think that's about it," she finishes, and then encourages him to take a turn filling in the gaps.

He isn't quite as open with her—he can't be—and sorrow tugs in the corners of his mouth. He used to trust her implicitly; he laid himself bare for her, both the darkness and the light. But as he listened with rapt interest to what's become of her these past few years, he realized how disparate their lives are now. She is the same emblem of incorruptibility, magnified a hundredfold by time and maturity. He doesn't doubt that she would still accept him with open arms if he revealed the unsightly truths about himself. But her faith in him—in his ability to overcome and be better, be more like her—that would be his condemnation.

Because he doesn't want to be saved. He's not lost. The effigy she would make of him is as oppressive as the profligate his father would have him become.

So, he edits his history to keep her at a harmless distance—the same span with which he holds himself apart from friends like David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard. His tales reflect his tamer exploits in Paris, the rather dull grind of studying at a prestigious school. He talks of recently sending off an application for an internship at the Louvre, and Marian gushes with pride that he's completely disentangled himself from his family. Robin blows out a thready breath. The road he's chosen isn't too far afield from his father's original intentions. At least, not far enough to warrant the approval shining in her eyes.

Her face twists in endearing chagrin when her phone beeps. "And reality knocks." At Robin's confusion, she clarifies, "Work—well, kind of. I volunteer for a shift at the animal shelter on Saturdays. But maybe we can get together tomorrow?"

There is a dense hope in the invitation, and he drops his head, shoulders sagging. She is everything he's supposed to want—everything safe and easy and good. For all the turmoil he suffered from the moment he heard her voice on the line, a strange sort of serenity settles over him. He knows now what it is he needs.

"I can't," he says, glancing up at her wearing a somber expression.

Her eager smile turns sad as she understands the meaning behind his refusal. "There's someone else."

"Yes." Although he may not yet have Regina's heart, she most assuredly has his.

"Ah." Marian's cheeks tinge with pink. "She's a lucky girl."

He lets out a rueful laugh. "I wouldn't exactly say that."

"I would." Her dark gaze whispers the disappointment she doesn't vocalize, and he regrets inadvertently hurting her. "I think that's my cue," she says, rising from her seat. "Take care, and—" she pauses as if she isn't sure she wants to say the rest, "—don't be a stranger, okay?"

He stands and gives her another bone-jarring hug. "Of course not," he murmurs into her hair. "We've got each other's numbers."

"Goodbye, Robin."

He watches her exit, the boy in him grieving what might have been had his father and her grandfather not been mortal enemies.

But then, maybe things work out the way they're supposed to.

He pulls out his phone and sends a text:

Fancy a visit to the MFA with me?

It's a minute before there's a reply.

What, you didn't get enough last night? Missing me already?

He grins.

Always.

Robin is becoming desperate. As the end of term—the end of university—approaches, Regina grows distant. She calls less often, replies to only a fraction of his texts, and he's afraid. He wants to tell her that what they share isn't a passing whim for him. He wants to believe it isn't for her, either. But she keeps their increasingly infrequent encounters brief, only long enough to sate her carnal appetites as if she resents that she needs him.

Having her and yet not is killing him in increments with the slow poison of despair.

He's angry, frustrated, but short of earning himself a restraining order, he's helpless to change the bleak trajectory of their deteriorating relationship—not until he can make her listen. He fills the consuming void, or attempts to, with his studies, with painting, with his new partnership with Jean. His latest pieces are filled with the same dusky anxiety and misery that has become a familiar barbed vine winding through his ribcage. Fortunately, Jean is unbothered by the change in theme, though he casts Robin an occasional glance suffused with concern that he never forms into words.

At the peak of Robin's torment, his father summons him. It's not a request, but a command. Of course.

Robin accepts the messengered plane ticket to New York with resignation. (At least it's not Dublin.) He'll go. If he doesn't, his father will come to him, and it won't be a quiet visit.

Surprisingly (suspiciously) the meeting takes place in a swanky uptown restaurant. While Robin is glad for the kind of sophisticated public encounter that will likely keep his father's coarser attributes under leash, he wonders what the older man has hidden up his sleeve. They haven't spoken since Robin's precipitate move to France, and it's unlikely that reconciliation is on the agenda—for either party.

Robin murmurs his father's name to the hostess, and she leads him through a labyrinth of tables to a booth in the back. Declan Cavanaugh relaxes back into the plush leather bench as he frowns at the wine list. Aside from a nose slightly crooked from youthful brawls, he is the image that Robin will see in the mirror in twenty or so years. Neatly coiffed thick hair, once dark blond but now ashen with silver and white; dimples indenting his clean shaven cheeks, made more pronounced with the purse of his lips; the cut of his jaw, the clear blue of his eyes, the soft rasp in his voice—everythingis the same. The only trait Robin apparently inherited from his late mother was her humanity.

He sucks in a deep breath as he takes a seat on the other side of the booth. "Is Will at least still alive?" he asks with a touch of venom.

Declan raises a brow and snorts. "Good evening to you too, son." His lilt is bare, almost seamlessly imperceptible by virtue of spending most of his adolescence in the States.

"I'm serious," Robin plows forward, unwilling to pretend at civility. "Tell me that you didn't have my friend roughed up just so you could find me."

"I'm overwhelmed by your unwavering faith in me." Declan levels him with a flat stare. "You're hiding in plain sight. I didn't need your whereabouts beaten out of Will Scarlet."

"Now that you put it that way, I feel so much better," Robin says, his tone saturated with sarcasm. "What do you want?"

"You'd do well not to bait me, lad. If you think this hoity-toity establishment will stop me from reminding you who it was that gave you life, you've got another thing coming." Satisfied that Robin understood the flagrant threat, Declan picks up the menu. "I hear the braised beef is really something."

Robin orders the sea bass out of spite. And a whiskey, neat—to steel himself for the impending dispute. He's well into his second glass of the stuff before the food arrives, grudgingly answering his father's polite inquiries into his life, at least the bits he's willing to share (nothing beyond school). Robin wishes the man would skip over these fictitious pleasantries already so they can have it out and be done with it.

"We've always had Boston," Declan says a few minutes into their meal, "and the Italians have always had New York."

Robin leans back in the booth and glares at his empty tumbler. He thinks of telling the waiter to give him the whole damn bottle next time he comes around; he has an inkling of the direction this conversation is about to take. "And the Russians."

"Interlopers, the lot of them." Declan waves a hand in dismissal. "Since the beginning it's been us and the Italians, and now that Sergio Mantovani's had the good graces to die, there's been a paradigm shift. His men are falling all over themselves to become the next Dom."

Sergio Mantovani. Marian's grandfather. Likely his death was the reason she felt safe renewing her association with Robin. He'd been too wrapped up in sorting out his feelings to make that connection—or the ensuing realization that running back into her arms meant a reenactment of their tragic modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance. But as he sits across from his estranged father, Robin understands that the old Dom's demise has even worse implications for him.

"I fail to see what any of this has to do with me," he lies, pointing at his glass when the waiter finally makes an appearance.

"All that fancy learning your mother demanded you have," Declan replies with a smirk, "and you're still behaving like the idiot boy."

Robin clenches his teeth, heat creeping up his neck. "Better the idiot boy than one of your lackeys."

"Point your nose up all you want, but at least they understand the meaning of loyalty. It's about time my son learned the same lesson." Declan's features tighten into the jagged iron that has the knees of grown men buckling as they beg for their lives. "The family here needs someone to take them by a firm hand and guide them through this golden opportunity. Someone who has the smarts to know when to charm and when to wield a pipe."

"And you think that someone is me?" Robin asks with a dubious laugh. "What, did you think you could wine and dine me, and I'd suddenly want to jump into the family business? Put Killian in charge."

"Killian is running Boston like a well-oiled machine. He's exactly where I want him." Declan leans forward, his posture menacing. "You can change your accent, and you can change your name, but that is Cavanaugh blood in your veins, lad. And I didn't build this empire to have my son spitting on it."

Robin waits until the server sets down his refreshed tumbler and takes a long pull of the scorching liquid before formulating an appropriate response. "What are you going to do if I say no, Da?" he grinds out, anger fracturing at edge of his baritone. "Point a gun to my head and force me to take over New York? If so, then pull the trigger. I'd rather die than do your bidding."

Declan's face turns a dangerous shade of crimson but his heated reply is lost on Robin. Because he hears something—a husky, familiar laughter that doesn't belong in this city, let alone this restaurant. He swivels in his seat, searching for the source, praying that the alcohol has finally befuddled him to the point of hallucination.

But it is her. The woman at the center of his tortured heart sits a few tables away, curling a lock of raven hair behind her ear as she tilts her head and grins at the man opposite her. She seems happy, as carefree as she'd once been with Robin, and he stands without thought, pulls out his wallet and drops a pair of crisp hundred dollar bills next to his unfinished meal. When Declan protests, Robin bites out, "We're finished—for good," as he sidesteps out of the booth.

Fury and anguish make fast friends beneath his skin as he crosses the room toward the pair. Neither Regina nor her date (the word makes bile churn Robin's stomach) notice his presence until he's next to the table, casting a pale shadow over their wine glasses.

"Robin!" Regina's dark eyes widen with shock. She is as breathtaking as ever in that lavender cocktail dress, and his nails dig into his palms.

He screws his mouth up in a thin smile. "Hello, Regina. Fancy meeting you here." The excessive politeness masks his outrage, but the emotion laps violently at the surface, demanding to be let loose. Because how dare she. How dare she give his smile to another man. Speaking of which: "Who's your companion?"

She stutters through a brief introduction, clearly unsettled by this chance encounter. (Good.) The other fellow's name is Graham, and Robin guesses that he's closer in age to Regina with the lines drawn in the corner of his eyes and the pinch of grey sprinkled at his temples. Robin is sick with the idea that she might prefer him because of it.

"Pleasure to meet you, mate." Robin holds his hand out and uses every ounce of self-control not to crush Graham's as they shake.

"Any friend of Regina's," Graham returns with strained tact in a recognizable sing-song timbre. Another Irishman. Is that what she wants? Robin could easily give her that. He'll put on a damn leprechaun costume and chase rainbows if that'll please her.

But he can't make himself older, and that bitter truth adds fuel to the inferno blazing through him.

"Indeed," he says, his falsely calm demeanor crumbling into fine dust. A rational voice warns him not to let fly the string of words he's now shaping with his tongue, but there's enough liquor in his system that he really couldn't be arsed to listen to reason. "So, tell me, Graham, are you sleeping with her, too?"

"Robin!" Regina exclaims as she starts to rise from her chair, but he throws up a finger to stop her.

His gaze, however, remains fixed on Graham. "I'm merely curious about my competition."

Graham smirks as he gives Robin a derisive once over. "I'd hardly call a boy competition, mate."

The restaurant erupts in chaos as Robin snatches the other man by his tie and punches him square in the nose. Regina is yelling; his father is laughing, proudly telling anyone who'll listen where Robin gets his fire from. The waiter latches onto his arm, pulls him back from the table, and Robin goes willingly. He's embarrassed that he caved to the club-swinging Neanderthal inside of him—even if he desperately wants to keep pummeling the smug bastard who had mocked him.

"I'm afraid you'll have to leave, sir," the waiter explains as he ushers Robin toward the door.

Robin is tempted to invite Graham to join him outside to finish their conversation, but the insolent offer withers in his throat under the weight of Regina's scornful glower. He apologizes instead to the waiter, to the patrons he passes before he exits into the muggy Spring evening. It occurs to him that he may have shattered the glass-blown hope he held of persuading Regina that he's not some meathead frat boy.

"Tell me again how you're nothing like me." Declan steps up next to Robin, raising a brow. "That was all Cavanaugh in there, lad. Let me know when you're ready to accept who you are." He retreats down the block with a trio of minions following in his wake.

Robin sneers in disgust. For years he worked to eradicate every vestige of similarity he shared with his father, and he throws that nearly insurmountable effort away in an asinine fit of jealousy? And yet, he's still seething. At Declan. At Regina and Graham. At himself.

He hears the determined staccato of heels against pavement, catches a diaphanous waft of the perfume that permeates his dreams, and he tips his head back, closing his eyes with a groan.

"What the hell was that display about?" Regina jerks his arm, forces him to look at her. She's almost at eye level in her stilettos, and she's positively vibrating with ire.

"I'm sorry I ruined your night out. He seems like such a brilliant fellow," Robin snaps back at her, shrugging out of her grasp. He refuses to let her see how thoroughly she's destroying him. "I'm sure the evening is still salvageable, though. Maybe a little game of nurse and patient—if he goes in for that sort of thing, that is."

She stares at him, lips parting as she shakes her head. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when an adolescent acts like an adolescent."

His blood pounds in his ears as he holds her gaze, his sore hand flexing into a tight ball. Oh, how he hates her in this moment. "And I shouldn't be surprised when the Black Widow screws over her pets. Love them and leave them in pieces. Isn't that how it works?"

She slaps him hard across the face.

He yanks her into him and kisses her harder.

Because despite his searing contempt for her refusal to see past the number of birthdays he's had, despite the open wound she's sliced in his heart, he still wants her, needs her—whatever dregs she's willing to offer him. And she presses herself into him, hungrily invading his mouth with her tongue as if he's the oasis she's long been denied. His fingers fist in the taut fabric of her dress, in her smooth hair, and he inhales her, tastes her, devours her.

He is vaguely aware of being pushed into the back of a cab and being dragged out of it again when it arrives at the front of the Plaza. It's almost a race to the lifts, and then he has her pressed up against the wall of her suite, hiking up the skirt of her gown as she folds her legs around his hips.

He wants to ruin her, to give her an experience that cannot be imitated. The consolation that he is here with her rather than Graham is too small. It's not enough.

He snakes an arm beneath her thighs, wraps the other around her waist as he steps back and fumbles his way toward the bedroom. She claws at his shirt buttons, his belt buckle, when he sets her on the bed, but he captures her hands, pulls them up to cradle his face as he covers her mouth in a languid kiss. This is not just sex, not tonight.

Tonight he's confessing his rooted devotion.

Any man can make her cry out in ecstasy. Only he can love her with this fathomless depth.

Each caress. I love you. Each kiss. I love you. Each gasp and sigh. I love you. He holds her gaze as he joins her, as he communes with her body and soul.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

There is no paradise without her. No joy. No future.

Afterward, he pulls her into him until her head is pillowed on his chest. He's grateful that she doesn't broach the silence. Words will hang between them soon enough, and he's afraid he won't like the flavor of them.

Regina is standing at the window when he wakes, terry-cloth robe clutched closed with one hand at her neck, her other arm wound across her waist. The sunrise swaths her in ethereal light and she looks inhumanly striking, like a creature out of fairy tale.

He slips out of bed and embraces her from behind. She leans against him, exhaling as he places a kiss on the top of her head. He wants this—every day. He wants to open his eyes each morning and see her next to him. He wants to fall asleep with her body curled into his. He wants a life with her.

She sighs again and steps out of his arms. "Robin, we have to stop this."

"Stop what?" His heart crawls into his throat, making it difficult to keep his tone light. "Having public altercations? I'll be happy to apologize to your friend and make nice." Unless, of course, Graham does have romantic intentions toward Regina. In which case, Robin will be more than glad to pick up where they left off last night—maturity be damned.

She faces him, raising a hand to caress his jaw. The expression she wears stabs him in the chest. "You know that's not what I mean."

"I love you." Giving voice to the acute emotion which has plagued him for months is both liberating and gut-wrenching. He's losing her—perhaps even lost her already—but he can't bring himself to admit defeat, not without one last appeal. "I love you, Regina Mills," he repeats, capturing her hand and pressing a soft kiss to the inside of her wrist.

Fear darkens her eyes, pinches her brows. She withdraws farther from him. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Why?" he asks, advancing on her. "Why is it ridiculous that I love you? Is it my age? I assure you that I am just as capable of the same depth of feeling as a man ten or twenty years older!" He grabs her arms, and it takes conscious effort not to shake her. "Why do you keep running from this thing between us? You feel it, don't you? We belong, Regina. And I don't care that I'm younger or that you're older. I don't care about some stupid unspoken rule about age differences. I love you."

"Stop, stop, stop!" She jerks free of his grasp as a single tear glides down her cheek. "You'll resent me for stealing your youth."

He blinks, frowning. That is quite possibly the most ludicrous thing he's ever heard. "That's what's holding you back? I've already sowed my wild oats. I know who I am and what I want, and I want you."

"You can't." She seems so small, so broken, and he wants to hold her; he wants to heal her. "You don't know me, what I am. I'm no good, Robin."

"I'm no saint, either," he says, ready to tell her every black secret if it means she'll let him in.

"I killed him," she whispers, chin dropping to her chest as tears course down her face in a steady stream. "I killed Leo. He was having a heart attack and I didn't call for help—not until he was already gone. I refuse to give Mary Margaret her inheritance because when she was a young girl she told about my secret engagement to Daniel. And that led to his death. I hate her." She looks up at Robin. "I'm a vindictive bitch who will step on anyone to get what I want."

He tries to see the woman she's described, but that's not all of who she is. He's witnessed the other side of her, her bald elation when he makes her forget the labels foisted upon her by society, the way she beams when she talks about her cousin's young son and his exploits with Auntie Regina, her dry wit that keeps Robin on his toes—this and so much more. And he doesn't doubt that she hasn't told him the full story about her husband. She's trying to push Robin away. She's failing spectacularly.

He shakes his head. "Regina," he says, "my father is the head of the Irish mafia—the worldwide Irish Mafia. I was reared among murderers and thieves. I'm not afraid of you."

He takes her head in his palms and pours his soul into his kiss. He needs to be as much a part of her as she is inextricably a part of him.

But she breaks away with a strangled cry, shoves him back. "I can't. I can't let you." She sucks in a quaking breath, draws herself up in that imperial posture he usually finds uncommonly alluring. "It's over."

He feels like his ribs are being pulverized with a vise. "Regina—"

"It was fun while it lasted," she speaks over him, "but it's getting boring now."

"You're lying," he accuses in a splintered voice. "You're lying!"

She lifts her chin. Her cold, unfeeling gaze is belied by the watery sheen in her eyes. "I'm going to take a shower, and I expect you to be gone before I get out."

He's suffocating in agony. This is a thousand times worse than seeing her with another man. Because she has taken his chance at happiness and obliterated it. "Please—"

"Don't ever contact me again." She locks herself in the bathroom, leaving him to stare after her, shellshocked at having the center of his gravity ripped from him.

The abrupt break-up doesn't fully sink in until weeks later as he sits in Logan airport waiting for his flight to Paris. He managed to make it through finals, managed to graduate with honors despite the protracted detachment that had him going through the motions like a wind-up automaton. He accepted the internship at the Louvre without enthusiasm—because living only miles away from Regina and being utterly barred from her is a hell he never knew existed.

But when the speakers crackle with the call for boarding, he compulsively checks his phone in the mad hope that she's come to her senses in the final hour. There's nothing, though. No text. No missed call. He's never going to see her again.

And that's when he falls apart.

Paris, France, Two Years Later

Robin climbs the steps to his flat, murmuring a friendly salutation to one of the building's other residents as she passes him by. She gives him a flirtatious grin as she often does, asks him when he'll finally let her show him the pleasures of the Parisian nightlife. He waves her off with a laugh.

"Un autre jour, ma chérie," he says as part of the script they've developed over the last year.

She playfully sticks her tongue out at him, tells him to dial her number when he stops being a boring old grand-père trapped in the body of a sexy young Englishman and then skips down the stairs. He watches her with a smile. She's in her early twenties, but she's so young. He won't think of how it was his perception became skewed. He won't allow himself to wonder if this is how he appeared to Regina, more child than adult. (The sewn-together fragments of his demolished heart still whisper her name, betraying his resolute belief that he's moved on. He hasn't. He can't.)

He drops his mail on the small table just inside his flat, and he rests his forehead against the door as he closes it. The adrenaline rush from examining The Birth of Venus—recently on loan from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for the Botticelli exhibit—has worn off, replaced by exhaustion. It's the first painting that he's been given to authenticate without supervision, and he spent hours combing every millimeter, scrutinizing each swath of pigment, the texture left by the brush against canvas. He's feeling a tad cross-eyed at the moment. He won't be working on any of his pieces tonight.

He straightens, rifles through the small stack of envelopes he brought inside with him. There's one from Marian—a wedding invitation. He glances at the photograph of the cheerful lovers without a twinge of remorse. From Marian's recent phone call, he learned that her fiancé was a classmate of hers, another graphic designer, and an entirely ordinary practicing catholic with no ties to the criminal underground. Exactly the sort of man she deserves. Robin is glad that she found her storybook ending—even if he'll never have his.

There's a letter from Boston—from the Museum of Fine Arts. He doesn't know why he applied for the assistant in-house expert position there. He tells himself it's because his internship is almost up at the Louvre, and he's sent his resume to several museums around the world. But he didn't have to apply to that one. He leaves the letter unopened with the rest of the mail. If they offered him the job, it's a decision that he's not ready to make yet. If they didn't, well, he's not ready to have that decision made for him.

The floorboards creak under his shoes as he crosses the short foyer into the salon and clicks on a nearby lamp.

He's not alone.

The air in his lungs turns gelatinous, unbreathable, as he stares at his unexpected guest. It's her. She who held his future in her delicate hands and tossed it aside. She stands between the sofa and coffee table, gaze trained on Les noces de Pierrette hanging on the wall. Her hair is longer, just past her shoulders, but she is otherwise unchanged. As stunning as ever. His fluttering heart keeps time with the footfalls that draw him toward her, and he's tempted to reach out to her, to test her solidity.

"Regina?" he questions with a measure of awe.

She glances at him. "I told your landlady that I was your sister," she says, giving him a fleeting smirk. "I don't think she believed me, but she let me in anyway."

"She's terribly trusting," he replies. A hundred questions dance on the tip of his tongue, and he can't bring himself to verbalize any of them. Because he's afraid that she'll flee again. (Because he's afraid to discover the reason for his prodigal lover's return if not to bridge the rift between them.)

She turns back to the painting. "Is this the real one?"

He swallows thickly. Is this why she came? "Yes," he answers honestly.

"Why didn't you sell it?" she asks, sounding inordinately clinical about something she once held dear. "It's worth a lot of money."

"It's priceless to me." She raises a brow at him, and he explains, "Because you loved it."

Her expression softens, and he has to tramp down the sudden swell of hope burning in his chest. "You're a thief, then."

He nods. "And a forger—and a soon-to-be accredited art expert."

"Clever," she says, and she's almost smiling. "But not a mobster, I take it."

"No," he agrees, daring to take a step closer to her. "I prefer white collar crimes, much to my father's eternal shame."

"Is that why you wooed me? Should I be checking the rest of my art?" The questions are casual, but earnestness is written in the corners of her eyes, in the tension in her brow. She wants to know if what they shared was real. That hope pooling like liquid fire in the hollow behind his sternum is becoming impossible to smother.

"That's the only one I stole." He inches toward her again. "Although, I can't say the same for the board members of your company."

She smiles then—his smile—and his love surges anew as though it was only yesterday they were together. "You didn't."

"Oh, I most certainly did." He drags his tongue over his bottom lip. "Though I doubt any of them will know the difference. I'm quite an exceptional forger."

She rolls her eyes. "Exceptionally modest too, I see."

This bizarre conversation is driving him to the brink. He's toe to toe with her now, her breath fanning over his mouth. "Regina," he murmurs, "why have you come?"

"I gave Mary Margaret her inheritance," she says as if that's somehow an answer. He supposes it might be—that she's just told him that she's now worthy of him.

He laughs at the absurdity of it, but she cuts him off with a kiss more scorching than he recalls. And then he is yanking her against him as if he can meld with her if he holds her closely enough, tightly enough. The curve of her is familiar and new at once, and dammit, she'd better not run away again. He won't survive it.

"Come home, Robin," she whispers when they break apart. That may be the only "I love you" he gets from her, at least for now. He'll take it.

He grins, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

"To you, always."

A/N: One more installment! XD Thank you for reading! Reviews are better than chocolate and tied with tacos.