Alice couldn't look away while Zelena chose to let her eyes close mostly to keep from crying at just how deeply she'd failed her little girl.
Robin's arm wrapped around her throat pressing the blade against the flesh from behind with her chin resting against her victim's shoulder as she smoothed her long hair back out of her face pushing it back over the opposite shoulder with tender movements as if she was taking a few extra seconds to savor the moment before she delivered the final strike. The flash of the blade was mercifully quick slicing into her skin in seconds. Really the mark it left seemed to be just deep enough to draw blood across her throat which surprised them given the size of the blade Robin was holding.
The effect wasn't immediate as Robin dropped her arm from around her neck already descending the steps back down to where her mother and Alice waited while Gothel looked on with the same betrayed look Alice guessed she'd had when they first arrived.
Her hand reached up touching the sliver of blood Robin's knife had spilled as she healed the cut as easily as she took another breath to speak but Robin spoke first lifting the weapon up for Gothel to see it properly. The gray steel was gone replaced with a strange electric blue-white crystal kind of blade "Say hi to my father for me witch." She repeated letting the drop of what Alice could now see to be a mix of water and blood drip off the tip of the knife and drop to the earth as if in slow motion.
Gothel's eyes widened at the meaning already going to her throat while the magic took hold as she dropped to her knees with a pained groan as more of her body was pulled away by the green hazy of power until the woman was gone leaving only a hazy blue outlined shadow of her behind looking at them with that wild-eyed panic before she too started to disappear before their eyes.
"What did you do? Where did she go?" Alice asked fear lacing her voice as Robin finished whipping the strange knife on her pants before replacing it in the sheath at her waist while the last wispy flashes of green and blue faded into nothing.
Zelena's eyes were owlish as they stayed locked on her daughters "You didn't." she whispered unable to even think it let alone that her daughter would have chosen such an ending for anyone however cruel they might be. "She deserved it." Robin answered her tone cold and more than a little distant. "Hades might have been a colossal father killing jerk with fire for hair but some of his tactics are worth learning."
"How much has Robin told you about our trip to the Underworld or about what happened to her father?" Zelena questioned at Alice's confused expression. "Let's just say that I made it impossible for her to ever hurt you again Tower Girl." The archer says by way of answering making Alice's mouth drop into a small 'o' in understanding before she answered. "Robin's right Zelena she really did kind of deserve it."
"I'll take that bottle now." Robin says holding out her hand toward the blonde. "There's nothing holding me here anymore." She says casting one last glance over to the white tree "I could use a fresh start." She shrugged shifting her bow into a more comfortable position against her back while Alice dug into her bag. "So, what I just drink it?" she asked after Alice handed the potion over.
"I think so." She nodded sharing a look with Zelena only to have the redhead shake her head "He didn't tell me anything other than you were in trouble." She confessed
The portal that opened up once Robin had drained the little bottle reminded Alice of the ones she uses to visit Wonderland.
Henry wasn't at his little makeshift writing desk like he had been when Zelena had last seen the place when they stepped out on the other side but before she could think too much on that subject the sounds of the stone monument over their heads scrapped back across the floor making Robin instinctively pull Alice behind her as she raised her bow an arrow already sitting against her hand ready to fire as the portal closed up behind them.
"What's with the Hunger Games look Robs?" Regina asked trying to lighten the tense mood as well as walk into having an arrow directed at her chest making her pause in the alcove of her vault her hands already raised showing she wasn't a threat. "Ours is staying as top side until we know if its safe." She added seeing Alice's worried yet hopeful look over her shoulder while the archer replaced the arrow in the carrier across her back and lowered her bow.
"What? What's going on?" Alice panicked trying and failing to move forward but couldn't because of some kind of magnetic force keeping her in place and going by Zelena and Regina's surprised expressions she wasn't the only one feeling the strange sensation. Everyone that is except Robin.
"For once this isn't my doing." The archer announced as if commenting on the weather on a dull day.
"You're right it's not." Her own voice answered them as the woman herself descended the steps.
"Robin? Baby, what are you doing?" Alice asked not wanting to know what could possibly happen when the two are in the same room let alone close enough to touch one another.
"Just a little insurance for later Tower Girl. So, we know all of this isn't for nothing." Robin assures her, but her voice isn't reassuring at all. "What are you going to do?" Zelena asks wondering where Rogers or even the Sheriff was so someone would stop her little girl while there was still time. "I'm taking a page from your book Aunt Regina." The bespectacled archer says sparing Regina a small smile as she passed her the shaky determination in her voice scaring everyone to hear including her darker self.
It wouldn't be until later that Alice would notice the glowing band tied around her fiancée's wrist steadily pulsing in power with each step Robin took into the room.
"I wouldn't." the darker archer advised her body tense as they stared one another down. Both of them slowly advances like Alice had with her Papa cautiously testing the limits. "Good thing I'm not you then." Robin answers plunging her hand into her doppelganger's chest right over her heart.
Alice couldn't tell if her scream was for her Robin the one she loved more than her own life or for the Robin that betrayed her to her mother only to kill her without a second thought. The second time however it was clear when the black clade archer shoved her 'hero self' way with a strength they didn't know she could possess given their current position sending the other Robin into a heavy looking shelf piled with glass bottles and thick spine books across from them.
Regina, Zelena, and Alice converged on their Robin while her darker self pushed herself back to her feet on shaking legs the magnetic spell seemingly broken now the caster was momentarily unconscious. "I told her she shouldn't have done that." She reminded them in a dull tone rubbing a hand over her chest.
Alice and Zelena had to bite their tongues to keep from cursing at her while Margot starred under their hands letting out a weak groan as her eyes blinked open "Ouch." She complained grateful for the support when her head started to spin as she sat up too quickly.
"Oh, walk if off I've taken way worse hits than that." The other arched taunted uninterested in what had just happened while she kept massaging that spot over her heart.
"Smart move putting a protection spell on your heart." Regina praises putting herself between the two just in case she tries to hurt her niece again.
"Why would I put a protection spell on something I don't have?"
Before they really have time to process the new information another voice joins in confirming what Robin has already told them. "She's right. She doesn't have one."
They all looked over at the sound of Henry's voice the young man leaning heavily against the wall as he spoke but when they still didn't understand he elaborated farther "Gothel used hers to bring her own mother back."
"But I stopped that." Zelena defended "Not in her storyline you didn't" the author argued his hands shaking as he made his way forward on unsteady legs. The use of the author pen taking more of a tole than normal this time around.
"But she's right there." Alice says still confused with her arms still locked defensively around her own archer
"Did you all honestly just think you'd jump into a story half way without knowing how it started?" the ebony and emerald clade archer taunted with a rather mincing breath of a laugh "Even you?" she added her eyes moving to Henry with a disappointed scowl.
"The Rumpelstiltskin from the wish realm wrote them but they were left unfinished." Alice answered before Henry could even open his mouth to defend himself.
"I think my story has a pretty amazing ending considering the circumstances. I mean I might have half a heart and…."
"I'm sorry you have what?" Zelena cut in exchanging a look with her sister then with her Robin and Alice.
The captive woman just groaned knowing she would have to tell them eventually, so she made herself comfortable on the long-forgotten sleeping cot before she started telling them about her past. "I'd already joined the coven by the time I met my Alice. Gothel brought her in to the fold once she realized how much power she really had. She and I started dating in secret not long after that something Gothel wasn't the lest be happy with especially when she found out Alice and I were going to leave the coven and wreak havoc somewhere else just the two of us." She heard a few gasps and whispered murmurs passed from one to another as she talked but Robin wasn't about to stop now as her eyes traced along a crack in the stone work over their heads.
"I don't think we're going to like this next part." Her 'hero self' whispered earning a pained whimper in answer from the blonde tucked against her side but Alice refused to answer any more as her other hand found Zelena's just in case.
"It was actually the night of Alice's birthday when Gothel found us she knocked Alice out saying she wouldn't hurt her daughter especially on her birthday when I was the real problem, so she ripped out my heart and used it to bring her own mother back to life."
Another round of popcorned shivering swiped the room while they digested what that meant. Alice even climbing into her Robin's lap needing the closeness.
"When I woke up again Alice said she'd split her heart with me." The woman on the cot laughed and they could all hear the break in her voice at the memory.
"Like Snow did with David." Regina reasons.
"Talk about knowing when someone really loves you back." Robin agreed with a shaky laugh "But it didn't work for us like it did with them." She finished in little more than a whisper.
"Oh, that is rather genius. No really think about it." The author says before anyone could speak. "The Dark One from my realm wanting to make your lives miserable but your stories were already written." He started to explain "So the only thing he could do was break them…."
"The fastest way to break someone is to destroy their reality." Alice says when Henry paused thinking things over while remembering a quip of dialogue she'd seen once as Tilly during one of her and Margot's bad day tv show binge watching nights.
"Exactly. Sending everyone on searches that will never stop or like in Robin's case avenging deaths that never really happened to twist us into different versions of ourselves. When all along the ones we love are alive just trapped in different realms…. well different books then ours so we can never truly find them." Henry finished with a node "A curse within a curse."
"English please." Both Robin's asked both of them having their arms crossed over their chest while holding the bridge of their nose between their fingers trying to push the start of a headache away while they listened.
This time is was Zelena that answered her eyes softer now as they land on the Robin not wrapped in Alice's arms as she spoke, "If the Alice from your world really is dead then why is the half of her heart your carrying still beating?"
Before an answer could be given the sound of struggling steps sounded down the stone steps and several whispered curses.
"What?" Rogers asked still trying to balance everything he was carrying under the somber yet hopeful looks the rest of them were sending them. "It's not really my fault you forgot to warn me about the waiting list during the lunch rush." The cop reminded them with a cheeky laugh as he started divvying out the food and milkshakes he'd brought with him.