Two days later, while Robin is busy filling saltshakers, Regina listens to his end of a telephone conversation with his beer distributor while throwing darts at the tavern's only dartboard. With pinpoint accuracy, her darts slice through the air as she stabs repeatedly at the bull's eye.

Observing not only this, but the noticeably defiant set of her chin, Robin checks the clock on the wall and releases a heavy breath. Snapping his fingers repeatedly, to avoid speaking and confusing the person on the other end of the line, he claims her attention and points with deliberation at the loaded serving tray on the bar. Forty-five seconds more and, after concluding his call, he returns the receiver to its wall-mounted cradle and turns to find Regina eyeing him crossly; her hands on her hips.

"Are you signaling for something or do you have me confused with Roland's dog."

He points again, "Napkin dispensers."

"What about them?"

Already tired, and the bar isn't even open yet, Robin grimaces. "Love, are you trying to be difficult?"

"No, I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'm not a dog either. You can't snap your fingers and expect me to heel, Robin. Nor am I applying for the position of bar wench." Regina crosses the room and moves the tray loaded with half-empty napkin dispensers to the only four-top in the room that doesn't still have its chairs up-ended on its surface.

Robin mutters under his breath, "You wouldn't make a good one anyway."

Dropping the tray noisily onto the table, she whirls on her heel and glares at him. "No, I wouldn't! Do you want to know why? I was not bred for customer service. My parents had something a little loftier in mind, and I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for it!" She turns her back on him before she adds, "The way you're behaving, I'm about ready to turn the gas on, and hurl a fireball over my shoulder as I run out the back door." Turning her anger to the task at hand, she rips the thin paper band off a bundle of napkins and roughly shoves them into a dispenser before she slams it closed and repeats the process ½ dozen more times.

Robin stares at her in shock, instantly recalculating his assessment of her mood. He knew something was irritating her, but he hadn't expected her threat to burn the place down.

Sensing his incoming touch on her shoulder, she sidesteps him and snaps acridly. "Do not touch me!"

With his confusion deepening, Robin shrugs and lowers his hand to his side. "I'm sorry. I…"

Regina shakes her head and waves dismissively.

He falls silent.

Frustrated, and needing an outlet, she turns and jerks the canister of salt from his hand without making eye contact and sets about filling the rest of the saltshakers, leaving the heavier prep work to him.

They work in uncomfortable silence for the next twenty minutes until the manual labor takes most of the venom out of them. Fifteen minutes after that. Robin offers quietly without turning to make eye contact, "You can go if you need to. You have your own things to do."

Her defenses back up in an instant, Regina snaps. "I don't want to go!"

Defeated, Robin tries again just as quietly, "Then stay."

"Don't tell me what to do!"

Befuddled, Robin turns to look at her. On the verge of saying something, he thinks better of it, shakes his head, and kneels behind the bar to hook a fresh keg to the tap.

Even though her back is to him, Regina presses on. "Stop it. Don't do that, Robin! Don't just quit."

Tired of being yelled at without understanding the reason behind it, Robin shrugs and raises his own voice. "I don't know what else to do. You don't want to go, but you don't want to stay. I don't have a clue what we're really fighting over. You've been utterly taciturn for weeks, Regina. You aren't really this bloody angry because I wanted you to fill the napkin dispensers. Are you?

Infuriated by his lack of understanding, Regina gives him a harsh look; her next words laced heavily with sarcasm. "Of course not!"

"Well, what is it then? Because if this place is really causing this much friction between the two of us, I will burn it to the ground myself."

Stunned by the force of his words, Regina takes ½ step back, but her voice loses none of its heat. "You will not!"

"The hell I won't!" He shouts back; his blue eyes going stormy with resolve.

Regina blinks; surprised as much by his words as his tone. "I don't want you to do that!"

Robin's eyes dart to the clock on the wall behind him once again and then back to his wife. "If I'm not setting any fires, this place opens in 23 minutes. So, tell me now, Regina. Exactly, what do you want?"

Without a word, she stomps across the room. Behind the bar she retrieves her handbag. When it's clear she has no intention of answering him, Robin hurries after her catching her right arm in his left hand just before she reaches the door.

Whirling to face him, the flint hasn't completely left her eyes, but her voice is much quieter when she says simply, "Let go."

Shaking his head, Robin relaxes his grip, but does not let go. "Talk to me."

"You don't have time."

"I don't have time to pull it out of you. So, don't make me. Just tell me. What do you want?"

Before Robin has time to process, before he's even fully aware of his own backward motion, the mahogany bar is hard at his back and her lips are on his.

Hungry and demanding, she pushes into him insisting on his response until his moment of shock subsides and then they grapple with each other, each of them desperate to get and, to give, enough. They kiss fiercely as if locked in some bizarre form of carnal combat.

When their tussle subsides, he keeps her close, refusing to let go. His breath is ragged, when he whispers, "Wow! You haven't kissed me like that in months."

Regina scowls. "I have so kissed you!"

Robin chuckles "Not like that."

"You've been so busy. You're working so hard we hardly see you anymore, and when you do come home, you're exhausted. You haven't kissed me like that recently either. I guess we've been neglecting each other."

Robin rests his chin on top of her head and murmurs, "We should stop doing that."

"Okay." She purrs seductively.

Robin raises an eyebrow. "What? Now?"

With the gentle wave of a hand, Regina magically ensures that the front door is locked and, with a second wave, that the shutters over the front windows are all closed securely. Trading places with him, putting her own back to the bar and pulling him close once more, she lets him know, "You've got 21 minutes. We can stand here talking about it, or you can find better ways to use that time."

Robin flashes his best smile, his eyes coming alive with tantalizing thoughts he's held in check for too long. "Don't tease."

Regina laughs drolly. Letting go of him, she uses both hands to ease herself up onto the bar. Fisting her hand in his shirtfront she pulls him close again, wraps her legs around his thighs, and whispers, "Do I ever?"

A moment later, they are nearly indecent when the front doorknob rattles softly the instant before the lock is magically disengaged and the welcome bell on the wall behind Robin clangs loudly with the force of the door being thrown open.

Robin swears under his breath and Regina grinds her teeth together, hissing ominously at the interruption.

Zelena takes in the sight of them, throws back her head and laughs with wicked abandon. "I should have known! Don't you two have a bedroom?"

"Zelena!" Regina growls. "What the hell!"

Robin stays where he is, holding Regina close, his body shielding her partially exposed chest from view as he also growls, "Did no one ever teach you the significance of a locked door?"

"Oh please! You don't pay any more attention to locks than I do, thief! Besides, I need Regina's help… Now."

Finally, hearing the urgency in her sister's voice, Regina gives her a moment's worth of attention. Taking in her disheveled and slightly sooty appearance, Regina instantly pulls her silk blouse closed. Holding it that way for the sake of privacy, she eases down from her perch on the bar, and despite Robin's reluctance to let the moment go, he knows that it is gone when his wife queries in mild alarm, "Zelena? What happened?"

Relieved, the wicked witch grouses, "Finally! You notice. I've been looking for you all over town. I've been to your office. I've been to your house…"

Regina smirks. "Never mind that. You're here now. What happened? You look a bit singed."

"That's because I am…" She pauses long enough to close the door and to escort her daughter to an empty chair, and when she lowers her toddler into the girl's lap, Eliana makes a hideous face in protest. However, before the kindergartner can issue a single complaint, Zelena's scolds her harshly "I don't care if you don't like it. You will sit here. You will behave yourself. You will not touch anything, and you will hold your little brother!" As she cups his chin, forcing her two-year-old son to look her directly in the eye, Robin slips discreetly around the bar and into the kitchen for the moment's privacy he needs to collect himself and rearrange his out-of-place clothing; but he can still hear the redhead declare, "Young man, if you set anything in this pub on fire, I am going to set you on fire, got it?"

Young Theo's bright blue eyes widen noticeably, and he shakes his headful of jet-black wavy hair. "Teo, no fire, Mummy."

"Good! Stay with your sister, you little pyromaniac, and don't get into any trouble!" When Zelena glances up to find her sister tying her blouse's sash at her waist and chewing on her lower lip in restraint, she points. "Shut up! Don't you dare laugh!"

Regina shakes her head and holds her hands up in a defensive posture as Zelena carefully unrolls the hastily applied gauze bandage that is wound loosely around her left hand and forearm.

The queen's restrained laughter dries up immediately upon sight of her sister's badly charred and blistered flesh. "Holy mother of darkness, Zelena? Did you reach into the flames this time? You do know you're not flame retardant, right?"

Zelena rolls her eyes and flinches as Regina takes her gently by the elbow and walks her backward until her knees give, and she lands in the seat of the chair that is directly behind her. "I would say that's fairly, not to mention, rather painfully obvious at the moment, sister."

Regina offers up the best of her mortal efforts, but makes slow work of only partially healing her godly sister's wounds, and when Zelena's discomfort eases enough to allow her to focus well enough to finish healing herself, the older of the two nods, indicating that all is well, or soon will be.

Regina picks up her nephew from his sister's lap and rests the boy on her hip. "Listen, little man. You set Mummy on fire one more time, and I'm going to lock you in a dungeon and feed you to a dragon. And, don't you think I won't. I know one personally. We're on speaking terms."

Theo giggles. "Dragon?"

Regina nods. "That's right. Dragon. And you're going to be her dessert! No more setting fire to my sister. It's not nice. It's not funny. You're hurting her."

"Hurt Mummy?" The toddler suddenly looks worried.

Zelena's sighs; the blisters on her burnt flesh still slowly fading from sight. "Don't scare him, Regina. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know what it feels like."

"That's precisely why you need to make him understand that it's not acceptable, Zelena. He can't go to preschool - he can't go anywhere or be around anyone, until he learns that most people feel pain when they get burned. I understand he's exploring. I understand he has to be allowed to do that, but for your own safety, for everyone's safety, there have to be limits." She turns back to her nephew. "Theo, you are not allowed to burn people. It hurts."

"Teo hurt?"

Regina nods gravely. "Yes! Theo hurt Mummy!"

The boy shakes his head, on the verge of tears, and reaches for his mother.

Zelena lifts him from her sister's arms and cradles him close to her chest as his big sister quietly makes a sour face. "Right then, I'm okay. Auntie Regina fixed it, this time, but you've got to be more careful."

Noticing that Robin has very quietly returned, and is more than a little wide-eyed, Regina brings up an idea that she fully expects will be met with resistance. "Zelena… It's time. It's time to start giving him lessons."

Zelena blanches. "You were what? At least 15 before you started learning how to control and manipulate fire? He's only two. He's just a baby, Regina!"

Regina shakes her head "No, I was older. I came late to the practice, remember? But your son is nothing like me. I'm a mortal witch, Zelena. Your son is ¾ deity. He already taps into his power at will, but he doesn't know how to turn it off at will. Zelena, you've got to teach him that this is more than just something he can do parlor tricks with. You've got to teach him that his power is not a toy. You've got to get in front of this. You've got to get control of your son. You've got to teach him how to control himself. You've got to do it now before he hurts someone in a way that can't be fixed. And, while we're talking about fixing and getting control of things, you've got to get control over your own ability to heal yourself, for his sake, as well as your own. You should have mastered that by now."

"I can do it…"

Regina nods. "Yeah, sure. You heal yourself when you're not frustrated, distracted, or in excruciating pain. Which, by the way, is pretty much nonstop these days. You have a child in kindergarten who isn't fond of her little brother and a sweet little boy with a raging case of the terrible twos who shoots flames out of the top of his head, not to mention. the palms of his hands and when he unleashes this ability on his father, lord of all that is dark and unholy, it's no big deal. Daddy can handle it. Daddy was built for it. So was his sister. You, on the other hand, were not. Hades plays with him. That's why he thinks it's a game, Zelena. If they are going to be allowed to play like that, Hades needs to start teaching Theo how to not only turn his ability on, but also how to access the off switch. I know he can do it. He's possibly the only being alive who can. You've been married to him for almost eight years, and, to the best of my knowledge, he has never once burned you."

"This is all very easy for you to say. You're the queen of being one with both the darkness and the light."

Regina laughs derisively. "Oh Greenie! You think this is easy? Two minutes before you walked through that door, I wanted to take Robin's head off."

"Well, obviously he hasn't been decapitated." Zelena gestures toward her brother-in-law. "So, I rest my case."

Having said what she needed to say and praying she was heard, Regina relents momentarily. With a sigh, she asks, "Do you need help getting home?"

"No. I can manage. I brought myself here in far worse condition."

"Zelena, talk to Hades."

She nods. "I will."

"Today."

"He's in the underworld."

"So, that's not a difficult journey for you."

"Regina, lay off."

Regina shakes her head. "I can't do that. It's only a matter of time before he goes full-on flame thrower in public. Zelena, when that happens, people are going to be scared and you know as well as I do that scared people do stupid, hateful, and sometimes dangerous things."

"So, you're talking to me, not as my sister, but as the mayor!"

"Damn it, Zelena! I am both! I'm asking you - for your son's well-being, for everybody's well-being, including your own – please get out in front of this thing before it becomes a problem that I have to address as the mayor. If you don't want me acting in that capacity, don't put me in a position where I'll have to."

With her injured arm still in the final stages of healing, Zelena takes her grumpy daughter by the hand, hugs her son tightly, and disappears from sight in a swirling green vortex of smoke and anger.

Suddenly exhausted, Regina returns to her perch on the edge of the bar. As Robin moves close once again, she closes her eyes. pinching the bridge of her nose as if she's fighting down a headache.

He waits several long seconds, but Robin is the first to speak. "I wouldn't trade places with Hades for every dime in this town."

Regina smirks as she opens her eyes. "It would keep the Lucky Feather permanently in the black."

Shaking his head, Robin settles beside her on top of the bar and drops an arm around her shoulders. "Not worth it."

The outer thighs of his right leg and her left brush together, sparking a new tender fire that neither of them wants to ignore. "You wouldn't have to work ¾ of the night here, and all day elsewhere, just to make the monthly note on this place. You could actually go home at a decent hour."

"Home to what? Big Red, a pint-sized Eva Braun in pink patent leather, and her little brother who starts fires for grins and giggles? No thank you! And, by the way, with a bit more hard work, in six months, if all goes well, the bank will be paid in-full and I will own this place out right."

Regina caresses his face. "Hey!" She whispers softly. Congratulations!"

Robin shrugs "I'm not there yet, love."

"Don't do that! You've been breaking your back. Don't brush this to the side like it doesn't matter. You should celebrate!"

He shakes his head. "Not yet. Not until it's official, and when I do decide I'm ready to celebrate, no parties please. The truth is she's just barely in the black, with precious little overhead."

"But, Robin, you're nearly there! Six more months and you can stop working like a demon-possessed dog. Just run this place."

"That's my hope. "I'm going to finish my current day jobs because… because I have to. I can't walk off the job and leave them undone."

"Of course not. There would be no honor in that."

"Exactly. After that's done, I might take a few more small jobs… Just to give the old girl a cushion to rest on."

Regina nods. "What are you working on during the day? Last time we really talked, for more than 30 seconds, you were helping Hook make some repairs to that weather-beaten washtub he calls a ship."

Robin chuckles. "Don't let him hear you say that. Sometimes I don't know which he loves more - Emma, or that washtub. And, we're still working on that. The job is stalled right now. He's waiting on a shipment of lumber. I did some work for the library. Built ½ dozen bookshelves. Belle was so happy with the work, that she asked me out to Cliff House to refurbish some old woodwork in the study."

Regina recoils slightly in surprise. "You're working out there? Robin! I can't count the number of times I have asked you not to get involved with Gold – not to have any business dealings with him. Especially not now! Not with the way he's been acting since he was separated from the Dark One."

"Regina, I have been going out there for almost two weeks and I've seen him a grand total of one time for less than 30 seconds. I'm not doing business with him. Belle hired me, not him. Even if he is the one paying for it, it's him who owes me money. Not the other way around."

"It doesn't matter, Robin. He's not to be trusted. A thief with honor, he most certainly is not. You know that! What happens if you do all this work, and then he stiffs you for payment?"

Robin's shrugs. "Then he stiffs me for payment, and I never work for him again which works out to be a much bigger problem for him than me, love."

Regina nods in aggravation. "Yes, until the Lucky Feather has a bad month and you need the extra cash you didn't get. Then you can't make the mortgage payment, and he goes to the bank and buys your debt. Then he owns the place, and you work for him because we both know that if it comes to that, you're not going to let me help you. Not financially."

Robin runs his hand down her thigh and shakes his head. "If that happens, I'll invite Theo over to play." He grins impishly. "I'd rather burn her to the ground than work for, or quit, and leave her to be ruined by that spineless malcontent!"

Regina raises an eyebrow. "And if Gold ever learns that arson was the motivation behind Theo's invitation, you'll find yourself behind bars."

Robin shrugs again. "I'll risk it. I've been there before. Jail's not so bad. Especially not when the local sheriff likes you."

Regina laces her fingers through his. "Does anything scare you, Forest Boy?"

Robin nods. "Yeah… Norah becoming a teenager."

Chuckling softly Regina nudges his shoulder with hers. "Rumor has it, we've already seen that."

"I've heard. Doesn't count. I can barely remember it."

"You still have a few years. Not many – but a few."

"Promise me, when she starts throwing fireballs, you'll drill it into that beautiful little rock-hard head of hers that she shouldn't hurt people!"

"She's already learning that lesson from you. Fireballs are not the only way to hurt people, and unlike Theo, she does understand that fire is hot. She learned that lesson when she was 17 months old."

Robin frowns at the memory of his daughter's suffering. "I remember."

"I tried. You tried. We both told her over and over and over again… Don't touch the stove, it's hot. She just wouldn't listen. She got burned one time, and after that…" Regina laughs, "She started telling the dog, "No-no John! Hot, don't touch!"

"I hate that she got hurt, but that minor burn was useful. It taught her something that all our lecturing could not. Too bad they can't find a way to do something similar with Theo."

"There's got to be a way around it. But first, they have to want to get around it. Hades is thrilled beyond all capacity for reasoning to have his very own little hot headed mini-me. And he lives a significant portion of his life in the underworld - a place that was divinely engineered to contain all of that natural combustion. Storybrooke was not. I'm afraid they are either going to have to choose to rein him in, or they're going to have to leave Storybrooke. Like I said a few minutes ago, it's only a matter of time until it becomes public knowledge that there's a junior-grade fire starter in town – one so young that he still lacks the mental capacity necessary to respect the power he wields."

Robin sighs. "So, you're saying there's a storm looming just beyond the horizon."

Regina nods with intent. "A firestorm – unless you can think of a way to convince Hades to permanently crawl back under his rock without incurring his wrath."

"Can we pack up your dad and the kids and leave town? Like, today?"

Regina shrugs as she shakes her head." Don't think so. Not really our style."

Robin clicks his tongue against the inside of his cheek. "Bollocks!"

Regina squints in confusion when he lowers his feet to the floor, steps across the bar, locks the front door, and shuts out the lights. She looks at her Breitling wristwatch. "Aren't you still planning to be open in less than fifteen minutes?"

"Screw it. I know when to listen. You tell me there's a fight coming, that there may be a bloody holocaust headed our way. If we have to stay, then we have to stay. Before the storm hits, I'm damn well going to go home and take a shower with my wife."

Determined not to surrender immediately, Regina bites her lower lip as her dark eyes ignite with the desire lying ready just below the surface. "Uh… Robin, Snow and I are supposed to have a budget meeting in like 14 minutes."

He shrugs. "You're the mayor. Make an executive decision. Postpone it. Tomorrow, you can do what you should've done ages ago and officially make her your deputy mayor. She's already acting in that capacity anyway. You can just make it official. Come on, let her deal with the spreadsheets and flow charts, just this once. Come home with me."