She recalls Mrs. Lucas' warning again—You keep your heart close to where you can see it, you hear?—as she braces for the blow that will surely crush it. But the reaction she gets from him is not the one she expects.
Robin appears remarkably calmer than she feels as he admits, "Yes, I had assumed as much. It was only a matter of time, whether it be on my terms, or someone else's." His palms cradle either side of her face, thumbs sweeping away the tears that still fall freely there, and they seem to perturb him far more than the revelation about his mother.
"Regina," and her name parts like a vow from his lips, "You have to know that I would never—ever—" He looks positively ill at the very idea of it, and then the slow-simmering anger that had been set to a boil finally breaks through to the surface; his entire body practically thrums beneath her fingertips as he growls now, almost to himself, "That infernal woman whom I call a mother—to believe she has the God-given right to interfere with—"
A pause while he calms himself to the point of being able to actually speak in a full sentence, then his voice grows gentle as he addresses her once more. "If you think my mother knowing about us changes in any way how I feel about you, then it is my own fault for not reassuring you sooner." His lips fall to her forehead, his words into a whisper. "Please, don't let her or this ruse trouble you any longer. My mother may have her ways, but I promise she will never find one that stops me from loving you." And he says it as matter-of-factly as though she would find better luck turning the sky from blue to green.
So that's it, then, Regina thinks faintly. I really am hallucinating.
But he's leaning back and staring at her with that look in his eyes again, the one that says he's never letting her out of his sight, and when a small frown sets into his features she realizes that her response is not the one he'd anticipated either.
"I—I don't understand," is all she can manage to say, and it's the truth.
Robin's frown only deepens. "Did you really think that I would lie with another woman? Or that I had intended to keep you stowed away in a cupboard for the rest of our lives?"
Our lives.
Ours.
"No, of course not," she says, but it sounds more like a question than he's clearly fond of hearing; his brow downturns further, and his hands fall from her face to encircle her wrists when they begin to draw away from his chest. In fact, that's exactly the kind of future she'd been foolish enough to believe wouldn't be theirs—until last night, when she finally understood what fate truly had in store for them. She knew she would be destined to hide behind marble columns; serve food to him and his wife of unparalleled beauty; make their bed for them after they'd gotten very little actual sleep in it the night before. And she would feel her heart break anew every time she did, for as long as she allowed herself to love him.
Because for all his comforting words, his tender reassurances, there's one thing she knows that he doesn't; that wherever there's a will, his mother will find a way.
The scars on Regina's back can attest to that.
"Oh—oh—Robin—yes!" comes the woman's voice again from behind closed doors, as if on cue, and he looks torn between fury and embarrassment, starting forward as though he's about to storm inside and give this "Robin" and his paramour a piece of his mind.
"Wait," and Regina is holding him back with a quelling touch to his arm, "don't. It's not worth it."
His fist clenches at his side for a moment longer before he finally concedes, though his anger relapses momentarily as the hidden couple's lovemaking reaches its dramatic overture. When Regina starts to withdraw her hand he gives a start like it physically pains him and he grabs it back, tugging her to him, looking forlorn. "Would it be all right if we sought out a less… uncomfortable place to discuss this?"
Without giving her a chance to respond, as though he knows what she would say if he did, Robin pulls her away from the door and the people behind it, threading his fingers stubbornly through hers when she tries to resist. She stumbles to match his strides as he marches them down the staircase and through the great entrance hall, evidently no longer shy about letting the entire castle know what his mother already does.
But Regina's not ready, she's terrified, and the blind panic is threatening to close in, until she realizes that the few people they run into—a reedy, older gentleman she recognizes to be the husband of the castle seamstress, and then a surly looking bearded fellow on his way to the stables heaving a stack of hay larger than he is—don't turn a single head in their direction.
Either nobody can be bothered to notice as they pass by, or Mrs. Lucas was right; everyone has in fact been aware all along, and she's the only one who's been living in the kind of fantasy where it's not anybody's business to know but them.
At least the people who matter haven't begun to talk, Mrs. Lucas' voice reminds her. Not yet, anyway; or not at all, if the marchioness has anything to say about it.
And indeed, apart from the occasional servant folk, the halls are blessedly empty. It's still too early for breakfast, as the marquis' many guests of honor sleep off the evidence of last night's revelry in order to prepare for the next. (Too early, even, for the marquis himself to stir from bed; his wife, on the other hand, always seems incapable of lying still past dawn. Regina wonders if the marchioness has had a good and satisfied laugh by now at her expense.)
Maybe, in time, she could learn to live with the envious sighs from Mrs. Lucas' pouty young granddaughter, or the other scullery maids' bitter speculation about her virtue and intentions. The people who are cut from the same cloth as the marchioness, on the other hand—she doesn't think she'd ever be able to stomach their contemptuous looks to see them together, or their complacent little smirks to finally see them apart. And knowing that his mother will do everything in her power to ensure it ends up that way, she feels helpless to do anything but end it on her own terms.
For now, though, the only steps that echo off the walls are their own, so she lets him take the most conspicuous route back to her room—or her cupboard, as he'd so charmingly put it.
.
.
.
Regina shuts the door while he settles down onto the small feather-padded quilt that passes for her bed, making himself quite at home before pulling her into his lap. She folds easily into his embrace, closing her eyes as he runs his palms across her middle, settling them into the curves of her waist, and she turns her head, tucking it under his chin with a small sigh. She'll give herself this, one last time, before she tells him, before she makes it her decision to let him go, hers and hers alone. But a deep unshakable anguish settles into her entire being at the very thought, and she longs for something, for anything, to banish it from her mind.
When she opens her eyes again, she blinks them in surprise to see a brand new candle sitting in the bronze bowl beside her stack of books, perfectly upright, to replace the one that had burned out the night before. She wonders how long it's been there, if it had simply been too dark for her see it when she'd woken up before the sun had that morning.
"You were fast asleep when I came last night," Robin murmurs, answering the question she hadn't spoken out loud.
Her heart soars despite itself.
"You were here?" she asks in a voice far too breathless, far too vulnerable for her liking.
He chuckles into her hair. "I had to see you. I couldn't stop thinking about you the entire evening."
She pictures Marian's striking face, her smile that he had returned, and she hates herself for doubting him, even now.
"Regina," he clears his throat then, "I have to tell you something." Feeling her stiffen, he rubs his palms up and down her arms, across her shoulders, trying to soothe the tension there, but then he only makes it worse when he tells her, "I met someone," before adding unnecessarily, "last night."
She's a second away from catapulting out of his lap when he backtracks hastily, "No, not like that," looking chagrined at his poor choice of words as she turns to stare blankly at him. "We only danced."
"I see," is all that falls from her mouth, her words deceptively calm while her heart beats out a furious rhythm in her chest. All her concerns about the marchioness suddenly seem trivial in light of the fear that's been festering into a reality since the day he first kissed her—that he doesn't need his mother's help to fall out of her love with her. That it requires such little effort he's completely capable of doing so all on his own.
"Maid Marian was perfectly pleasant, I dare say," Robin concedes, and the confirmation of her identity isn't helping matters, "quite amiable, bless her heart, and heaven knows my mother was rather…aggressive in her encouragement, to say the least, but—" His voice drops octaves into a low, rumbling tenor as he removes his hands from where goosebumps have spread over her bare arms, folding them onto her lap and uncurling the fingers she has wadded into fists there. "Regina…" He drops a scratchy little kiss onto her shoulder, then nuzzles his nose into her hair and breathes deeply, once, twice, once more. "All I could think about was this."
"This?" she echoes, her hands clammy, cold and lifeless in his.
"Holding you," he tells her roughly. "Touching you." When she remains mute, he twists her around in his arms, blue eyes earnest, searching. "Regina, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about last night. I'm sorry about this morning. I'm sorry you believed me unfaithful for even a second. I thought I was protecting you from my mother, but I can see now how misguided my intentions were." His eyes burn into hers as he traps her face between his hands. "If she does indeed know, then what is there for us to hide? Perhaps there was never a reason to do so in the first place."
Her heart gives another treacherous lurch as Mrs. Lucas tells her again in a disapproving tone, Nothing good can come of this. But his stubbornly blind optimism is only making it that much more difficult for her to leave him, before that nothing good has a chance to become something bad.
He takes advantage of her silence, continuing, "I have something for you," and for possibly the first time since she has known him, Robin sounds tentative, almost…shy. He deposits her on the bed with a swift kiss to her brow before striding two steps over to her wardrobe—a splintered, pitiful-looking thing she'd shoved into the corner of her room, that holds what few, modest items she can claim as her own. He cracks the door open and a foreign bundle of deep gleaming scarlet cascades out.
"Absolutely not," Regina responds instantly, jumping to her feet in shock.
"I thought you might say that," he interjects, "which is why I acquired this too," and he presses the ball gown gently off to one side so he can pull something else out from behind it.
She stares dumbly at the mask he offers to her now.
"The ball tonight was designed to be a masquerade," Robin explains, "upon my request at the conclusion of the previous evening's festivities." He traces the delicate gold edge with a finger, along the upward slant of the eye where it tapers off into a series of jet-black feathers, as he continues, "I had anticipated your refusal, and thought perhaps I would make the prospect of it slightly less daunting before I convinced you to attend. Although, now that my mother seems to have realized where my heart truly lies, a masquerade may no longer be necessary?" And he fixes her with a ridiculous, hopeful grin.
He must be joking. Momentarily distracted from heartache, Regina folds her arms across her chest. "You…want me to go to the ball. With you."
"Yes," he says, more cautiously now.
Stay calm. Stay calm. "Are you out of your mind?" she explodes. Too late.
"Not to my knowledge, no," Robin frowns.
"I can't," she tells him, shaking her head with such frantic energy she feels the room spin with it. "I can't—I can't openly defy your mother like that!" it would certainly be one thing to get caught canoodling in a corner of the castle, but this is entirely another altogether. What does he envision happening? That he'll parade her around in some fancy gown, in front of countless noblemen, their wives, their daughters, like she thinks she's one of them—and expect his mother and father to look on with, what, pride? Joy? Acceptance?
If the marchioness somehow managed not to lose her own head at the sight of such a display of utter indecency and insubordination, then she would surely have Regina's instead.
Accurately guessing the direction her thoughts have taken her, Robin speaks now, "If you're concerned about what people might say, or what my mother will do when she sees you, I will protect you."
But then after they make their remarks about the devious, opportunistic servant girl, they would turn on him as well. What on earth? they'd mutter to each other under their breaths as they collectively wondered, Has Robin of Locksley gone mad after all those years away from proper civilization? Bathing in streams, trekking over mountains, living in the forest amongst all manner of ill-bred men? And what if their murmurings persuade him into seeing the error of his ways?
She imagines Marian politely hiding a smile beneath a well-placed glove as Regina trips over the hem of a gown worth more than whatever the marchioness had paid her mother in exchange for her child's lifelong servitude. Sees Robin, as he bows himself out of the dance they would be sharing to reclaim his position by his mother's side; and the marchioness praising him for finally coming to his senses, embracing his birthright, learning his true place amongst those beneath him—
It's honorable of him to think he can protect her from them, but naïve all the same, when he doesn't even realize that he's the one with the greatest capacity to hurt her. How could he possibly protect her from himself?
"I don't know," Regina finally says, a lie, because she does; she knows that if she doesn't break through to his unrealistic delusions about their future together, then her heart will be the one that's left in pieces.
"Wear the mask, then," he urges. "If you're not ready to face her, then it doesn't have to be tonight. I just—the thought of spending another evening surrounded by all the women in the world save for the one I love—" But he cuts off when she turns away, and the mask falls to the floor as he takes the two steps he needs to gather her rigid, unyielding body back into his arms.
"You beautiful, stubborn woman," he whispers fiercely. "Why do you cling to this belief that my love for you isn't real?" His hold tightens around her waist, drawing her close as he peppers tiny kisses along her hairline. "I just need you to be aware," kiss, "that I will never give up doing everything in my power," kiss, "to convince you otherwise." The last one he presses to her mouth, lingering there for a second longer before pulling away. "Until my dying breath, if it comes to that."
"Idiot," she mutters, managing to sound halfway back to her normal herself, and his answering chuckle rumbles through the fingertips she's pressed into his chest.
Robin grows serious again as he tips her chin up to hold her gaze, then directs it with his to the glorious red garment peeking out of her wardrobe. "I will be looking for the woman in that dress tonight." When he turns back to face her, the heat in his eyes steals her breath away. "And I promise you I'm not stopping until I find her."
.
.
.
He refuses to leave until she promises in return that she'll think about it, and then she's the one who doesn't let him leave until he's made her another stating he won't go seeking out his mother as soon as he does (We could be wrong, she says, maybe she had nothing to do with this, though they both know better). He only relents when he recalls the unsupervised state in which he'd left his room, and after one last brief kiss to her lips he stalks off, muttering something about burning his bed sheets, with or without the people still in them.
She watches his retreating back from her doorway, already missing the feel of it beneath her hands, the way his gaze alone scorches her to her very soul; already wondering how much longer the heat of it will last once he realizes that she's not the one who deserves to be seen the way he inexplicably does.
And she loves him, she realizes with a painful knock in her chest as she bends to pick up the fallen mask, she'd never allowed herself to think it before, but she does now, and now is too late. She fights back a fresh wave of loathsome tears as she staggers over to shut the wardrobe door.
"So. You're going to let that old hag win, are you?"
Regina lets out a startled yelp and whirls around, backing up into the wardrobe and slamming it closed.
"Who are you?" she demands breathlessly of the woman standing before her now.
The woman's lips curve up delightedly, red as the wild mane of curls on her head. But it's hardly the most striking feature about her, for every inch of skin exposed by her skintight black dress is a dazzling shade of effervescent green.
"How refreshing," she declares, clasping her hands together from where she's leaning with her back against the windowsill. "Most people only care to know what I am, not who."
"Who are you?" Regina insists again, casting a furtive glance over to her bedroom door, which she's absolutely certain she'd closed after Robin left. How on earth, then, had she gotten in?
The green woman gives a coy little kick of her heel as she hops off her perch on the window, extending her hands out to grasp one of Regina's.
"The name is Zelena," she answers, beaming. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, darling."
"I'm sorry," Regina starts, wondering why she's bothering to be polite with this strange woman who has seemingly materialized out of nowhere, uninvited, in her bedroom, "but am I supposed to have any idea who you are?"
"Oh," laughs Zelena. "How silly of me to only half-introduce myself properly. Regina, I'm your fairy godmother."
Wonderful. Not only is she parading about her room as though they're long-lost sisters, but she's clearly just escaped from the insane asylum as well.
"How do you know my name?" Regina asks aggressively, hands balling into fists behind her back in case she needs to make quick use of them.
But Zelena looks more petulant than dangerous as she lets out an indignant huff. "I just told you I'm your fairy godmother. Honestly, were you even listening?" She shoos Regina off the wardrobe and reopens it, rifling through its contents as confidently as if it were her own. Regina can only stare, stunned, as she reaches purposefully into the farthest corner and unearths a worn wooden box with a rusting, cast-iron clasp that would've taken great effort to find if one did not already know where it had been hidden.
Dust clouds burst forth into the stale air as Zelena creaks it open, revealing a dainty pair of crystalline heels nestled in a cushion of forest green velvet. "These belonged to your sister, didn't they?" she asks curiously.
But how could she possibly—?
Resigning herself to the fact that this day is simply not destined to go anywhere near the realm of expected, Regina sighs, affirming, "They're all I have of her. She left home when I was very young—too young to remember what it was actually like to have a sister. I always thought she would return for me someday, but even after our d—after our father passed away, she..." Her throat closes up at the memory of waiting by the window every day for someone who never came back for her, as she would do again years later when it was her mother who had been the next one to leave her behind.
"Mmm," murmurs Zelena sympathetically, though she seems to be only half-listening as she examines the shoes with a critical eye. "Yes, these will do," she decides finally, looking pleased.
"Do for what?" Regina asks, though her suspicions are confirmed when Zelena sets the glass slippers aside and reaches for the red gown next.
"I'm not going to the ball," Regina tells her firmly, for her own benefit just as much as the other woman's, but Zelena only laughs, a wicked, throaty sound.
"Don't be ridiculous," she scolds, smiling with all her teeth now. "Of course you are."
Regina opens her mouth to deliver a heated retort when the dress glides out of the wardrobe with a soft, luxurious swish, revealed in all its glory to be every bit as beautiful as she had dared to imagine it. What had she been about to say?
"That's what I thought," Zelena sniffs triumphantly, trailing a finger down the lush, silken skirts billowing out from a narrow waistline, bright green in a sea of scarlet. "Now…" she holds it up against Regina's frame, sultry lips arranged into a thoughtful pout. "Something tells me this was made to fit you like a glove. Let's see, shall we?"
And even if Regina had the wherewithal to decline (her resolve is wearing thinner and thinner as they speak), it turns out it would hardly matter; with a snap of Zelena's fingers, she suddenly finds herself enveloped in a viridescent smokescreen, and when it clears, gone are the limp brown rags that had fallen formlessly over her body like a potato sack—the hand-me-down apron, the handkerchief she'd tied around her hair that morning as she bathed the marchioness' feet. In their place, the crimson-colored fabric clings to her body like a second skin, impossibly smooth and fluid as water as she turns to examine her reflection between the cracks of the mirror tacked to the wall by her wardrobe.
Imposter, a nasty voice hisses into her ear, but she shrugs it off, mesmerized by the transformed creature who stands before her now. She runs her palms across the bodice and down over her waist, imagines Robin's hands there in place of hers, and she closes her eyes as the ghost of his breath, the stubble of his kiss, brushes over her bare shoulder.
"Do you always have soot on your face?" Zelena grumps then, licking her thumb and swiping it impatiently across Regina's brow, and her eyes pop back open.
"This changes nothing," she insists, the illusion effectively shattered. "I'm still not going."
"Then you're twice as absurd as I originally thought you were," Zelena accuses her. "That stupid man is madly in love with you. It's positively sickening, really. Even his mother knows. With that out of the way now, what could possibly be the problem?" She holds a stern finger up to silence Regina's protest. "And don't so much as think about using her as an excuse. If I hear one more thing about the marchioness"— she spits out the word like it puts a foul taste in her mouth—"I swear I'll expire from boredom."
"Yes, heaven forbid that from happening," Regina says, but she sighs in defeat as Zelena begins separating locks of her hair, twisting strands experimentally this way and that.
"Hold on a moment," says Zelena suddenly, hands stilling, and Regina tenses instantly, knowing what the woman has just seen, what she'd been a fool to forget to hide. "What are these?"
"Nothing," Regina mutters, pulling away and folding her hair back over the scars exposed by the deep cut of her gown.
Zelena looks mutinous.
"Nothing?" she repeats. "Does your nobleman know about all of this nothing?"
"I'd rather not talk about it," Regina snaps, hugging her arms protectively around her chest.
"So he doesn't, then. Why?"
"I said I'd rather not talk about it," she hisses.
"You think he won't fight for you if you do," Zelena realizes, "that you're more trouble than you're worth," and the silence that follows confirms it. "You…are a complete idiot!" She's deep in thought for a long moment, and then: "Even if he was willing to keep silent for one more day on your behalf, I can assure that this is something he will most certainly not stand for. And neither will I."
She retrieves the mask, muttering something under her breath; it glows briefly before she's pressing it firmly into Regina's hands. "I understand your reservations, I truly do. That woman is more of a monster than I realized. But you are going to this ball now, whether you like it or not. And before you say you can't—I know, I know—I have an idea of who can go in your place. Watch this." And she guides the mask over Regina's face, securing it onto the bridge of her nose.
A prickling pain shoots down her back, as though she's just lain down on a bed of pins and needles, and then as quickly as it spreads to her toes and fingertips, it dissipates completely, leaving nothing but a vaguely odd, foreign sensation deep in her bones, as though her body no longer belongs to her. And then she lifts her head back up to the mirror and sees someone else's face staring back at her from behind the mask.
"I'd say that's a worthy compromise, wouldn't you?" Zelena asks as she reaches for Regina's hair once more, a lighter hue now, streaked with hints of red and gold. "Now you're freed from everything that's holding you back." She watches as Regina presses her fingers into the unfamiliar new contours of her mouth, her cheeks, her jawline. "Go. Be with him. But you have to promise me you'll tell him the truth by the end of the night. He deserves to know." Regina starts to argue, but she shushes her. "Until then, this disguise will be what protects you from her. From all of them. It will give the marchioness the satisfaction of thinking she's won when you don't show up, but we'll know better, won't we?"
Robin won't, Regina thinks wretchedly, staring down at hands she does not recognize, then back up at her reflection, with lips too thin to be her own, hazel blue eyes instead of charcoal brown. She wonders briefly if it's worth the trade-off, to be with him at the cost of his knowing it; but as long as he doesn't then his mother won't either, and the thought of spending one more night haunted by images of Marian in his arms nauseates her. A different voice is whispering in her ear now, telling her to fight back, to fight for him—that if she's willing to give up on them this easily, or to believe that he is, then his love is just one more thing she doesn't deserve.
"Why are you doing this?" she asks finally. "Why are you helping me?"
Zelena pauses in her fiddling with Regina's hair and their eyes meet in the mirror. For the slightest fraction of a second she sees something flash through Zelena's eyes, but it's gone before she can tell whether she'd imagined or not. "Well what else do you suppose fairy godmothers would be good for?" she asks exasperatedly, and Regina supposes she has a point, because up until today she would've snorted with a derisive response of Next to nothing, because fairies? There's no such thing.
"There is a caveat," Zelena is warning her now, and of course there is, "All magic comes with a price. And as is the case with most things, it won't last forever. The spell will break at midnight. But," she sounds optimistic again, "that should give you plenty of time to enjoy your evening and come clean with him. He would be a fool not to stand up for you after he learns the truth. And I'm guessing he is the furthest from such a thing."
There's a lump in Regina throat as she admits, "I don't know if I can."
"What are you afraid of?" Zelena asks, an unexpected softness to her voice now. "That he will stop loving you? Or that they never will?"
"I already know they won't," Regina replies. "I don't belong in their world." She curses herself for sounding like a sad, broken little thing. "I don't belong in his world."
"Think of tonight as a test," Zelena offers. "Maybe you do. Maybe that world will surprise you."
Regina shakes her head, grateful for the mask now that it's there to catch her tears before they fall down her cheeks. "That doesn't seem possible."
"Maybe he will surprise you, then," states Zelena, all resolve and determination. "Have you ever considered that perhaps you're his world now?"
.
.
.
Regina wobbles on her glass heels, unaccustomed to the extra four inches they add to her frame, as she drifts between marble columns and around banquet tables, trying not to draw too much attention to herself. She contemplates sneaking a bite of baked plum wrapped in strips of pork when she spots Mrs. Lucas walking briskly toward her, panicking for a split second before the woman bustles right by, grumbling something about more mulled cider for the "royal brats." The housekeeper had been so distracted all day, having spent the better part of it cleaning up after said brats who had gotten properly schnockered off of said cider, that she hadn't even noticed when Regina had snuck off to make her own preparations for the ball.
After finagling her way into her gown and mask (a task made much more difficult without the aid of Zelena's magic), Regina had hidden with her ear pressed against the doorframe until all sound behind it had ceased, so that she wouldn't be caught sneaking toward the ballroom from the direction of the servants' quarters. And then she couldn't have reversed course even if she'd wanted to, as an influx of boisterous, well-dressed gentlemen and the dazzlingly styled women adorning their arms swept her up in a whirlwind to match the previous evening's fervor.
Her breath had caught for a brief moment as she passed the marquis and marchioness (who looked decidedly more smug than usual), but when they only nodded and smiled graciously in her direction before bestowing the same upon the next girl behind a mask, she'd let it out in a relieved sigh before continuing on. Every few steps would produce another involuntary twitch as familiar faces from the kitchens whisked by, balancing large serving dishes of pear and Brie baked in maple sugar, but they never spared her a single glance. And then she'd nearly jumped out of her skin when a white-gloved hand fluttered over her arm as its owner praised her gown; but before Regina could decide whether to thank her or not—lest it lead to awkward follow-up questions about where it had come from—the woman had vanished back into the crowd.
It's an odd feeling, to be a fish out of water, to blend in with the birds in a set of borrowed wings—to wait for someone to discover they're fake, to expose them for what they are. But until then, she'll have that baked plum, thank you very much, and she takes advantage of the reprieve that chewing gives her from having to verbally fend off multiple offers to dance, as her eyes search for the one man she could never say no to.
And then her heart leaps into her throat at the sight of him, looking handsome as ever in a maroon and gold doublet as his own gaze scans the crowd. She swallows, taking a hesitant step forward, when she spots Maid Marian approaching from the opposite end of the ballroom floor, recognizable even with a mask covering half her features. Regina shrinks instinctively back as she watches the woman glide up to greet him with an elegant touch to his arm, a celestial smile on her face. Robin says something that has her smile widening, but then it falters slightly as he glances distractedly around again.
Their eyes meet across the room.
As his face splits into a heart-stopping grin, it takes every effort for her to look demurely away, reminding herself that she has someone else's face, is in someone else's body (though its heart races now as though it were her own). Out of the corner of her eye she sees him making his way purposefully in her direction, pausing only to offer an apologetic smile to a couple he nearly knocks over in his haste to get to her. But when he does, she sees the confusion dawn in his eyes as she turns around to face him, and he draws back the hand he had been about to place on her elbow.
"Oh. Forgive me, milady," he utters, frowning slightly. "I…mistook you for someone else."
"It's all right," Regina responds, and the sound of her own voice is so foreign to her, higher-pitched and daintier around the edges, that she almost turns around to see where it's coming from.
"You…" Robin's eyes take in the detailing of her dress, and then lift up to do the same to her mask, as if to reassure himself that they are up close what he'd thought them to be from afar. But there's no mistaking the fact that while she may bear her mask and wear her gown, this is not his Regina standing before him, and his face visibly falls.
Her pulse is hammering now.
"I don't seem to be what you were expecting," she says, and he looks abashed at his poor manners.
"Please accept my sincerest apologies," he says, dipping his head, "I really thought you were—" he pauses, unsure how to proceed, but looks desperate enough to know that he asks, "may I inquire as to where you got your dress?"
"The man who has my heart gave it to me," she replies honestly, and Zelena was right; it really is remarkable, how freed she feels, not to be burdened by her own identity.
Robin looks floored. "I see," he says, a crease in his brow, and she frowns in irritation, knowing exactly what he's thinking.
"Not every woman is here in the hopes of winning your hand, you know," she tells him tartly before she can help herself.
He blinks in bewilderment. "That wasn't," he starts, but then his attention seems caught by the hands she has fisted rather defiantly against either hip, and the look of disdain that's curled her lip and scrunched her nose in a way that she realizes too late her mask has poorly concealed.
"I'm sorry," Robin says, regarding her curiously, "but have we met before?"
"Oh, no, I don't think so," she says hurriedly, hands and face loosening into what she hopes will appear more passive. "I'm sure I would remember."
He smiles crookedly. "I'm not exactly endearing myself to you at the moment, am I."
"Not particularly," she says, and he actually chuckles.
"In that case, I shall simply have to redeem myself to your good graces," and he offers his hand with a gallant bow. "Would you care to dance?"
"Oh, I'd rather not, thanks," she says, back-stepping hastily into the banquet table, cringing at the clink of silver on silver and the sound of Mrs. Lucas tut-tut-ing nearby as platters and dishware get rearranged. Of all the potentially disastrous things she'd been wary of happening tonight, waltzing with Robin was one she had somehow completely overlooked.
"I'm not much of a dancer," she states matter-of-factly.
His smile widens. "You remind me more and more of someone I know," he tells her, and she flushes beneath her mask; not a week before, as they'd been riding Shadowfax deep into the woods, he'd forced them to make an impromptu stop by the river, where he had then proceeded to spin her about in circles despite her very forceful insistence that she'd rather have both feet firmly on the ground.
"Is that supposed to make me any less reluctant to dance with you?" Regina retorts now, and at his eyebrow raise she scolds herself for her mistake, remembering that she is supposed to be a stranger to him, and even in the body of a noblewoman the marchioness would be no less inclined to have her head if she heard her addressing her son that way.
But her response has only seemed to amuse him more. "I must admit that your honesty is rather refreshing, milady. However, I simply have to insist."
She frowns reluctantly as he takes the hand she's refused to offer him on her own. "What choice do I have then?"
"Not much of one, I'm afraid," he grins, biting his lower lip the way he always does when he's driving her up the wall and knows it. For one ridiculous moment, jealousy warms her skin, threads into a tight net around her heart, squeezes there, but then she catches his eyes darting around the ballroom again, cautiously hopeful still, looking for another dress to match her own; and she hates that she's set herself up to feel like this, to trick him as she has done, because she's too weak to be any other way.
With one arm firm around her waist and the other lifting her hand delicately into the air, he leads them seamlessly into the ebb and flow of the couples twirling around them, and when her heels crisscross at the wrong time he smoothens her fumble with an improvised dip. Her heart does its own little dance as he rights her again, and her hand clutches briefly at his shoulder before remembering its rightful place, rigid and proper just above his elbow. But he has nothing but a kind smile to offer her, and she loves him all the more for it, hurts all the more for it, too.
"So," she starts when she thinks she's gotten the rhythm of the steps down and can reasonably speak at the same time without looking too foolish, "where's your mask?"
"I have nothing to hide," Robin shrugs. "And I wanted to be easy to find. For…" he trails off.
"For?" she prompts, throat closing in around the word.
His smile breaks slightly. "I'd rather not bore you with the mundane aspects of my personal life."
"I'd hardly call having a ball thrown in your honor mundane," she remarks.
"Yes," and he looks genuinely bothered for the first time that evening, "for the purpose of marrying me off to a perfect stranger."
"Well," and she avoids his gaze by pretending to glance interestedly over at the musicians thrumming away on their stringed instruments as they glide by, "you seem to have a rather generous selection of perfect strangers at your disposal tonight."
He shakes his head. "Milady, please take no offense to this, but you are not the only one who is here dancing with someone when your heart belongs to another."
You. He's talking about you, you idiot. "This woman that you're looking for," Regina begins, a traitorous hitch in her words. "What—what is she like?"
"She…" He seems at a loss of words to describe her for a moment before answering, finally, "She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." He's told her this over and over, every single time he does she rolls her eyes and shoves him away, but to hear him confessing it to another woman feels like a different thing entirely and it takes every fiber of her being not to pull him closer. "She doesn't smile often, but when she does—when she truly smiles, and I know it's because I've somehow managed to make her do so—it takes my breath away."
She is now finding it difficult to breathe herself.
"I was mad for her since I was a young boy," he says ruefully. "When my mother shipped me off to boarding school, I was devastated, to put it in the mildest way."
Even after she'd scarred him with an apple to the face. The memory brings a smile to hers now, before she has to quash it down.
Thankfully, he's distracted enough by his own version of the memory that he doesn't notice. "I actually came back, for a time, when I was on holiday." He'd mentioned this to her before, during one of their late-night rendezvous that had left her mind blurry and body longing for sleep the next day, but never as much as she longed for him. "I had every intention of making an utter fool of myself, professing my love for her, and as soon as I arrived I went off in search to do just that. But then I caught her unawares in the orchards and she—she was crying."
Regina can only stare at him. He'd never told her this part before.
"I couldn't bear to let her know I'd seen her with her guard down like that. And when I inquired after some of her companions on the matter, they informed me that it was over another boy."
He must mean Daniel, she realizes with a start. The stable boy she had admired from afar in her early teenage years, and the day she learned the marquis had sold him to another family had been miserable indeed, but she hadn't thought of it in years; and to know that it had been haunting Robin ever since—
"So I left once more," he says, "this time with no intention of ever returning. But when I heard recently that she was still unspoken for…I dared to hope I still had a chance."
"And did you?" she asks breathlessly.
"A man blinded by love can only hope." And he blinds her now with a lopsided smile.
She takes a moment to recover before asking, "What about the other man?"
"To be honest, I've been afraid to broach the subject," he admits. "If she still harbors feelings for him—I know I'm weak for it, but I'd almost rather not know." A low chuckle. "I'm but an idiot in love. I can only hope your tale is half as rife with the drama of mine." He nods invitingly at her then, but she's not ready for him to change the subject, to admit to her own side of the same story.
"Is that why you think she's not here now?" she presses on, wanting to shake him for how wrong he would be if he does.
"I think," he frowns, "that she's sacrificing a lot to be with me. And perhaps I am selfish for asking it of her, but—"
Regina's jaw nearly unhinges and drops to the floor at that. When he is the one risking the respect of his title, the honor of his entire family, to be with a lowly maid—this is how he feels?
Robin is shrugging helplessly even as he looks around one last time. "Maybe this—maybe it's not worth it, to her."
"Doesn't she love you?" she asks, surprised by how aggressive she sounds. The idiot. Doesn't he realize?
But hasn't she been the one to push him away all along?
An ache spreads deep into her soul as he looks down for a moment before meeting her gaze, and the pain in his eyes is like a punch in her gut. "I don't know," he says finally. "I—I don't know."
It takes every last shred of energy she has not to rip her mask off right there and then, to press her lips to his again and again until he believes, but even now something holds her back. She wants nothing more than for him to see her, to really see her, and to look at her as he always does, not with polite interest but with the fiery declaration of his love burning through his eyes, so that she can finally return it with one of her own. And yet, she can't allow herself to want it. Knows it's not what she deserves. That this is not what he deserves.
"I'm sorry," she gasps, heels clicking to an abrupt halt. "I—I have to stop."
"Have I done something to upset you, milady?" Robin frowns. "I'm afraid I am all apologies and no manners tonight."
"It's not you," she insists, because it's her. Her fault that she'd been so selfish as to think he'd only end up hurting her if she didn't walk away, when all she does is hurt him by staying. How can she burden him with the truth now?
"Wait. What is this?" he asks, voice soft and warm, and she looks down to see what has caught his eye—droplets of scarlet bleeding through the white palm of her glove. Before she has a chance to protest he's removed it from her hand with one swift motion; to her horror, the scar has begun to shimmer back into existence, and the burn blister she'd gotten the day before has reopened—there's no mistaking them, or what they mean. The spell is wearing off.
"It's nothing," she says, tries to rip both hand and glove from his grasp, but he holds firm.
"You know," he begins, "it's rather odd, but I've seen these exact markings before." And he's scrutinizing her face again, with an intensity in his eyes now that she's more accustomed to, but the clock must not have yet struck twelve because they cloud with confusion once more when they see nothing familiar behind the mask there. She spots his mother close by, too close, engaged in deep conversation with Maid Marian, the daughter-in-law of her dreams, and Regina's breathing shallows. She's running out of time.
"But how," Robin is muttering to himself, and she takes advantage of the slippery realm of the impossible where his mind has been diverted, stealing bonelessly away from him. As she sidles into a fresh wave of rustling skirts and soaring trains, her foot catches and steps right out of her glass heel, but seconds are too precious to lose so she leaves it there, palming her other shoe off before she runs the remaining distance barefoot to the ballroom door.
He doesn't call after her; but then, she'd never told him her name.