Regina is fighting her way out of her gown—one hand struggles blindly at the endless ties cinching up the back, while the other discards her shoe before fumbling with her glove—when she realizes with a start (and then a stop of her heartbeat) that the reason why he hadn't called after her was because he'd decided to follow instead.

She hears his footsteps still at the door and turns, stomach giving a tremendous lurch when she sees him standing there, slack-jawed and spellbound. She shrugs helplessly before him, glove bunched into a fist, one sleeve of her gown half-undone and dangling off her shoulder.

He doesn't say a word, face expressionless now, unreadable as he strides forward, and if she had any more room to back up against her wardrobe door she would, but as it is the fear has all but paralyzed her feet to the cold stone floor.

And then he's close enough for her to feel the heat rolling off his body, positively intoxicating now where it had been only pleasantly warm moments before (when he'd danced with yet another perfect stranger and she'd let him believe it to be so). Even with her mask covering half a face that still belongs to another, she feels exposed to the core and utterly raw from it; and as his hands come up to grip the gilded edges, gingerly removing it from the bridge of her nose, she trembles as the remainder of the spell washes instantly away.

Her eyelids flutter shut, adjusting to the odd sensation as every nerve, every fiber, of her being returns to its rightful place, and her heart to the man who owns it. When she finally opens them again, dares to meet his eyes from beneath her lashes, what she sees there is a look of abject wonder.

"It was you," he breathes, voice hoarse. "It was you all along."

And before she can find the strength to deny it, his mouth is upon hers, tender as the palms sliding to either side of her neck and splaying there, yet fierce as the fingers burying into the curls loosened from the clasp in her hair. He kisses her until she is dizzy from it, and the sound of his ragged breath when her lips part from his to drag in one of her own tingles down low into her belly and weakens her at the knees. Her hands grasp and clench at his elbows when his mouth places one last bruising kiss to hers before finding its way to her pulse point, stubble scratching across bare skin, sending delicious little shivers through her body from her spine.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she insists belatedly when she's finally caught her breath, and she might have sounded more convincing had the feel of his tongue tracing the contours of her neck not brought a hitch to her words as she said them.

"No?" he sounds amused, chuckles when she gives a vigorous shake of her head in response.

"No," she repeats, but damn it her voice loses all conviction as he untangles from her hair and travels down, palms dragging over her collarbone, to rest over the rise and fall of the swell of her chest.

"Well," Robin says roughly, nose tickling the hollow of her ear, teeth nipping at her lobe, and she's breathless all over again when she realizes he's just as affected as she is by the feel of her breasts in his hands, "perhaps this shall serve as a reminder." She squirms at the loss of heat when he suddenly relinquishes his hold on her to pull something out from the inner pockets of his doublet; and then she stills upon seeing her bloody, ruined glove in one hand, her missing glass slipper in the other.

"Never seen them—before," Regina tries to say, but the last part comes out muffled against the lips he presses back to hers, vibrating from the indulgent hum he releases into her mouth along with the heat of his kiss.

"In that case," he rumbles against her lips, "would you"—his tongue slips out to tangle with hers for a moment—"be so kind as to assist me"—and he slants his mouth to deepen the contact before pulling back again—"in locating the woman to whom these items do belong?"

"Fine," she all but groans as his forehead nudges into hers while his breath warms her skin, cools the dampness of her lips left behind by his kiss, and then he's granting her a bedazzling smile before dropping suddenly to his knees, her glove fluttering to the ground beside him as he cups a warm hand around her bare ankle.

"What are you doing?" she gasps out, head falling back against the wardrobe with a dull thud as his touch travels up, up, up her thigh and then slowly back down.

"Just proving a point," he replies, capturing the back of her knee and coaxing it to bend, lifting her heel off the floor. Her toes wriggle as the cold crystal of the shoe encases her foot in an undeniably perfect fit.

"That doesn't actually prove anything," she tells him to no effect, "it could have fit fifty other girls downstairs, for all you know," to which he mutters a rascally Not anyone else I particularly care to know about, and then she's scowling at the smug quirk of his lips as he peers up at her from between her legs.

Oh God.

As though he's just come to the same conclusion she has, his playful smile widens into something positively roguish now, and she feels herself clench in anticipation before he's even dipped his head under her skirts, with a quiet whisper of silk on silk, and then heated skin on skin, as he drops wet, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of her thigh.

Rapturous little shocks are spreading deep into her core, tingling, pooling there, the combined softness of his lips with the surrounding roughness of his stubble does things to her as he ventures closer and closer to where he has yet to touch her before, but then he's talking, why is he talking, and his hands loosen around where they've been rubbing the backs of her legs to extract himself from beneath her gown.

"I've not quite finished ravishing you up here yet," he says by way of explanation as he stands, and the single heel she teeters on has brought her to a height taller than he's accustomed to, so he bends a little more now than he might've to access the generous expanse of skin exposed by her low neckline, which she's beginning to suspect played more of a role than he'll ever admit to in handpicking this particular gown for her.

And then, speaking of his hands, and her gown, he slips one into the lace-lined edge that's pressed into her breast and supporting it to a perilous degree, thumb dragging over her nipple before creating enough space within her corset for him to dip down and take it into his mouth, between his teeth. She fists his hair with a startled gasp, fingertips spasming into his scalp as she feels him move under her touch, laving at her skin, and when her eyes close involuntarily his stabilizing hand across her back is the only thing that keeps her from swaying sideways and off her feet.

But he seems to grow increasingly frustrated with the confining nature of her bodice; his palm relaxes around her breast, withdrawing, then repositions with a firm grip over the center of the corset, and before she can even begin to process what he plans to do there (for it can't be good), he's ripped it clean in two.

Her breathing quickens at the sight of his own heaving chest as he takes her in, drowns her in the deep blue depths of his eyes, before reaching for her once more. The ruins of her dress dangle in pieces from her shoulders where her sleeves are still intact, and as his arms encircle her at the waist to examine the state of the back, deft fingers encounter the ties she'd been endeavoring to loosen when he first found her.

"Allow me to assist you with these, milady," he says gruffly, and succeeds easily where she had failed, the remainder of her bodice falling away within a matter of seconds. It's hardly fair, she's thinking headily as his hands find her hips and pull her against his chest, that he still has all his clothes on, and she's about to remedy this fact, fisting into his lapels and giving a sharp tug, when another thought nags at her, breaks through the cloudy haze of desire, and she leans back slightly, turning her lips away when he tries to capture them in another kiss.

Brow furrowed, Robin starts to speak but she stills his words with a gentle hand, a soft murmur of his name; she looks him solidly in the eye as she tells him, firmly, to expel any remaining doubt from his ridiculous mind, "There is no one else." He waits patiently, always so patiently for her to continue, "and there will never be anyone else. I do—I do love you," and her fingers trace the beautiful, incredulous smile beginning to curve up beneath them, "I love you," her eyes are burning and tears are falling, catching in the pads of his thumbs as he seizes her face between his hands, and then her voice is cracking with her confession, "I try to stop but I can't," but he will have none of that.

"Then don't," he rasps, "for the sake of my own sanity, please don't ever stop," and he picks her up clean off the ground, glass slipper and all; her arms throw around his shoulders, straining to carry her own weight, but he has her, and she knows now he will never let her fall. When her mouth lands on his, open and eager and waiting for her, the force he angles behind his kiss has her nose pressed into his cheek and her back against the wall, anchored there by the leg he's nestled up into the juncture of her thighs. The friction is tantalizing, arches her spine, exposes her breasts more fully to the hand he's dropped there, squeezing, caressing, and she's lost to the reverence of his touch, the feeling of being worshipped by him.

She feels a heat at the small of her back move up with his palm, and then still. His mouth, devouring hers in a kiss that's all gasps and tongue and heated sighs, pulls back from her; she frowns, her thoughts a blur of confusion, before comprehension dawns as he traces the marks on her skin. And when she opens her eyes upon the look etched into his features, a furious battle of pain, devastation, absolute rage, she knows it's too late to push him away.

"Regina," he speaks now, and there's a touch of warning in his voice that hadn't been there a moment before, a warning that choosing to lie will only worsen matters he's determined to understand. "What is this?"

Nothing, she wants to say, but she finds she can't say anything at all; the word has dried up her throat and lodged there, festering, eroding a hole straight through her chest and into her heart.

"Turn around," he commands her, low but livid, leaving little room for her argue, and so she does, trembling all the while, and her arms come up instinctively to wrap around her bare front even though his attention has turned to her backside now. She feels defenseless, vulnerable, like a worn, broken secondhand thing, and then she's feeling his hands instead, shaking but gentle, oh so gentle, as they brush her hair off to the side and over her shoulders. She hears his sharp intake of breath, and she closes her eyes, sees what he must see: ragged raised lines marring otherwise creamy skin, some redder, rawer, more tender-looking than others, and he runs his fingertips over these now.

"Who did this?"

She hears Zelena urging her to speak up, declaring with more faith than she feels that he will protect her, that he would be a fool not to stand up for you after he learns the truth, as he repeats, his words filled with quiet fury this time, "Who. Did. This?"

"Who do you think?" she finally bites out, suddenly furious with herself, furious with him, for cornering her like this, for forcing her to explain out of obligation what she'd striven so hard to hide. Because this isn't his fight, she realizes now, and what difference does it make? It's simply how things are, how things will always be.

"Some of these don't look more than a few weeks old," he's observing in a hushed tone, and she grimaces openly knowing that he can't see it from where he stands. "When was this? Why didn't you tell me?" And she can't bear to answer, to hear the agony in his voice or see the despair dulling the brightness in his eyes when she tells him it was all for him, because he was carefree with his time and so she'd been careless with hers. But withholding the truth is unfair, and Zelena is right, it's not what he deserves, so once again she finds herself hurting him without doing a single goddamn thing, and she can never win.

But this is her fight to lose, not his.

"It doesn't matter," she says shortly, bracing herself for his explosive response.

He delivers, fuming, "Like hell it doesn't matter!" And then he's turning her to face him once more, but her arms stay crossed, eyes glowering, the delirious smile she'd given him not two breaths before now pressed into a thin defiant line.

"How could you—" Robin's hands are gripping her face, hard, then releasing her, and his frustration, by shredding through his hair, rubbing palms into his beard, "how could you not say something?"

"How could I?" Regina repeats dubiously. As though this is all her fault, and maybe it is. "Why would I tell you? What would that change?"

"This changes everything!" he yells, but she's too nettled now to shrink back at the rising tide that is his voice.

"No!" she yells right back at him, jabbing a finger at him as her other hand reaches across her chest to press her forearm over her breasts. The mortification of the situation is not lost on her, standing there naked and exposed, from skin to soul. "This changes nothing. I'm still a servant, and you—you're still the son of a nobleman who's never wanted for anything in his life, or ever had to do so much as ask for it when you did!"

"Now there's where you're wrong," he thunders, "because I've wanted for you—my entire life. You know how I feel about you. I—"

And she knows what he's about to say, but it's not what she will let herself hear right now. "You don't," she seethes, "you don't—you're in love with the idea of me more than anything! Something exciting and exotic and indecent and—"

"I won't even dignify that rubbish with a response," he growls. "By your leave, I stood aside and allowed my mother to play her manipulative little games with your heart, but not this. I will not stand for this."

"What choice do you have?" Regina is outright shouting now, and to high hell if someone else hears her, as long as he does too—because she needs him to understand, how absurd it was for either to think they'd get the happily ever after they both deserved, if they thought they would find it with each other. "Or are you forgetting the simple fact that your—mother—owns—me!" And every word is punctuated by another jab to his chest, another drop of her heart into her stomach.

And she realizes why she had never told him about the marks on her back—not simply out of fear for his response, or lack thereof (she knows how foolish she'd been for doubting him in that way), but because it makes no difference for him to know, and yet all the difference in the world for him to think it does. Because fighting for the futility of this relationship, of their love, will only bring it to its inevitable end that much sooner. Because she knows that even though he won't stand for it, she will; she has to. Because he's fighting a fight he cannot win, and the sooner she makes this obvious to him, then the more grief they'll both be spared.

"My heart may belong to you, but your mother owns the rest of me. I am nothing more than a thing in her eyes," she explains to him, a damaged, unwanted thing, "a thing that belongs to her." A thing he doesn't have the power to save.

"You know you are much more than that," he pleads. "You must know this."

"No, Robin," and she's the one holding his face in her hands this time, he's the one who needs comforting. A deep resignation, an acceptance of a future she can no longer avoid, has settled into her nerves now, calming them, and she has never seen things with such clarity until now. "I know what I deserve. And I've known it since the moment my sister abandoned me, and my father died, and my mother didn't love me enough to stay."

He looks horrified by how matter-of-factly she's condemned herself to such a fate, trapping her hands in his palms before she can move away from him, and she steps back as he takes one forward, doubting the strength of her resolve if she lets him get too close to her.

"You are only looking for excuses to push me away," he states, and it occurs to her that he may only be able to take so many before he lets her, or walks away on his own, and even though that's what she wants, because she can't allow herself to want otherwise, her heart collides painfully with her chest at the thought. "Why, Regina?"

So she pushes him further, physically shoves him now before bending down to grab the scarlet heap that is left of her gown, a gown that cost more than what her own life had been worth to her own mother, a gown that he had destroyed so effortlessly and without a second thought. "Because this isn't me, Robin," she says, brandishing the garment, an accusation, because shouldn't he have known better than to dress her up as someone she's not? "Why can't you understand that? I don't belong in that world!"

A bird may love a fish; but where would they live?

"Then what makes you think that's a world I want any part of?" he demands desperately. "Regina—please—"

"No!" Enough. No more. Her eyes burn from the tears that refuse to fall, because if they do she'll be a mess for him to kiss dry, and he can't, she can't, she has to stay strong enough to break her own heart. "That is your world, Robin. Like it or not, you can't just renounce it the way you would a—a tunic that doesn't fit quite right, or—"

"Exactly what kind of man do you take me for?" Robin interrupts, infuriated. Good. Anger. She's the one who has made him this way. "I live by a code, Regina. Not a code governed simply by doing what's expected of me, or upholding some antiquated notion of familial duty—but a code of honor, of being good, and righteous—"

"Then do the honorable thing," she exclaims, imploring.

"And what do you believe to be the honorable thing under these circumstances?" he challenges her. "What are you trying to tell me, Regina?"

"I'm telling you to stop being so delusional!" she bursts out. "We have no future together. Maybe in my wildest dreams I'd ride off into the sunset with you, but the only way that would ever happen is over your mother's dead body." And everything she couldn't bring herself to say, not even to herself, she says aloud now. "I shouldn't have to be the one to tell you this; you should have been man enough to admit it to yourself, to both of us, instead of dragging me into this mess that you can't fix. So just put yourself out of your misery, and mine, and—and—go marry someone like Maid Marian!"

He stares at her like she's just taken a meat cleaver and hacked his heart in two, and she realizes too late that she's gone too far.

He speaks slowly, disbelievingly, but with an aura of defeat, a finality that tells her there's no turning back if she pushes them beyond this point. "You can't mean that."

She swallows back the truth with a lie, and it's the most difficult lie she's ever told: "But I do." She looks him in the eye as she tells him, "I really do."

He shakes his head, as though to clear it of this entire disastrous scene he must have dreamt up in his sleep, a living nightmare, because that's the only plausible explanation for it, for why she's saying these things that are making him look at her like he potentially loves her a little less for them, like he's wondering who this woman is that he's nearly thrown away his entire life for, and was it all worth it?

Perhaps not.

And then it definitely wasn't.

She's paralyzed there for one second longer after he's gone (had watched helplessly as he backtracked all the way to the door and past it with this look on his face she hadn't recognized, he'd never looked at her that way before). One second longer, maybe two, before she understands what a horrible, horrible mistake she's made, the love she's just tossed aside as carelessly as the gown he'd damaged beyond repair, but damn the gown, his faith in them was what he'd given her to hold close to her heart, and she'd been the one to destroy it.

She runs across the threshold of her door with her ruined corset still clutched to her chest, turning about frantically, but the hallway is deserted, and he is well and truly gone. She stares after the empty corridor, her heart pounding violently in her chest as it heaves, struggles to get a breath into her lungs before she collapses from the ache that's building there, spreading, spreading.

"What have I done?" she chokes out, and when a soft swish echoes behind her she dares to hope as she whirls around, but the last person she'd ever expected or wanted to see, under any circumstances, is the one who stands before her now.

The marchioness gives her an indulgent little smile, hands folded regally across the front of her ivory beaded ball gown, mask still on, not a single lock of white blonde hair out of place. She must have left the festivities in search for Robin, and known exactly where to look.

Regina hadn't seen or so much as spoken with her face to face since that morning, when the woman had sent her on a mission to sabotage a lowly servant girl's happiness at the expense of her own son's. Zelena had badgered her into staying out of her way during the day before hiding in plain sight at the ball, in order to let the marchioness think she had won (and she has). So there's no precedent to set the tone for their interaction now, nothing to indicate how much she knows or doesn't, but as she examines Regina's disheveled appearance from head to toe, there's a vindictive glint in her eye that had never revealed itself until this moment.

And she's all the more frightening now that she's shed her façade as a shallow, flighty flibbertigibbet of a woman, to uncover the chillingly shrewd and calculating stone-cold heart that lies beneath it.

"Well," the marchioness says primly, in a deceptively offhanded manner. "It certainly appears as though my son got what he came for."

Regina's face positively burns as she all but spits at her, "Then you'll be happy to know you have nothing to worry about now."

"Oh. My sweet young child." The woman laughs without a single shred of humor, a deep musical sound that makes Regina's blood run cold. "Believe me; I never did."

"My dear sister," someone comes bellowing jovially around the corner then, and Regina's doubling back through her doorway at the sound of the Duke's sloshed, slaphappy voice. "Why do you insist on badgering this poor girl?" He appears in view, equally resplendent in a knee-length tunic of midnight blue, lined with silver and tapered at the waist. Regina has never bothered to pay much attention to his face before (his gaze, on the other hand, always seems to situate upon hers when she is near; not intolerably so, as he is never nothing short of amiable to her), but she notices it schooled into a look of pleasant concern for her now.

And all she can think is how badly she needs him to be Robin instead.

His beard is darker but peppered with grey, meticulously trimmed where his nephew's is rugged, and the Duke's smile, while perfectly agreeable, lacks the natural warmth of Robin's, the ability to set her nerves aflame because his smile is meant for her, only her, and now she's pushed him to give it to someone else instead.

The Duke approaches her with a genial familiarity as he shrugs off his outer garment to wrap around Regina's body, shielding it from the cold air drawing goosebumps out of her skin, from the scathing, wintry blue eyes of the marchioness. The woman's delicate white shoulders shrug up and down and she drawls, as though bored by his ingratiating show of gallantry, "Honestly, Leopold, your attentiveness to this girl grows rather tiresome."

Her brother tuts, "Nonsense, dear sister," and then he's laying a comforting hand on Regina's clothed back; he turns to face her fully, effectively dismissing his sister from her view. "Now, my dour little darling, why don't we go find something more agreeable to change you into?"

.

.

.

Regina doesn't sleep that night. The candlelight burns, long after the tears have run dry, and well into the dawn; beyond the rooster's first cry, and the chiming of the clock tower that had shattered every remaining illusion of her happiness the moment it struck midnight.

And then any last shred of hope she still had the audacity to cling on to is obliterated by a single word.

She's in the kitchens, mute and mechanical in her motions, when the news reaches her that his eminent Lord Robin of Locksley has accomplished the unthinkable (so many had doubted his commitment to the task)—"Why, against all odds, he's become engaged!"—"At some point over the course of the night, is what I heard"—and "to a woman unparalleled in her good fortune, no doubt," the identity of whom remains the source of much speculation amongst the castle folk for the rest of the day.

The knife she had been using to prep vegetables for a hearty afternoon stew is pulled gently from her trembling grasp before she slices a finger to pieces instead; and when she comes to, she finds that Mrs. Lucas, with a gentleness uncharacteristic of her usual crabby demeanor, has deposited her out of harm's way in a pillowed nook beneath one of the kitchen windows, where she remains for many hours that she can't account for later.

Every puff of air she manages to take in and out is no small victory, her chest a crippled, hollow space save for the frozen slab of her heart resting there; and it's cracked, but it does not shatter until she sees them from her vantage point at the window, Robin guiding Shadowfax by the reins as he ambles down a small stone path that winds through the courtyard below, a hooded figure by his side. But Regina sees the dark brown curls peeking out from the edges of her riding cape, and she presses a palm to the glass, transfixed by the sight, and it's too horrifying not to be real.

Robin is speaking animatedly to Marian, with a near-wild energy evident in the way his free hand gesticulates emphatically back and forth, as Shadowfax trots patiently alongside them. Marian's head bobs up and down in a nod, and then she's speaking with what seems to be equal fervor, a gloved hand emerging from underneath the cape to settle briefly on the sleeve of his forearm.

And whatever she has to say has his face breaking out into a smile that spellbinds as he regards her with immeasurable gratitude, and Regina recognizes the look he's giving her now—the look of a man hopelessly in love and utterly blinded by it. He grasps Marian's hand in his and presses a swift kiss to her knuckles before swinging himself up onto Shadowfax's saddle, as though suddenly impatient, frantic, even, to attend to whatever task awaits him in a neighboring town.

He rides off then, green cloak billowing in the breeze, as he leaves the castle behind but takes Regina's heart along with him, dragging it miserably in the cloud of dirt Shadowfax kicks up after them as their figures retreat steadily into the distance.

.

.

.

The aura surrounding the ball that night is one of a more celebratory nature, understandably so, as it benchmarks the achievement of the very goal they had been designed to fulfill. A morbid curiosity draws Regina to hide behind the velvet-draped marble columns once more, almost carelessly this time, for now that she no longer has Robin, what more could she possibly stand to lose? Oddly, he is still nowhere to be seen—perhaps he has not yet returned from whatever preoccupation had taken him both from the castle and from his bride-to-be earlier that day—but the marchioness is everywhere, greeting guests with a genteel hand, a calm in her smile and a warmth that never quite reaches her eyes to thaw the ice there.

And when the woman's gaze falls on hers in the balcony, with a purposefulness that Regina knows she can't possibly have imagined, her smile widens into one of genuine pleasure as she turns, satisfied, back to her conversation with the Earl of Arundel. Nearby, attendees grow restless in their chatter as they await Robin's arrival, and the imminent announcement to follow, that will put all conjecture to rest regarding the mysterious identity of one future Lady of Locksley.

But this is the honorable thing, Regina's reminding herself, this is what she deserves, when there's a sudden scuffling sound from behind her, and then something is grabbing hold of her arm, wrenching her shoulder at an unnatural angle. Her answering scream is muffled by the large glove that reaches around to smother her mouth; and the last thing she sees before the rest of her world goes black is Maid Marian's large, brown eyes staring up at her, with an indecipherable expression on her face of unparalleled beauty.