He thinks his feet are pounding faster than his heart, a thwip-thwip-thwip that kills all feeling in him, and he's flying and falling in one.
Root over fern over stone.
He stumbles through their shifting patterns, remembers a magician's trick he once saw (watch closely now) – a disappearing woman, a patched cloak in green and grey, a word invoked by the crowd – but he sees only Regina in his mind (the axe falls) and knows that he will not stop until he reaches her, until he reaches the place she has never invited him into and bids her to run.
Even then he will not stop.
He realizes his hand is empty. Stinging. He has lost his bow somewhere, and in another lifetime he would have turned back to reclaim it, but it is done, it is done, and he will suffer himself to be less-than-whole if it means he can find her in time.
The light is failing – the sky is failing, and falling – when he crests the last incline and spots her tree-made-house, and her beside it.
She is gathering wood, arms heavy with it, and how he wishes that would be enough. They can torch the entire forest, a thousand forests, and still the darkness will come.
No need to bury themselves in the earth's ashes first.
The Queen must be the one to choke them down. He still has teeth, he still has fists, he still has her, and he will not be swallowed so easily.
He takes Regina by the arm, spilling kindling down their fronts (they will set themselves on fire), and the way she looks at him is sharp enough to cut. She is rigid against him, resistant.
"The Queen," he pants, by way of explanation. "She's coming with everything – everything she has, for you."
Her eyes dart over his shoulder, as if she expects an army to spill over the crest behind him: a willful blindness.
"Regina, we haven't time," he presses, trying to back her into the line of trees that still shows some daylight overhead, kicking at her feet when she doesn't move with him.
She stares at his chest, head shaking and shaking. "I'm done running." She rips her arm from him and sweeps it angrily around them. "You think there's something out there for me?"
He wonders that she cannot hear the thunder (his heart), that she will damn them both before she chooses to take what stands before her. He knows the path that will safeguard them. They must run – she must live – and even when that proves not enough, it is kinder to die on one's feet, fully feeling lungs and blood and sweat, fighting for a last step.
He tilts her chin, gentle though it kills them both, and tells all.
"I've seen the way you look at me when you think I don't notice."
Her eyes are glass, cradling water, and when a drop falls to wet the scar he has never kissed (he will hunger for nothing else, forever) on her lip, she is ready.
They beat out a new rhythm, a broken one, but the pieces fall together anyway: her sweat on his skin, his breath singing to her blood, her image firmly held in his eye.
The ground drops out beneath them, and they are airborne, safe within the drape of his cloak, safe within the draw of her arms, and he bends his head to whisper into her while they disappear.
(Watch closely now.)