Regina's half-risen from a crouch, bow tucked into her side, when his hand catches against the crook of her arm and flexes, holding – it's not a signal they've used before, but she can read its caution, its warning, well enough.
She sinks back immediately, whips her head to align with his, and searches, seeing no more through the trees than she had a moment ago, but dusk is falling, and she must be blind to something in the shadows, some man or beast that has pulled Robin's eyes.
They have traveled far for the hunt today, only now crossing back into territory frequented by the guard, and it would be ruinous to be taken by surprise here – or taken alive.
She gestures to him in askance, an open spread of palm under lifted brow, and he leans in to breathe, "Wait."
Another cock of the head, and she strains to follow, looking hard, until she feels his shoulders drop on a triumphant exhale.
"There."
She sees no movement, nothing more than the burnt fizzle of a firefly or two over a stand of milkweed, but Robin rocks up on his feet and sets their cover shaking, no care for concealment now as he strides into the open and reaches through the air with hands cupped, arcing shut.
Oh, for the love of –
He's cranked her pulse a few notches higher and squandered the last good daylight all in the pursuit of catching fireflies.
He turns and grins, so pleased with his discovery, and Regina can just make out a dart of light through the loose knotting of his hands. She has half a mind to throw her bow in his face and stalk off, let him find his own damn way back to the downs, but he'll simply follow her and she prefers to be fully armed when he does.
So she stands and grinds her heels into the topsoil with more force than is strictly necessary as she walks to him, and his grin slips a little at the ferocity of her approach, as if only now realizing he's wasting their time (her time) with nonsense.
"Are you quite finished?"
Her voice stays cool, not the heated lash it could be, and she uncurls with it, chin tilted up to him in a play of scorn. She means to look down on him. She measures no taller than the line of his shoulder, but she has defiance and anger enough to fill the extra inches, and she takes each one as her own.
He bites his lip, dimpling even then, and refuses to be embarrassed, but he releases the firefly without a word. It clings at the base of his thumb when his fingers shift, lighting once more there, and then it flies, lost to the gathering dusk with the others, blinking in odd intervals.
"I couldn't resist," Robin says, all quiet and unapologetic, and she huffs, "Clearly," in the same moment that he continues with a rather more wistful, "Reminds me of a simpler time."
It's unguarded, far more than he has given away before – and, perhaps, more than he intends – and she will have none of it.
(She does not know the meaning of a simpler time, has no use for innocence while she still wears a beaver pelt at her waist and a half-bloodied quiver across her back, and she will not think on any moment but this one, not for anything.)
But Robin is built for the study of things, he has always seen too much, and he reads her well, knows her silence for what it is.
"As a child, surely – ?"
The lick of laughter in him fades to something grave, a tightening of his mouth, and (if he pities her, she will hate him, irredeemably) she looks away.
"I did not have time for such games then."
She watches through the screen of lashes at the corner of her vision, watches as his gaze drops to her hands and fights to keep them calm – empty, but seeking nothing. They are as rough and calloused (hard-won) as his own, but they weren't always, and Robin sees too much.
"And now?"
She looks at him again, aware of the middling distance between them and how it no longer seems sufficient, and moves her shoulders carelessly: a shrug, or a challenge, and she can't decide which she wants it to be.
Everything darkens by the moment, more shadow than dwindling sky now, and she can't quite catch his expression when he steps away, wading deeper into the milkweed.
She is free to go on, she understands, but she will be doing so alone.
The earliest stars are already rearing overhead, and Regina itches to follow them, to pick the surest path back to camp while she can still tell buckthorn from bramble, but each breath spent in the choosing only roots her further, firmly in place until she scuffs through the milkweed herself, hardly knowing what she's doing, and lowers to a crouch beside him.
Robin speaks without turning his head, and this is a signal she recognizes. "It's like hunting."
One firefly bobs around his ear, another tangles in the stalks in front of them, and he amends with, "Well, not really," in that light, laughing way he has. "But the principles are the same."
He waits a beat, intent, and drags his hands together just as the firefly sparks again, safely peeking through the space he has left between fingers and palm.
Speed and precision, yes, but there is delicacy where she has learned to strike hard, and it is small, so much smaller than a heart, but her mouth dries the same at the sight of it.
He holds clasped light between them, too dim to reveal more than the broad outlines of their faces with each pulse, but she imagines the soft set of his smile, and the night presses in just enough for her to answer with something akin to honesty.
"Except you let them go, in the end."
Robin sends the milkweed rustling, flicking against the side of her leg, as he centers his weight, but his arms remain steady, and the firefly within his grasp blinks on, and on.
"There is that," he says, and lets his palms fall open.
They both watch the firefly drift off, tracing its flight as best they can to the edge of the clearing, and, with Robin so distracted, Regina fixes her eye on the ones dancing within reach.
Tense, taut as a full draw on her bow, and then she relaxes, guides the nearest firefly towards the palm of her other hand and closes on it as quietly as catching a bit of dandelion fluff out of the air.
When she raises her eyes, he's there, observing, dimples hollowing his cheeks again as if (he has seen gentleness in her, and wonders at it) he trapped the damn thing himself.
As if it was so difficult to hunt something and not kill it.
"Stand fast your ground, your quarry, and your aim," she quotes, lips tipping into a smirk.
He gives his laughter full voice this time, and she looses her captive to the wind, so weightless she never knows its departure, and it's one more star to light the path home.
They end up stumbling through the woods like drunkards, feeling along with clumsy, booted feet, and she can't repress the thrill of satisfaction in her chest every time Robin runs himself into a root or groundhole and mutters a curse behind her.
He does, after all, only have himself to blame.