Robin had been pushing them off for days, the vague misgivings of a body overworked, and always he had his reasonings at the ready: his legs ached, of course, because he had led the Queen's black guards in a chase halfway across the county, and it was the unseasonable warmth that flushed his cheeks and dried his throat, sweat that made his fingertips slip from the bowstring before he had fully drawn.
Still, there was a layer of husk to his voice that couldn't quite be explained by the smoke he breathed from the fire pit. The hearing in his left ear turned in on itself, most strangely, tuned to some internal sea that did nothing but unbalance him. His whole arm, more than his nocked grip, shook against the bow now.
He began one morning by trapping his fingers in the knottings of his bootlaces, and only then was he forced to concede that everything was – perhaps – not as it should be.
He was (more than) tired, and unsettled, and his bedroll was more welcoming than he could remember it being. He could spend days in its comforts and not even bother to tend the fire because, surely, he was burning enough for them both already.
Tongue passed over cracked lips, and he was reminded that all his water skins were empty, run through the previous evening when he couldn't seem to take in enough to sate him, and the word stuck there, lodged in his gullet, and drove every other thought out.
Water.
He needed water.
He cursed himself for letting the supply run so low and rooted through the skins again, not daring to hope that he might have overlooked one in his haste, but there it was - one that still sloshed a bit at his shaking, and he pulled at the stopper with his teeth until it came free, tipping back to catch the liquid with his mouth only for the bag to fumble, to upend itself, at his chin and go spilling down his front.
He cursed himself doubly.
His thirst was now acute, the pangs in his throat desperate, and there was nothing for it but to trek to the stream, though the distance it required made him groan aloud - immediately regretting the action when it struck a match against his vocal cords.
Movement hurt, breathing hurt, but Robin worked slowly to gather up water skins and string them across his back and over his shoulders, bow and quiver swept up with them because he had no eye for discernment any longer.
Telling himself that he'd had worse (this was nothing mortal, and it would pass, it would pass, he chanted to himself), Robin tied off his boots more carefully and set out over stones and roots that seemed to have reached up overnight for the way they caught at him.
He tramped along, minding his feet with such dogged concentration that the pounding in his head and the lurch of his heart gradually faded, harmonized, into a single distant beat.
Runnels of sweat marked his back, everything clinging to his skin, and he didn't know how his body could spare it when his forehead was dry heat and his tongue kept poking to the corner of his mouth and failing to find any wetness there.
He was starved for it, water - such a simple thing, the basest element, and why had he never seen its value like this before? He could dunk his whole head in the stream, revel in its clear coldness, its sweetness, and let it quell the dullness that was spreading joint by joint. He could drink enough to hold him for days, and after filling his skins again he'd be rich in it - not wasteful, no, he had learned that lesson, but a little hoard to keep at his side was just what he needed.
It would be (catching his toe on a rock as he sighed his anticipation) heavenly.
The crack of a particularly large branch beneath him surprised him into stopping, guilty foot still pressed to the white break of it, and his senses struggled back to order, abruptly aware of the forest again, and his place in it.
He had been moving incautiously, loudly, tracks laid clear behind him for all the minutes he had walked and leading directly back to his camp. And it might not matter so much, he thought (tried), as he wasn't on the hunt and there was no evidence that the guards had ever ventured this deep before and he could bury his trail on the way back - the water was unbearably close.
He hadn't been so reckless, really, and the stream would set him to rights again.
That stream… was proving rather more distant than he remembered, actually, and when had autumn transformed the wood so thoroughly? Leaves thick under his boots, making a hellish racket every time he shifted weight, and the trees looked too open without them.
He squinted at the nearest stand of birches, trying to orient himself even though it was impossible - unthinkable - that in his distraction he had strayed in possibly (entirely) the wrong direction.
The added burden of his weapons over shoulder had confused his steps, perhaps, and he had instinctively made for his favorite shooting grounds and missed the turn down to the water.
An extra minute of puzzling (swallowing past the hell of his throat, rough as sand) was all he needed to work out a new path, a shortcut, navigating by sun and shadow and the rough compass of his hand. He was now confident in his direction but wearied, plagued with hesitations, tiny rebellions in every muscle so that what might have been a pleasant amble downhill felt like fighting his way through strong currents of undergrowth.
His eyes were tearing, dazzled by neat shots of light through the trees, and there was pressure and pounding behind them he couldn't rub away.
He was breathing harder than he should have been when he crouched under an elm, and it wasn't the spot he had been working towards but it was closer, easier, and he could bloody well sit for a minute if it pleased him. The stream wasn't going to wander off.
The whole world seemed to have taken on a pulse, pressing too close, and he couldn't hear anything but waves, a shoreline he'd never seen and still -
"You make it sound like this was some epic - an odyssey - to find the rarest spring in the land," Regina says a little too loudly, calling all eyes to her. "You're not actually a young god tasked with impossible… impossible tasks, you know."
"I was ill, Regina. That's kind of the point of the story."
She leans forward, letting the table take on more of her weight, and jabs a finger in the general direction of his face. and it's then Robin realizes what the slouch of her spine and her unexpected gregariousness means - she's drunk. Or at least well on her way to being so.
"You're telling it wrong."
"Am I?" He's amused despite himself, cocking his head towards her with new interest and a poorly-concealed smirk. "I suppose you could tell it better yourself, then?"
"You think I won't?" Her eyes flash at the challenge, and Robin (thinking on broken noses and insults traded like blows and gold stolen out from underneath him) regrets rousing her, just a little.
"No, no, trust that I at least would never underestimate the extent of your competitive nature," he sighs. "But, Regina, I think even you must concede that this is my story."
"Who's to say your illness didn't addle your memory as much as it did your sense of direction? Or do you deny that you would've ended up halfway to Arendelle if I hadn't found you when I did?" She asks this last with a flare of triumph, and when the rest of the table breaks into raucous laughter Robin knows he's hopeless to regain their attention.
"Let her speak!" John calls, raising his tankard to salute their new storyteller, and the sentiment is echoed roundly by the other men.
To which Robin concedes with a wave of his hand, and a deep swallow of ale, and a tight-lipped mutter that no one can hear: "Traitors, the lot of you."
...
Regina had been out since earliest light, moved not by hunger or the need for work but by a restlessness that drew her farther and farther from her hollowed tree as the sun climbed overhead. Her walk was aimless, as much as it could be for someone who had the better part of Sherwood memorized down to its boulders and rabbit-runs, and she followed the stream for its easy burbling, downhill and west and on until she had passed beyond what she thought of as her section of the forest.
The trees thinned here, and she peered through them as if to pick her next direction on sight alone. There had been a blackberry bramble just over that hillock, she thought, one that had served her ripely over the summer. Too late in the season now, but she found herself cutting inland anyway, curious to see what remained - it was a silly thing, to think of some places as friendly, but so she did - ears and eyes alert for company that was less pleasant than the stream.
No blackberries, as expected, but there was a comely patch of hellebore beside the bramble, and Regina knelt to examine the leaves and blooms. She knew less of herblore than she would have liked, but hellebore was spoken of widely by mothers and healers and fortune tellers alike. A cure for insanity, some said, or a ward against evil - or was it witchcraft, meant for invisibility and summoning demons?
The thought pricked her, and she shivered even in the sunlight, pulling her fingers back from the flowers. She did not hold well with superstitions, but hellebore seemed to bode ill for all its cunning prettiness.
She was still gathering herself when she heard a noise that was decidedly not animal and stiffened immediately. No clanking of armor or stamping of horses, the usual markers of both black guards and passing merchants alike - no, more likely this was a traveler who had lost the path, and wouldn't that be her luck, to have a stranger stumble upon her and by chance alone betray her to the Queen at last?
She crouched low on her heels, obscuring herself within the thicket, keeping both blade and wit at easy reach to deflect whomever might come her way. Her hand had crept to the hilt of the dagger at her waist without her noticing, but she was glad for its firmness and gripped it all the more fiercely as she waited.
More clumsy sounds, like one not accustomed to moving through the forest, and her head inched up despite herself, curiosity trumping caution, to better see what anomaly this was and whether posed any risk to her after all.
Oh, gods.
Him.
Regina knew this man, had sketched rather unflattering portraits of his face on more than one occasion, and she released her hold on her dagger with a grumble of irritation as she watched him - Robin bloody Hood, rival bandit and professional pain-in-her-arse - be even more of an idiot than she had thought him capable of.
Robin was wavering his way through the forest, swaying, seemingly, to a bit of music only he could hear and sending up a din while doing so that endangered both of them if there happened to be any guards or passably observant lawmen in the area.
He was groping at the low-hanging elms and maples to keep himself upright as he walked, finally seeking a moment's rest against one almost directly opposite her hiding place. His shoulders heaved with each breath, as though he had been outrunning something, as though he had staked his life on some reckless escape through the woods, and Regina kindled with fear again as she listened and puzzled and tried to guess from which directions the danger would descend.
She looked closer for blood on Robin's clothes - he was moving like a wounded man, or a mad one, and she couldn't account for it - and though she sensed now that something was very, very wrong, she was not yet willing to spring the trap by making herself known to him.
Instead she let one foot slide experimentally over a slender branch until it gave, snapping whip-quick, the kind of disturbance in an otherwise still wood that no outlaw would ignore for fear of his head.
Robin, to his credit, lifted his gaze immediately and swung about, hands feeling out weapons with instinctive certainty, but the moment was rather ruined as he continued to pull at the same arrow without ever once clearing it from his quiver. He gave up on that particular arrow after a number of unsuccessful draws and grasped again, this time missing his aim entirely and pulling at one of the many water skins looped over his shoulder with such force that he might throttle himself.
This was the famed Robin Hood who had hijacked so many of her carefully laid plans over the past two seasons?
"Unbelievable," Regina muttered to herself as she watched him struggle, increasingly entangled in his hunting gear, and after a painfully long moment she sighed and pushed out of the bramble and (dagger half-unsheathed and ready) stalked towards him.
She was going to help him - this nuisance, this outlaw who deserved nothing from her except a punch to his smirking jaw - if he didn't force her to gut him first.
"Thief," she growled, refusing to name him, and he blinked owlishly at her, unguarded in a way that made her nerves rise again.
And for the first time she thought that thief didn't ring like much of an insult at all, not when they were standing without the excuse of something to be won between them, not when she was one too, and that realization made her scowl all the harder.
"What the hell are you doing, thief?"
"Professional pain-in-your-arse, am I?" Robin asks with an aggrieved huff that's belied by the lightness in his eyes, and Regina stops talking long enough to shoot him a pointed look.
"Not only in her arse," Will adds helpfully, and once again the whole table chuckles in agreement.
"There are some other choice words I could use," Regina says, and, oh, he loves to see her spark with danger like this,"and you needn't sound so pleased about it."
"You've caused me quite a lot of trouble as well. Don't think I've forgotten about -"
"Oh, if we're keeping score, you'll find that I'm well ahead. Is there anything I haven't bested you at yet?"
Robin narrows his eyes suspiciously. "What definition of 'bested' are you using, if I may ask? I think I've proved myself more than capable of keeping up with you."
"Says the man who gets tangled up in his own bow and quiver."
John chokes on a mouthful of bread at her words, hastily coughing to conceal his laughter, and Robin bristles, baleful.
"I did not get tangled -" Regina arches her brow, and he's forced to correct himself before she embarrasses him further. "Well, I did, but you've been grossly exaggerating the extent of my, er, insensibility."
"How would you know? You were completely delirious."
Now it's Robin's turn to sit forward, laying his hands on the table like a winning set of cards. He smiles slightly, wickedly, just for Regina.
"I'll have you know I remember our meeting with utmost clarity, m'lady."
...
Regina had always been able to find him, unerringly - usually, to be sure, when he had the misfortune of pursuing something she had already decided was hers - and so he was not as surprised as he might have been to look up from the tree that supported him and see that it was her approaching.
She called him thief and threw more questions at him, and he was powerless to do anything more than stand and catch his breath, sickness and the sight of Regina at such a near distance warring with each other to thoroughly rob him of his senses.
Regina seemed to realize that he had not taken in a word of anything, and, frowning up at him, let the silence stretch on until she said, quite unconvincingly, "You're scaring all the game away."
The incongruity of the moment, and the way she she stared at him with something like concern was enough to finally shake Robin out of his breathlessness, out of his stupor. He gestured to the full sunlight around them and asked - rasped, really, "What exactly were you expecting to bag at this hour? A handful of squirrels?"
He winced at the terrible hoarseness of his voice and the pain that dragged out behind and imagined, for a flicker of a second, that Regina winced with him.
But she simply sniffed, disinterested in everything except volleying the insult back at him. "Certainly didn't expect to find a grown man bumbling through the woods like a lost kit."
They stood at an impasse, then, each trying to take measure of the other without betraying their purpose, and Robin should excuse himself, should make for the stream, but he didn't know how to do any of that, overwhelmed just by the thought of the too-many steps involved in speaking again.
Regina frowned deeper now and suddenly (Robin lost track of her movements, of the world, as he blinked, blinked, blinked) was too close, rearing up on her toes to touch him. He was not that much taller than her, but he found he liked being reached for, that unconscious strain towards him on her part.
She reached to his forehead and touched there, eyes widening at everything she felt, and Robin wanted to sink the whole of his weight against her fingers, her palm, for the coolness it brought him.
"You should be in bed," she said quietly, and she didn't let go.
He smiled down at her, and, then, unsure whether he thought it or spoke it: "You've gotten bold."
"You should be in bed," she repeated stubbornly.
Her hand traced downward, gently, to take him by the throat, dangerously close to that pulse-point that beat just below his skin, and still he made no move against her, stood fascinated, even though it defied every animal instinct that told him to fight.
Her fingers skated over his pulse and rested, probing, on the tender spots below his jaw, and he closed his eyes against her, weak for the feel of it, weak to submit to her will to explore him so intimately.
(How easy for her to slip the crook of her knife into him there and bleed him of his life, and it would be nothing less than he had asked for.)
"I'm fine."
His protest would have been rather more effective if he hadn't had to breathe in hard and swipe a hand quickly under his nose while he coughed, great wracking things that burned out his vision again and left him legless, and he was relieved to still be upright of his own volition, that eternity later, until he realized Regina was gripping him firmly under the elbow and leveraging him against the tree trunk to keep him so.
They were muscle-to-muscle, her thigh pressing above his knee, and Robin wanted to say something flirtatious, something about the positions they kept finding themselves in, but all he could manage was a weak croak for water.
She nodded, settled him better against the tree, her touch and voice barely penetrating the fog of his head and suddenly gone before he could call her back. Time passed uneasily - he might have fallen into a doze - until she was forcing his own water skin back into his hand and helping him lift it to his mouth and oh, water, at last, cascading down his throat and over his chin faster than he could swallow.
Regina eased the container away from his mouth, ignoring his mumbled protests for more (and he did feel full-to-bursting, but wanted all the same), and wetted her hand instead, running it over his forehead and into his head and down each cheek until he was shivering with relief and pleasure and not a little fever.
She had brought him water. He would marry her for that wonder alone.
(He hoped he hadn't said that part aloud.)
Robin stops, having just said that aloud, and for a moment he's so discomfited he can only reach for his ale and drain the last fifth of it and determinedly avoid looking in Regina's direction.
"Well, man, what happened next?" someone down the table asks impatiently, and Robin becomes very aware that all the men have stilled, tankards neglected and faces slack with curiosity, and he has yet to answer to them.
"I -"
"Nothing happened," Regina breaks in with a vehemence that borders on threat, and Robin is glad for the men's scrutiny to shift back to her. "Only a fool would waste time nursing her greatest rival back to health. And he would trust her to? Please."
Will nodded at the sense in it, spearing Robin with a thoughtful glance - the man always got to the quick of things more skillfully than was good for him - as he did so. "Hard to argue with that."
"But to leave a man in such a state… surely you don't mean that's the right of it?" John's question stirs the men again, several pounding their fists against the table at the idea of such a betrayal, even of one's enemy.
But their eyes are alight with the excitement of the story, bobbing between Regina and himself as if they are indeed keeping score and settling their wagers on who will emerge as the victor, as the better bandit, this time around.
"What, you want a turn at the story too, now?" Regina snaps at John before the discussion can devolve into a review of the Merry Men's moral code. "Let me finish."
...
Water skin emptied, Regina levered him out of the trap he had made of himself and stood clear as Robin swayed back to his feet.
"Better?"
"Much." Robin swept a hand through his hair and looked down, chagrined. "Aside from the rather large debt I have to settle with you now, which will undoubtedly bankrupt me if you have anything to say about it."
She scowled at the jab, tossing the water skin at his chest and wishing she had something weightier (a stone, a boulder) to lob at him instead. "You say that as if you have gold to begin with."
"Perhaps I should seek a new trade - one that pays more handsomely."
"I hear mapmaking is a worthy business," she agreed. "Shame you can't navigate two meters without tripping over your own bootlaces.
And though he opened his mouth to respond, Regina turned decisively on her heel and strode away, knowing that this time, this time, he would not dare follow her, and she would be well and finally rid of that troublesome thief, Robin Hood.
"...and that's the last I saw of him."
Regina is tracing a finger contemplatively around the rim of her glass. "For all I know he really did take up a career in mapmaking. Or maybe he was eaten by bears."
There's a beat of silence as the men take in her words, and then - first, John - one by one they throw their heads back to roar with laughter, and those near enough reach down to thump Regina on the shoulder until Robin worries they'll break her.
Or he would worry, if Regina wasn't grinning just as broadly as the rest, and pausing in the midst of it all to catch his eye and flick a victorious smirk straight to him.
Your move, it says, clear as day, and Robin means to take it.
"I wasn't eaten by bears," he protests, loudly, fighting the noise of the barroom. "I'm not - I'm sitting right here. This is plainly ridiculous."
"I don't know, Robin, that was a yarn you won't find easily matched."
"Matchless, indeed," he mutters, irked that everyone seems satisfied - overjoyed, even - by Regina's version of events. "Are none of you curious as to how it truly ended? There's plenty more to tell."
Regina sighs. "Plenty more to be spoiled by your telling of it, you mean."
Robin rolls his eyes, fondly, at her stubbornness, and he drops his voice low to meet hers, as though they're passing codes through tight spaces… that just happen to be inhabited by several large men.
"Bears, really?" he asks, to tease her, and she kicks him sharply in the ankle.
He smiles, sees it reflected in her eyes, and begins to speak once more.
...
Regina nudged him along, guiding him by the arm when he began to drift, and then her touch stayed there, pressing his elbow, and Robin knew he must be well and truly pathetic when she let him take her hand instead.
Somehow she had collected his bow and quiver along the way, and that he had no recollection of being so disarmed should concern him more, but Robin couldn't think much past his own feet, and his need to keep them.
The forest was little more than a swirl around him, and for all he knew they were just as likely to be headed for the Queen's dungeons as for his own camp. The thought, oddly, made him laugh, and in his humor he stumbled into Regina so that they both tripped sideways, landing ankle-deep in water that immediately flooded his boots.
This made him laugh all the harder (it was the fever, he would insist later, as Regina scowled over the memory of dragging him upstream), and Regina didn't stop cursing once until he was abruptly tumbled into a bed - not his, it turned out.
He rolled his face into the ball of fabric that formed a pillow, and it smelled of her. Forest-y, in a pleasant way, and other things he could not discover names for.
"Don't sleep yet," she ordered from the doorway, and Robin nodded, holding his eyes open, though he didn't think he had much choice in the matter. He watched dark shapes play against the ceiling and wondered if they were shadows or spots in his vision.
And he must have fallen asleep after all, for Regina had to shake him to call his attention back, passing him a steaming cup and steadying his head and hands while he drank.
"Foul tea," he rasped as he slumped into the pillow, making a face as the taste lingered. "Did no one ever teach you to brew a proper cuppa?"
Her eyes darkened at that, and he had pried too deep there, rattled something loose, and he would apologize but Regina simply said, inscrutably, "I never said it was tea."
Robin had time (just) to wonder if he had fallen under her bewitching, delivered himself so neatly into the hands of his rival, but he didn't want to believe it of her (didn't, really) if only because the way she was looking at him felt more protective than predatory, and she could have killed him without such effort ten times over by now.
And then his vision folded inward, shrinking and centering on the oval that was her face, and he knew no more.
The line between sleeping and waking bent meaninglessly during those days - Robin would think this only later, when he had come back to himself, and after a passage of eons and yet no time at all, he woke enough for the shapes of the room to straighten themselves into recognizable objects again.
Fur-trimmed coat hanging from a hook in the wood, apples on the stool, and Regina asleep by his bedside, accidentally draped over him in a way she would be embarrassed by, and so Robin too felt as though he must look away.
He searched for water with his fingers, not wanting to disturb her, brushing up and over the length of the bedside table until he touched glass. He managed to get it to his lips without spilling, and though the water within was flat and warm it roused him some, and his mind turned to worry over just how badly he had overstayed his welcome.
Not that Regina had welcomed him into her home, exactly, in the first place.
There was no hope of him slipping off unnoticed even if he could stand unaided - and he rather doubted that after tiring himself by merely reaching for a glass of water - so he would have to face Regina and all her scowling, endeavor to thank her when they had barely said a civil word to each other, before he could be on his way.
Setting the emptied glass back on the table proved more challenging than he had anticipated, and in the process he caught his sleeve on some papers stacked there and pulled them into his lap (narrowly missing Regina's head) before he could right them.
He reordered them as best he could without looking - he had no desire to invade her personal spaces more than he already had - but he caught glimpses of familiar papers as his fingers worked to realign their edges, and it was enough to slow him, to attend to these things of hers more carefully than he should.
There was her face staring out from a wanted poster, and then his own (now bearing a inked-in rakishly thin moustache that made him resemble Lord Broadmoor), and lists upon lists of herbs, as though Regina had tried to catalogue every leaf and blossom in the forest itself.
The last paper held a smaller listing of ingredients, a recipe for some curative or restorative, and the bitterness of her 'tea' finally made sense. Valerian, willow bark, honey, a question mark smudged after hellebore, and the checklist went on to name herbs Robin had heard of only in songs, so rare were they said to be - to gather all these things in this season would require an unfathomable amount of risk and expense (or thievery, maybe), and he surveyed Regina properly for the first time since he had woken, suddenly longing to touch her and determine she was real.
As if in response to his thoughts, she turned in her sleep, rolling closer to his knees until she had bared her front and her face (half-obscured still by hair Robin had never seen loose before) to him.
And a shirt, a bit of mending, laid under one arm, something she must have been working at as she had fallen asleep. All of its buttons were torn out, and Robin could pick out three of them scattered amongst the furrows of his blanket, and hidden near the seam of the shirt was something that looked frighteningly like an old arrow hole, hedged with rust-black.
He would not have thought her a mender, this one, but here Regina was, spending days and nights of her careful attentions on making worn clothes and… and himself whole again.
Impulse guided him to reach out (past her sleeping hand, though he would press it) and, with great tenderness, pluck a single button for his own and disappear it into his hand.
It was a magician's trick - well, a pickpocket's - and he knew she would mark its absence, quietly begged forgiveness for the time she would waste searching floor and blankets before giving it up as lost and choosing another, as he had chosen this.
Hers.
If he were a better man, he would wake her.
(He had never been that man.)
Robin pulls a button, flat and wooden and wholly unremarkable,, out of his breast pocket with an air of great significance, and everyone, especially Regina, rolls their eyes.
"It's a button, Locksley, let it go," Alan counsels from beside him as another lad, genuinely puzzled, asked the table, "Who steals a button?"
"I liked you so much better when you were unconscious."
Robin grins at her all the same, all charm for teasing the confession out of her. "Ah, so you do like me."
"Liked, past tense, and a good deal of that was because I thought you were dying." Regina says flatly and turns to John conspiratorily. "You should have seen the way he was carrying on. Dramatics to rival any mummers' play."
"Aye, lass, I've seen 'em myself. He took a splinter in his palm once, and you'd've thought the world was endin' by the way he moaned over it!"
"John, that was an arrow."
They both shrug off his words, confirming that the Merry Men quite prefer Regina's story to the truth of the matter. There's much joking and laughing at Robin's expense, and he allows it for the glint in Regina's eye, for the color in her cheeks that signals pleasure at finally having cracked his men to become one of their number in more than name.
She has worried for it for some time, that the men have found her strange among them, that they keep her company for love of Robin alone, and now perhaps she has quietened that fear with the way they clap her on the back and ask her for the medicinal properties of ale and another story in the same breath.
They leave the tavern to return to their tent, and Regina hangs onto his arm, wobbly-stepped with drink and happiness as she crows at her success (as much as she would ever crow).
It is fitting, somehow, that Robin is the one to take charge of her this time, leading her home and repaying the favor she never sought to collect.
He can't resist. "You are aware that that's not actually the story of how we met, right?"
"Tell me," she says muzzily, contentedly, leaning her head into his shoulder, and he slows his step for her.
There are so many things he must tell to set forth their story in its entirety - the first time she interrupted him in the middle of a job, the first time he chased her, the gold, the danger, the kiss stolen beneath the apple tree.
He wonders if (how) she will remember this tomorrow.
And so he begins with the way their story must always begin, when Regina won't glare at him for his sentimentality and gentle flirting:
"I didn't know it at the time, when I slipped into the serving passageway under our Lord Sheriff's manor, but that was the night I would meet destiny in the form of one Regina Mills - sex goddess, actual goddess, and the one true bandit of Sherwood Forest…"