They walk to Regina's work together in the morning. Emma and Henry dash out a few minutes earlier, Emma driving her little yellow car to Henry's school while Regina finishes up in the kitchen. She's tightlipped around them all now (except Henry, who gets a kiss and a pleasant goodbye) and Marian thinks that the night before had been too vulnerable for all of them.
Except then when they're halfway to Town Hall, Marian's hair tied back and wisps of it coming free in the wind, and Regina says, "When I saw Daniel again, it was like…like everything that had happened between then and now had vanished. As though I was just a girl again, just in love, and it was all I had to be. I'm sure Robin felt the same way when he saw you." Her jaw is tense as she speaks, hands opening and closing against the pockets of her coat as though she's halfway ready to stop herself from reassurances.
Marian breathes out a sigh. "But we're not the people we remember. We're not…the joy wore off quickly and now I fear we'll only disappoint each other." She kicks a rock on the pavement and Regina's foot lands on it, sending it flying directly at Marian's eyes before Regina snatches it from the air. "Perhaps it is over, after all. Perhaps it's time I stopped standing between you two."
"Perhaps you stopped being a fool," Regina retorts acerbically, walking on. "There is nothing unmanageable in your relationship. Robin loves you more than ever, and you still love him, don't you?" She crosses the street to the sheriff's station, high heels pounding the cement as she pounds out words that are as much a comfort as Regina will offer her, and she spins around to face Marian as Marian reaches the sidewalk. "I won't have you force me to into your relationship's death knell. I have no interest–" She takes in a deep breath, lines stretching across her face. "I won't destroy your family's happiness ever again."
Marian opens her mouth- to say what, she doesn't know- but Regina cuts her off before she can speak. "Work at it. Iron it out. See who you are together before you play the martyr." She narrows her eyes at Marian, no malice but impatience with idiocy, and Marian flushes and looks away. "And for the love of god, stop acting as though you're already dead."
She stalks into the sheriff's station, Marian trailing behind, and barks out, "Emma!"
Emma looks up from where she's carefully balancing unsharpened pencils on the tips of her fingers. "Oh, good, have you talked to her about it?"
"Talked about what?" She's bewildered, still off-balance from their conversation outside, and Regina is looking at her expectantly. "Why are we here?"
"You're going to be the new liaison between the Merry Men and the sheriff's station," Regina says abruptly. "They're our new backup team during crises and we'll need you to be on top of that. You'll be working equally with Emma and Robin. I hope that's all right."
"I…why are you…" She shakes her head, unsure of the questions she's supposed to be asking, and she's interrupted by the click of the door. Regina has departed as swiftly as she'd come, and only a shimmer of magic repairing the glass door outside Emma's office as it shatters at Marian is any sign that she'd looked back. "What just happened?"
Emma fiddles with a pencil, smiling to herself. "You were just assigned a job."
"But I'm not– I can't keep a job. I'm not going to–"
"Uh-uh." Emma drops the pencil and opens the bakery plastic container in front of her. "Trust me, it's not worth it to fight Regina on these things. Guess you'd better live. Bearclaw?" She holds out a pastry, a subtle smile still playing at her lips, and Marian blinks at it.
The flippant remark before it doesn't register until she's sitting in the seat Emma gestures at, and her eyes go wide. Guess you'd better live. It's a gauntlet she hadn't expected. It's roots, something more tangible than the family she's clutching at, responsibility and new ground firming beneath her feet.
It's no magic cure, nothing that can undo the fact that she's going to die. But it's a promise of something permanent anyway, a place where she belongs. For the love of god, stop acting as though you're already dead.
Emma watches her as she reels, hand still extended with the bearclaw, and Marian retrieves it and takes a bite.
Robin is inspecting a frozen tree with Mulan and Little John when Roland spots her. "Mama!" he calls, stumbling through the underbrush to her.
She catches him, lifting him into her arms. She still marvels at how heavy he is, how he's been transforms from a little bright-eyed bundle to this human being with needs and desires of his own, who snuggles into her as though he'd missed her. "Roland," she murmurs, kissing his brow.
She'd seen him only briefly while she'd packed up her clothing- had felt guilty asking any more of Robin when she'd been avoiding his touch and itching to run back to the woman who'd nearly killed her rather than look him in the eye- and now she holds him tight, squeezing her eyes closed and feeling stubby little arms wrap around her neck. "Roland," she breathes.
When she opens her eyes, Robin is leaning against the tree, watching her with eyes that hurt, that are pained and confused and lost, and she suddenly wonders if there really is anything to talk about when it comes to pixie dust and soulmates and people who aren't here.
("If he'd come back," she'd asked the night before, after Regina had brought her upstairs to her room. "Your stable boy. If he'd come back instead of me, what would you have done?" Regina hadn't answered, just given her a look that had said clearly that she would do well to dwell less on hypotheticals.)
She's here and she doesn't doubt that he still loves her, even if they aren't quite on the same wavelength. Even if there's someone else out there for him, someone more suitable who she can't quite hate as she should. See who you are together, Regina says, and she closes her eyes again, forces down the dread and fear and remembers–
–Robin, climbing up to her window when she'd been a ward in Nottingham. "Maid Marian!" he'd managed to call before he'd caught his foot on her ledge and gone toppling backward, banging hard against the balcony one floor down.
She'd jumped up from her sitting table and run to the window, forgetting that she'd only been in her nightgown and nothing else. "Robin?" He'd been sprawled out on the stones below and still managed to offer her his most charming smirk. It's hardly charming- just a fool, being foolish, she'd reminded herself- and she'd demanded, "Are you mad? What are you doing here?"
"I brought you a gift." He'd fumbled in his satchel and then brandished a familiar necklace at her.
She'd laughed down at him, tucking her hair behind her ears as it falls forward. "That's mine. You stole it from me."
"Ah, but did it come with a matching ring?" He'd procured a box out of nowhere, tossing it up to her as she'd caught it with both hands, as easily as he'd thrown it. She'd opened it and gasped. "Robin!"
It had been delicate and simple, a ring with a circle of diamonds nearly flat against the band. Later, she'd find out how much time and work he'd spent obtaining it, how he'd refused to steal for it but had labored to earn the money to have it specially made. It had been designed for a rider, for an archer, for a woman bandit; and she'd known that looking at it and known immediately what it had signified.
A promise. Not a commitment, not yet, but a promise of a future together. And she'd stood stock-still, staring openmouthed at the ring until Robin had climbed back up and perched on the windowsill. She'd looked up again and seen him gazing- not at her hand but her face- and her heart had felt so light and she'd met his eyes as she'd slid it onto her finger.
She'd moved forward to kiss him (and he'd fallen off the windowsill again midway through it, but that no longer matters) and she'd thought, in that moment, that this had been her fairytale–
–and it still is. It still can be. She opens her eyes again, feeling that same love bubbling up, and it may have been five years but his foolish smile is the same and his eyes are so warm and she can feel her lips press together and curve upward, unbidden. And there's an itching in her eyes that she can't explain and Mulan is glancing from her to Robin with understanding and then Roland is being gently tugged from her arms and Robin is moving toward her as the others leave the clearing, and she's walking back toward him with unsteady steps. And they meet at the frozen tree.
"Hello," she whispers, and tears spring to her eyes.
He remains still, but she can see the way his gaze shifts to follow her, the way he halts his breathing when she takes his hands in hers and the way his thumb traces the circle of diamonds on her ring finger. And this is who they are, legendary bandits who ride in tandem through the woods and hold hands and laugh together as they flee castles.
"Do you love me?" she asks him, and he's still gazing at her face and not her hand. And he must see something written across it, or perhaps an image- of pixie dust and soulmates and a woman she can't seem to hate.
His eyes darken and he shakes his head slightly; and she waits.
"More than anything in the universe," he murmurs, and he's older but he's still Robin, unmistakably, if she only allows herself to believe it. She doesn't…she thinks she might. With time. With hope.
He raises her fingers to his lips and she raises her eyes to the sky and says, "Oh. Well, I love you. I love you." The words are uncertain as they've never been before, and she repeats them, again and again and again though they never gain strength and he's echoing her and they paint a pattern of I love you into the sky and the woods and the gleam of moonlight against an ice-encrusted tree.
She slips into the mansion that evening after a brief texted warning. She'd spent most of the afternoon with Robin and Roland- which, technically, is still her job, Emma had reminded her when she'd apologized. They'd followed a trail of frozen undergrowth that had petered out not far from the outskirts of town and talked, tentative as though they'd only just met (when they'd first met, there had been nothing tentative about it).
And this world is beginning to feel like it might be right, alien and constricting as it is. She's beginning to see a future here that isn't just prolonging death, a life that includes friends and family and a purpose, and she's terrified to dream any more.
She's relieved when she walks into the living room and only Henry is there, frowning over his mother's paperwork with a pencil. Being around Regina is complicated now. There's guilt and anger and a craving for something she can't place, and she just- she wants to imagine happiness today, nothing more complex required.
"Hi." Henry underlines something carefully and then blinks up at her, grinning. "They're in the dining room playing chess." He lowers his voice. "They're terrible at chess. My mom hasn't beaten me since I was eight."
"Why are they playing, then? I can't imagine Regina would willingly lose to anyone but you." She hears a thump from across the foyer, a low growl followed by the sound of exultation.
Henry shrugs. "Because I took it out. And got them to play." At her raised eyebrows, he sighs. "They've been all weird again lately and I don't like it. I just want things to be good again, but Mom's so angry about…stuff."
He chews on his lip, and she says, "Because Emma brought me back."
"I guess. I mean, I think Mom likes you and she's definitely working on keeping you alive, so I don't know why she'd be holding a grudge?" His voice rises in a question and he blinks down, eyes shifty. "But she's kind of super at holding grudges. She cursed everyone here once because she was mad at Snow White." He flips through his papers again. "I don't want her mad at Emma like that."
"I don't think she will be." It's a hunch built around the stillness of Regina the night before, gazing after Emma with her whole body angled after her and something close to longing in her eyes. "And Emma's been on her best behavior, hasn't she?"
Henry opens his mouth to respond, but then Emma's voice cuts into their conversation, loud and smug as she crows, "Ha! What are you going to do without your queen, Your Majesty?"
"Maybe not best behavior," Marian amends.
Henry grins. "No, this is really good for her. I have the worst moms." But he's smiling when he says it, eyes bright and proud, and she can only dream that someday Roland might have that much love in his eyes when he thinks of her and Robin.
"I don't need a queen to crush you, you imbecile," Regina grits out from the next room, and Marian departs from Henry to them to see them sitting opposite each other, Emma slouching low enough that her chin is resting on her arm and Regina is alternating between bending over the board and sitting straight to glare at Emma. They knock pieces off the board with ferocious glee until there are fewer than ten remaining and Emma is using her queen like a bludgeon as Regina dances circles around her and they haven't even noticed Marian in the doorway.
Not until Emma hisses, "Ha. Check–" and Regina's finger on her king slips and the chess piece is shooting across the room, knocking down the rest as it hurtles toward Marian's open mouth.
Regina appears in a puff of smoke in front of her and snatches the piece out of the air. "I suppose we're done," she says, glancing at the mess of the board.
"Oh, yeah. How convenient." Emma narrows her eyes at Regina and Regina purses her lips, unmoved. Emma rolls her eyes. "Hey, Marian. Good day? No one trying to kill you?" They both look at her expectantly and she feels suddenly shy at their inquiring gazes.
"Only the usual," she says, flushing when Regina peers at her face. "We were tracing those frozen trees, but they stopped too soon to see where they were coming from."
"Huh." Emma frowns. "I'm going to call Ruby and see if she can sniff anything out for you tomorrow. How long have these cold spots been appearing in the woods?"
"Robin says he hadn't seen any until after Zelena was defeated." She thinks about it, brow creasing as she shifts in place. "Do you think it's connected to me?"
Regina's jaw tightens. "No. Not you." Emma fidgets beside her, brow creasing as she struggles to remember– something– and Regina says, "Emma. A word in the kitchen."
They're shouting in tightly restrained voices, low and furious and struggling to keep it from Henry's and Marian's ears (is she one of the children in this family or somewhere in between?) and failing miserably, and Henry sits glumly at the dining room table, pushing his chess pieces back and forth on the board as he listens.
They talk about Emma in the past and Regina accuses Emma of being careless and Emma snaps back that she's trying and Regina's one to talk about carelessness, isn't she? And then they're recounting old grievances and they begin on Henry, Henry, Henry and it's bitter and furious and Marian has never heard them like this. She glimpses them through the doorway and she's never seen them like this, either, Regina barefoot and still looming close enough to sneer up at Emma from much too close and Emma's face dark and angry as she leans down.
"Maybe you should go upstairs," Marian murmurs to Henry. "They won't want you to hear this."
"I don't care what they want." Henry pushes forward the white knight and the black queen and shoves a white pawn between them. "They don't care what I want, so why should I?" He swipes a hand on the table and knocks down all three as Emma's voice rises.
Regina's words sound wet, heavy with underlying frustrations and close to sobs, but her tone is still cutting and Emma lashes out with swift fury, slash-slash-slash and then she's storming from the room and from the house and Regina hurls a glass after her that hits the wall and shatters.
Improbably but completely expected, a dozen shards of glass bounce off the wall to make a beeline for Marian, and Regina appears in the doorway to repair the goblet and settle it down onto the table. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she looks exhausted and angry and devastated and Henry won't look up, so Marian retrieves the glass silently and walks past Regina into the kitchen. She finds Regina's apple cider and pours a glass for the other woman that Regina accepts gratefully.
She swallows half the glass in one gulp and says, "I'm sorry you had to see that. Both of you. Emma and I are…volatile."
Henry doesn't respond. Marian says, "I've noticed."
"It's good that she left. Having her here was a mistake. I'm sure the Savior would have found some new way to destroy me," Regina mutters, and Henry sighs heavily and backs away from the table, stomping back to the living room. "I suppose I should go to him."
"No," Marian says automatically. Regina is still drinking cider and pouring more with a wobbly hand, and she guides her to the table. It's a strange kind of peace that settles within her at helping the Ev– No. Not the Evil Queen. It's Regina whom she's helping, settling down in a chair and pressing a hand to her back. Regina with a son in the next room and a…an Emma who she can still see from the kitchen window, pacing back and forth at the end of the block. "You need to calm down. Henry can wait."
She takes out the whole pitcher of cider from the fridge and sets it on the table, and Regina's head is drooping more and more with each sip taken. Marian sits opposite her and fills up a glass of her own.
Regina alternates between swallowing cider and staring out the window at the figure silhouetted in the streetlight, pensive, until she says abruptly, "I know you, don't I?"
"Yes. You tried to kill me once, remember?"
"No." Regina blinks at her, head tilted and teeth pressed to her bottom lip. "Before. You were…you were a cousin?"
"Hardly." She'd thought of Regina as a cousin for years, though that had faded once she'd heard tell of what the older girl had become. First whispers, more derisive than they'd been even at King Xavier's court. Cora finally bagged her king. The girl is just like her mother. Then, at visits back to see her family, fearful murmurs and an odd hint of pride. For all their judgment of her, Regina had been one of their own, and she'd seized control of one of the mightiest of the higher kingdoms. Marian had grown wary. "But yes. My mother was a childhood friend of your uncle the king."
Regina puts down her glass, massaging her temples as she fights to remember. "We rode together," she murmurs. "Mother hated when I rode bareback and I had been angry with her for…something. Something inconsequential. I rode to spread rumors and you asked me to teach you."
"You were the only girl in that palace I wanted to know." She hadn't been an outcast but she hadn't exactly been one of the girls, either, too distant from the royal lineage to stand out as a notable acquaintance. And she'd only been a child, not yet schooled in the social niceties that princesses had been taught from a younger age. Regina had been different in her eyes, graceful and beautiful but an outsider as well, and she'd ridden that horse like a champion from the legends.
And she'd been nothing but patient with Marian, encouraging her forward and laughing with her. They'd spent two days lunching together in the harvest fields just outside the wet forests and she'd hung onto Regina's every word and sworn she'd be just like her when she was fifteen, untamed and powerful and kind.
Regina is staring at her bleary-eyed, looking horrified. "I killedyou. You were…I didn't have friends, not with my mother, but you were…I killed you."
The cider and the argument have done their work and Regina's defenses are down, her face more expressive than Marian's ever seen before. Regina has always been distant around her, guarded and snippy even when she's being kind, but now she's gaping at Marian and shaking her head and there's not a feature of hers that mirrors the Evil Queen's, not now.
"You killed a lot of people," Marian points out, uncomfortable. "That doesn't change even if you'd spared me for our history."
Regina shakes her head again, the next admission emerging stilted and reluctant. "I wouldn't have. I would have…I would have been infuriated by you helping Snow and killed you on the spot." She catches Marian's gaze before she can look away. "How the hell can you sit here with me like this?"
She doesn't know. She believes in redemption, of course- they'd had reformed villains within the Merry Men on occasion and Robin had always had a soft heart for those who'd turned from dark ways- but Regina had been a menace, a terrifying, uncaring cold woman who'd wanted only the misery of others. She'd gloried in it, wiped out at least one full town of rebels who'd supported Snow White, and done it all with a sneer on her face, according to the stories.
And now she's sitting in her kitchen with a glass of cider and Regina's son in the next room and she's unafraid and it boggles her that they've gotten to this point, that somewhere along the line she's come to genuinely care about Regina. That this is a place of comfort for her.
She shrugs uneasily and Regina doesn't tear her gaze away, and when she says, "You're going to live this time," it's both a non sequitur and not one at all, a promise when nothing else can be changed. When there is death written across Regina's face and she won't look away.
She still doesn't know if living is so feasible, but it's impossible to look at Regina in that moment and think otherwise.
Regina speaks to Henry while Marian pretends not to hear. The former queen has her knees curled up under her on the couch and she's bent forward and there's nothing in her eyes anymore but sincerity and even Henry begins to fold under that face. He sighs and shrugs and says, I just want you to be friends and Regina looks just as wistful as she promises to work on it.
She leaves happier than she'd come and Henry shuffles through the papers again, chewing on his lip and looking up at her. "You're working with my mom now, right, Marian? Emma," he clarifies, and she nods. "Can you tell her that her reports suck? How are you at paperwork?"
It's nice to laugh after the rest of the night. "Not good enough. I'm very new to this world and to the sheriff's station."
"Damn." He scowls and then his eyes widen. "Crap. I mean. Don't tell my mom I said that or she'll blame Emma for it, too."
She switches couches to sit down beside him, leafing through the sheriff's reports that he's been organizing. "I hope your mother is properly employing you, too. You've been working at this for a while, haven't you?"
He sets the papers down. "Yeah, but I asked to do it. Mom works from home a lot more since the curse broke, so she has loads of paperwork here now. And it's good practice."
"What for?"
He shrugs self-consciously. "Politics? I kind of like this stuff." He chews on his pen for a moment, looking down as though he's too embarrassed to admit it. "I used to want to be a knight or a prince. Like a real fairytale hero. And it's still cool to think about, but I wouldn't want to live back in your world. Sorry."
"I'm not offended. Your world is…" More structured, easier to understand. Open with opportunities unavailable in the old world unless you knew the right fairies or royals. She'd seen devastation and destitution there, and while she doesn't doubt that it exists somewhere in this world, it isn't in this town. "Freer."
He nods. "This is my town. My mom's town. I want to take care of it and I guess I need to be the mayor to do that." He twists the pen between his fingers. "And I'm pretty good at writing and math and getting people to do what I want, and I bet I could protect it like my moms do." He fiddles with his pen, a bit red at the ears. "It's stupid."
"I don't think it is," she says, and he grins to himself and lifts up the papers again, eyes moving quickly through the lines on the page.
"You're an idiot if you think running off is going to help anything. Henry was–" A pause from down the hall, and then an indignant, "Yes, he was! I wouldn't usemy son to bring you back here. Not that it's not far more pleasant without you, dear." Marian quirks an eyebrow as Regina continues snapping into the phone. "Fine. Sleep in your smoke-infested apartment and die, but don't expect me to come to your funeral." She hesitates for a moment, and Marian waits patiently, hand on her door to close it. "I don't want you here," she says, and falters. "Goodnight, Miss Swan."
She clicks the phone off and catches sight of Marian across the hall. "I really hate that woman," she mutters. Regina flushes from her ears, too, but forward to her cheeks instead of behind them like her son.
"Do you?" Marian asks innocently, biting back a smirk.
Regina opens her mouth to respond and the doorbell rings.
They hurry downstairs, Regina tugging on a robe and Marian snatching her shawl. Regina's foot catches it on the last step and she goes flying into the air, the shawl catching her by her neck as Regina grabs her hand and they both crash to the ground. At least she's still breathing.
It's no surprise to discover Emma waiting behind the door, phone still in hand. More unexpected is Robin, equally sheepish as Emma claps her other hand onto his shoulder. "I…uh." Emma's blush is the same as Henry's, dropping down to her neck. "I happened to be nearby when you called." Her hair is windblown and she looks tired, like she's been pacing the local streets for the past few hours. Or maybe just sitting on the porch, playing the waiting game with the other most stubborn woman in this world. "And I found a trespasser."
"I didn't wish to intrude," Robin says quickly, and he's avoiding eye contact with Regina with the same energy as she does him. "I was only waiting for…" He ducks his head like he's being caught on their estate grounds and chastised by Marian's mother again and she can't keep her heart from skipping a beat.
"His wife," Regina says, offering her a tight smile. "Of course you can come in."
"I shouldn't." He takes a step back, and Marian touches his arm tentatively, glancing to Regina for confirmation.
She nods and says, "You might as well, too," to Emma, and turns on her heel to leave. Emma reaches for her elbow in the exact same motion as Marian had to Robin, and Regina halts. "What?"
"I…uh." Emma licks her lips. "Do you have any coffee?"
"It's eleven at night."
"Right. I forgot." She looks desperate to hang onto Regina's arm and Regina turns reluctantly to face her. They have a conversation with no words at all, Emma reddening and Regina pursing her lips and both their faces pained like their eye contact alone is enough to strain at their insides.
Marian takes pity on them both. "Regina, didn't I see some of that grapefruit juice Emma likes in your icebo- fridge?"
"Yes!" Regina says, turning to face her, and Marian sees the moment she catches Robin's gaze- bemused as he remains in the doorway- instead.
She freezes up like she's been trapped in place and he shifts closer to Marian and it's a sudden new tension that fills the room. And Marian can't keep herself from glancing from one to the other, searching for longing in their eyes. For something more than there is when Robin looks at her.
But there's nothing but guilt and misery and discomfort. And maybe that's indication enough that they're unresolved and this is bound to go wrong again, but Marian can't focus on that right now. She can't think about them because it's not a part of a world that she's in and– "That juice sounds good," Emma says, her thumb running over the bend of Regina's elbow, and Regina breathes out and breaks the contact with Robin.
They disappear into the kitchen and Robin says ruefully, "I didn't expect Regina to get over me quite so quickly."
"They aren't…well. They think they aren't." She cranes her neck to see them at the kitchen table, Regina pouring juice into Emma's glass while Emma sits, hands wrapped around the cup as she remains intent on Regina's face. "What brought you here?" she asks, leading him to the living room. He's looking around as though he's never seen the house before. It's a petty relief.
"Ah. Yes. I was waiting to say hello?" he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
She raises her eyebrows at him, seeing the lie on his face at once. "And yesterday?" she says on a hunch. She knows Robin better than anyone, even now, and the more she sees of him the less she believes that he's become all that different.
It's a direct hit, and Robin scratches at his beard shamefacedly. "It's only that I don't like being away from you now. Not after I lost you once out of my own carelessness."
"It wasn't your carelessness, it was mine." She'd been determined to prove to herself that her skills were still sharp even after the months of sickness and Roland's birth, and she'd ridden out to the edge of the Northern Kingdoms to hunt with her bow. Robin had had nothing to do with it.
He shakes his head. "You don't know…I was going to go after you. I knew you were going to do something reckless. But there was talk of Prince James riding through Nottingham and I thought…I thought I'd catch up to you." His fingers twist away from hers and he stares at the fireplace to his left.
She stares back toward the kitchen entrance, biting her lip. She'd known that he'd follow her, of course, and she'd been determined to lose him, a game they'd played dozens of times before. They'd rarely been down to the Evil Queen's kingdom. Robin had never been one to meddle in magic and she'd teased his caution, had ridden down that way and expected him to track her down. And he hadn't, and she'd been caught at the border. "You would have been captured, too," she says finally. "Roland would have been alone. There's no use in dwelling on regrets."
But he moves to her and then away again, a hand brushing her hair from her face as his fingers settle to cup her chin. "I spent five years dwelling on regrets," he murmurs, and she closes her eyes and feels his kiss brush against her lips. "I can't lose you again."
He tastes like all her fears bottled up and released, like a future that terrifies her. Because without his regrets, without the pain of losing her, what will there be left between them? What will they be once the relief of seeing her again fades?
"You won't," she assures him, managing a smile, and she remembers flying bannisters and exploding ovens and a dozen other ways she's been in danger today. And she wonders again if it might be easier if she were gone. For the love of god, stop acting as though you're already dead. "Regina will make sure of it," she says, and it's with certainty.
His eyes soften. "I'm glad she's taking care of you," he admits. "There isn't another person in this town as powerful I'd trust. Except perhaps Emma." He frowns. "Have they had a falling out?"
"Regina's very angry with Emma about...something. And Emma must be feeling guilty. She doesn't strike me as the kind of woman who'd hang her head and let Regina vent at her without due cause." She glances toward the kitchen again.
She can see his eyes, still curious, but she doesn't have the energy to explain their suspicions as to the source of the rift. Surprisingly, there's a growing part of her that doesn't want to foster new anger between Robin and Regina. (It's the part of her that's beginning to believe that she might live, even in this shaky future where there's only death. She isn't selfless about it.)
They speak of inanities and she folds awkwardly into Robin's arms and thinks about Regina losing her happy ending. She thinks about Henry and Regina's face around him, about Emma's smile and Regina's hesitant beam, and she doesn't understand entirely why Regina would feel as though she's lost anything at all when she's had what Marian has now all along.
She hears their voices from the next room, still pitched too loud to be cordial but stilted enough that she knows they're trying. And then she hears Regina, Have you eaten anything tonight? and Emma's mumbled I'm fine, and when she walks Robin out she sees them at the table, Emma staring down at a plate of food and Regina half-turned from the table with eyes that flicker back to Emma and then down to her twisting fingers, again and again and again.
"Sneezy reported a break-in last night, so I headed out here to check it out, and…" Emma gestured to the streetlamp outside the shop. Mulan brushes fingers against the ice and Marian spots the place where it hits the ground and radiates outward into the street.
"What was stolen?" Regina asks. She's standing at a safe distance, but the lamp still disengages from the ground once to fall toward Marian's head. Regina catches it with a twitch of her fingers and sets it back in place.
"Almost nothing. That's the strange part. Not cigarettes, not any of the knives, nothing that usually vanishes from the shop. The candy displays were overturned and the refrigerators were frosted over, but nothing quantifiable." She glances at her phone, flipping through photos while they look on. "Oh, and one other thing that he isn't totally positive about, but…here. See those?"
Marian blinks at the packaging on the box. "Are those for the bloodtime?"
Emma makes a face, and Regina says, "Menstruating, Emma."
"Uh…yeah. You have these at home?"
"We have cloths cut in the same way, with a glue below. Not in the woods with the Merry Men," she amends, remembering hastily collected rags with sap pressed to them. "It's an upper-class commodity. The ice creature has a bloodtime?" She contemplates the box and turns to Mulan. "Unless it's…"
"You think that this freezing creature is no creature," Mulan agrees, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "You brought back…someone from the past. Not something. A girl."
"A royal," Regina puts in. "No peasant would see that package and know what purpose it had."
"So a princess who can turn trees to ice." Emma glances at her phone for another second before she slaps her head. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
They all stare at her, and she blinks at them. "Why are you not getting this? Have you all been living in a cave for the past year?"
"No, a castle," Regina says dryly, and Mulan nods in assent. Marian says, "I was dead then."
"Right. Crap. Why didn't Henry figure this one out?" She rubs her eyes. "Elsa. It's Elsa. Frozen? The Disney movie?"
Regina heaves a long-suffering sigh. "A Disney movie called Frozen came out and you didn't think to inform us? Emma."
"I really didn't spend much time thinking about fairytales when I was away for the year!" Emma protests. "It made for a nice change, okay? Not that I knew it then, but I wasn't seeing pictures of Snow White and thinking 'Mommy!' It was a nice place to be." She ducks her head, glancing through her eyelashes at Regina. "Thank you."
Marian doesn't know what the thank you is for, but Regina looks mollified at once. "Yes, well, we should get to finding this Elsa. She would have come up from…" Her voice trails off and she looks suddenly haggard, weary of something she doesn't explain. Emma moves closer to her, a hand hovering against her back. Regina doesn't pull away.
"The portal you two went through," Mulan finishes when no one else does. "Where was that?"
"Zelena's house," Emma murmurs, and Marian understands the stiffness now.
"Your sister."
Regina nods stiffly. "Sister is an exaggeration. I hardly knew the woman." But she's turning away from them, that single crack in her facade apparently already too much. Emma steps forward with her and Regina pulls away this time. "If you touch me right now, I'll turn you to ash," she says through gritted teeth, and Emma rolls her eyes.
"Okay, Regina. Mulan, can you go get Robin and his men? If she turns us all to ice, we're going to need some backup." Emma calls up a map on her phone, tracing the lines on the screen to show Mulan where they're going. "Marian, you're with us. You're a decent tracker, right?"
"I don't have a werewolf's nose, but I can find a girl in a house."
"Good." She starts walking, Marian at her side and Regina a few steps behind. "Robin and I scoped out the house back when this started, but there was no sign of any animals or energy that would have been a problem. It hadn't occurred to us that there was someone actively hiding from us." She makes a face. "I never even saw the movie, I just watched the presentation at the Oscars. It was a whole big deal. Something about sisters. I didn't have sisters- not permanent ones I liked- and I wasn't planning on making Henry a big brother anytime soon, so…"
"Well, I had a sister," Regina muses darkly. "She killed herself when I offered mutual understanding, so I don't think they're all they're cracked up to be."
Emma chews on her lip and says nothing. Marian murmurs, "You never said she killed herself." She'd known that the woman was dead, but she'd also known that she'd been terrorizing the people for over a year before that. She'd wondered, more than once, if Regina had had to be the one to kill her, but this is somehow just as bad. She killed herself when I offered mutual understanding. Regina had reached out and her sister had chosen death.
"We found her gone the day you arrived, actually. My sister committed suicide and was replaced with a cousin I'm destined to kill. Not a surprising turn of events for my family, actually," Regina says. It's conversational, the edge to it just below the surface.
Regina offers facts, cold, pitiable facts that no one else will when it comes to her, even those who care about her. And maybe it's about garnering sympathy, but it's just as telling that this is the only way she can get it, and Marian feels a rush of compassion regardless as they walk to Emma's yellow car.
Apparently I just don't have much time during the week when I'm using all my free time for writing, so comment responses will come over the weekend. The final chapter should be out early next week!