This is what it would feel like, Robin realised, to be turned to stone by the legendary Medusa's fiery eyes, if we slowed time.

First he just felt very cold and very tired, but after a time the pounding of his heart slowed down, frost flooded his veins and stilled his limbs, and in the end, it was even beginning to be hard to breathe…

He was a dead man still alive, a living statue, a prisoner waiting for his execution, a lingering ghost, a tin man without a heart.

He didn't want to die before holding his son in his arms one last time.

It was Regina who broke the silence. 'Well, I suppose you've earned that,' she he told Rumple. She had expected him to fight back, to snarl at her like an impatient dragon like he always would, but he only said, with more guilt in his voice than she had known even existed, 'I have.'

'Elsa, let's go,' pleaded the girl called Anna, 'I have a way home.' Elsa's eyes opened wide with surprise and hope and delight. 'You do?' 'Yes,' replied Anna, just as excited, 'a magic bean! Chris-'

'Hush,' Elsa silenced her and looked at them as if she had noticed it only then that they were still there. She eyed them with hateful suspicion. It was scary to see how fast she could transform from a happy girl into the Ice Queen.

Her eyes stopped on Rumple. 'I will let you live,' she hissed, bursting, 'But just don't think for a moment that I will ever forgive you.'

'It's alright, dearie, I don't need your forgiveness,' he said. Or was it really "I don't need your forgiveness"?

Elsa's eyes narrowed; she turned away abruptly and pulled Anna with her as she hurried away.

'Where is he? ' Marian pushed herself inside the library. 'I've heard what happened, came as soon as I could…' her words caught up in her throat.

He was sitting in the corner, just as he always would, his handsome face etched with a regretful sorrow… and he was made of solid ice.

There was a terrible moment when she had already understood what she saw but could not – would not – believe it yet, a horrible second when her belly twisted, her lungs refused to draw breath, and her heart ceased to beat at the sight of his lifeless expression.

Did she cry out his name before she ran to him, and fell down on the floor by his feet? Was she crying, and wailing, or was she as silent as a dead lake? She didn't know, and it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that his beautiful body had been frozen by some foul spell, that his life had been robbed, that she would never hear his voice again or fall asleep in his arms, that the glow of his lively eyes were gone for good and would never return…

Not now, she thought miserably, not now that I've just got you back. She wished she had died in that prison; it would have been a better fate than this; this that required her to witness his death.

Despite he was painfully cold, she threw her arms around him and kissed the ice that had been his lips.

'You can't wake him up,' said a silent voice sadly. Wake him up? Was it possible to wake him up?! 'What?' she asked in an hysteric bit of laughter.

The Blue Fairy's sympathetic expression, she couldn't explain why, didn't seem genuine. 'Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart.' But she loved him! No one loved Robin more than her in the whole world, why wasn't he waking up?!

'You may love him,' the fairy went on, 'and he may love you back, but you can't wake him up, because you aren't supposed to be here.' Marian struggled to understand her words, to interpret their meaning among the helpless screams of her soul that demanded to know why he wasn't waking up. 'You weren't supposed to live to see these times. And therefore magic refuses to let you have any influence on it.' Marian tried but did not understand, it was too complicated for her bent little mind.

'But I was saved,' she protested, 'I escaped the prison, the past, my death!'

'Yes,' said Blue, 'but you can't run forever.' What was that supposed to mean? What did the fairy think she was running from? Her destined death, or her past, or just the next prison?

Why wasn't he waking up?

She was crying so fervently that her whole body shook.

Someone tried to pull her up. She clutched to the leg of the chair he sat on, tight, but her fingers were unfolded and she was dragged away from his feet. 'No, ' she pleaded weakly, 'no, let me back to him.' But they didn't listen. Her teared eyes never left him, not for the shortest moment, no matter how many people were getting between them, and so she noticed immediately when someone replaced her by his side. 'Robin,' her voice was hoarse, and she had short, dark hair. She was too broken to know her, to pay attention to who she was, but she already hated her. No one was allowed to call his name like this, no one except her! She took his frozen hand in hers and whispered something before kissing him.

Marian didn't know how long it lasted for Robin to wake up, but when he finally did, instead of looking for her, his wife, he lost his glance in her eyes.

When they kissed each other she pulled free of the gentle hands that had supported her for a time, and flung at the Evil Queen. She wanted to hurt her; to claw her eyes out for loving Robin as much as she did, to kill her for being able to save him when she wasn't, to strangle her a thousand times because Robin loved her back.

But she was stopped, pulled back and shouted at, so she ran outside, and roamed the hostile streets till her jealousy turned her mad, till all her tears burned away.

In the outskirts of town, she heard some people talking in the distance, and she hid from their eyes; she didn't want to talk to any living soul. If Robin was able to fall in love with someone else then her life wasn't worth living. She was supposed to be dead anyway, she thought bitterly, as no one failed to remind her every once in a while. Why bother to pretend that it was alright when it wasn't, that their life would go on just as it did before when it wouldn't?

No, no it wouldn't. They would go their separate ways. Robin could have that… person… but he couldn't take her son away from her, too. She would have Roland, at least.

The three people whose words she had heard were passing before her hiding place. She had never seen them before. 'But still… ' said a skeptic voice. '…a bean? Will it work?' 'One of those brought us here,' answered another. 'Don't worry Elsa, once we're back in Arendelle everything will be alright.' 'I hope so… Oh I hope so…'

Elsa? Arendelle?

A magic bean? If it was that kind of bean that she suspected it was, then it would be just what she needed. It could take her somewhere where she belonged, where she didn't have to run. Could it take her back in time as well, if she used it on the same spot where she had emerged into this crazy world?

She followed them.

She was peeking through the leaves of a bush, her heart hammering in her chest. She tried to make no sound, to not spoil it now when she had almost won. They were standing to her left in the gleaming snow.

'Ready?' asked the man. 'Yes!' cried Anna excitedly. Elsa just nodded. 'Alright then…' he said, 'one, two, three!' He threw the bean in the air; it flew in a high, perfect arch.

Marian leapt from the bush and caught it in her fist before it could fall down like a practised acrobat, and then, hoping she could get rid of them among the houses, ran hellbound for her son.

'Marian!' called Robin as he arrived home. 'Marian, let me explain…' but there was no answer. He walked into Roland's room; no sign of the boy. He was told before that Snow White was looking after Henry and some others for some time so he called her up.

'Is Roland with you? ' he asked, dreading the answer.

'He was,' she said, surprised at the worried tone of his voice. 'Marian took him a few minutes ago. She looked a little upset,' she added cautiously, 'is everything alright?'

Robin stared into thin air, a hundred scary possibilities running before his eyes. 'I don't know.'