They won't speak again until Boxing Day, but he sees her on Christmas Eve. There are services, of course, and it's expected that everyone in town will show their face at some point, either for the Christmas morning services, or the smaller Christmas Eve service the night before. Robin prefers the Eve – it's a smaller crowd, more intimate, somehow more personal. And he rather enjoys the way they end the service by dimming the lights and singing "Silent Night" in the glow of the candles carefully lit from person to person.
Regina prefers the Eve too, he knows, but she'll be here for both services regardless. Her mother will attend both of them as a matter of good publicity, and Robin knows that Ophelia has the coveted role of a heralding angel in their morning service's Christmas pageant. He can't imagine Regina will miss that.
Tonight, he's sat six rows behind her and a ways to the left, near the end of a row in a spot Ruby and Granny have saved for him, as per usual. They'd done it first the year of Marian's passing, when he wasn't sure if he'd make the services at all, too bogged down in his grief. She'd loved the candlelight closing as well, his Marian, and he'd thought the whole thing would just remind him too much of her.
Maybe that year he'd go in the morning, he'd said to Ruby from one of the diner's barstools a few days before Christmas.
She'd shrugged, and said that made sense, adding entirely too nonchalantly that there'd probably be more people who'd want to see him at the morning service anyway.
That had given Robin pause – he'd known she was probably right, that the morning services would be full of people telling him how good it was to see him, how they hoped he was still managing to have a Merry Christmas on this first one without her, how much they missed her usual spice cookies in the fellowship hall after services.
"Maybe I'll stick with the Eve after all," he'd muttered into his coffee, and Ruby had smirked and promised to save him a seat. He'd expected to find her and Granny in their usual prime aisle spots when he'd shown up at the chapel a scant three minutes before the service was set to begin, but he'd been wrong – they'd taken seats on the far aisle this time, leaving a spot at the very end open for him.
"In case you need to duck out," Ruby had told him (with sympathy, but not pity, and for that he'd always been grateful to her), and for the first time in quite a while he'd felt a little bit of warmth seep back into his bones.
Ever since then, it had been tradition, the three of them here on Christmas Eve, taking up the last three spots on the left side of the sixth row.
He'd spent that Christmas Eve service focusing on anything he could but the service itself – mostly the people, this town he'd been so warmly adopted into, the one he'd been debating if he had stomach enough to remain in without Marian.
And for a long, long stretch of that service, he'd stared at her . Regina, in the same spot she is right now. Front pew as always, just beside her mother. It had been her husband on her other side, then, and her father beside her mother. Two matching sets of ill-matched spouses, sitting dutifully together to keep up appearances.
This year, Ophelia sits to her right instead, her red hair plaited into a crown around her head (something he has a distinct recollection of watching her attempt to do again and again without much success, in the corner booth at Granny's not even a month ago; she seems to have gotten the hang of it now, though – or she'd gotten help from a certain visiting aunt). Zelena is on the other side, completing the family.
He remembers them that year, too. Ophelia had been young then, only just four, and squirrely as preschoolers so often are. Zelena had kept her in the back, where it was easier to take her out if she got rowdy, and of course she had.
Robin had found them in the church's front lobby when he'd ducked out himself a good ten minutes before the end of the service. They were bearing down on "Silent Night," and suddenly he hadn't been sure if he could bear it, his heart weighing heavier and heavier, grief squeezing vice-like around it.
He'd slipped up the side aisle, in search of a bit of fresh air – or at the very least, a place to shed a tear in private – and there they'd been. Ophelia in a green velvet Christmas dress, her hair a riot of ringlets back then, chattering away to her exhausted-looking mother about Santa Claus and presents and if she could maybe have just one more cookie before bed.
She'd been oblivious to the quiet reverence of the service going on in the sanctuary, just as she'd been oblivious to Robin's darkening mood when she'd noticed him coming through the doors. She wriggled out of Zelena's hold and barrelled at him with all the excitement of a child with a new toy – not far off, considering she'd only had her mother for entertainment for the last little while.
He'd been more than happy for the distraction of gappy baby teeth, and freckles, and giggling, rambling recitations of a story he'd come to find out was a liberally adapted retelling of Frosty the Snowman . She'd seen it for the first time just that evening, and spent quite a bit of time telling Robin all about top hats, and parades through town, and something very sad about a greenhouse and it being hot.
It hadn't made much sense, but it had been the greatest story ever told as far as he was concerned.
He hadn't even noticed when the low chorus of voices began inside, hadn't had time to feel that gnawing ache in his middle over the first candlelight processional without his wife.
He's had a soft spot for Ophelia Mills ever since.
He watches tonight, as she leans over and whispers something to Regina, making her aunt turn and grin at her. It's just the right angle to have Regina's profile suddenly starkly defined by the glowing lights all around, and Robin feels his heart skip that beat again.
The holidays always remind him of Regina, for better or worse. There are simply too many memories of this season tied up around her for it not to.
This year, though, there's no heaviness to the thought of her. Not from his end, anyway. She's melancholy, and understandably so, but Robin, well… Robin is just glad to see her. All too glad to spend an evening half-listening to passages from Luke while he studies the way the light glints off the dark coffee color of her hair, or the way she gets a sharp elbow from Cora when she and Ophelia giggle to each other again. (They both sober up and sit straighter, but Robin sees Regina's shoulders shake once more, an aftershock of mirth that ripples over into Ophelia, too.)
He must have been staring for longer than he realizes, because Ruby leans over to whisper in his ear, "Is it too soon to ask her out?"
Robin tries valiantly to stifle his snorted laugh in response, shaking his head and muttering in reply, "I think it's customary to wait for the ink to dry, yeah."
She shrugs and straightens back up, and Robin tells himself to focus on something other than the back of Regina Mills' head for the rest of the service.
When it comes time for their "Silent Night," it goes as always, row by row. The first candle lit from one on the altar, and then brought down to that first row, where the light is passed from neighbor to neighbor in anticipation of the coming light of the Christ child. And then as each row is finished, they head up the center aisle and out into that front lobby, out into the night.
He watches Regina again, then, watches her shield her flame carefully with her free hand and the way the candlelight dances over her face. He can see the red of her dress through her open coat, festive with some sort of metallic flecks glittering slightly in the candlelight.
She passes by without seeing him, and he wonders if she's at all aware of his precise presence at the Christmas Eve services the way he so often is of hers.
When the candlelight reaches their row, he lights his flame from Ruby's, and then turns to give light to Belle just behind him before he waits for their row to filter out of the pew.
Regina is there in the lobby when he emerges, making small talk with her mother and Dr. Hopper. She smiles at the man, and it's pinched, half-assed. Robin watches her speak, makes out her, Thank you, but I'm doing fine , and pities her for having to spend her whole holiday break talking about the end of her marriage.
And then she looks up, over, and catches him staring. For a moment their eyes lock, and her smile softens, fills her face, her eyes, with warmth, and Robin can't help but grin at the sight.
He lifts a hand in greeting, and she does the same before mouthing, Merry Christmas.
Robin says it back, aloud, but quiet enough that she can't hear from a half-dozen feet away, "Merry Christmas, Regina."
And then Cora is tugging at her attention again, and Ruby is ducking an arm through his and dragging him over to say hello to Leroy and Astrid.
When he looks for her again, Regina has already gone.