Part 15
Robin
Robin lies on the cold hard ground, his chest burns, pain deep in his heart, sharp and hot. He curls his body on the ground, legs drawn to his chest as if to cradle the ache there.
The sharp pain dissipates, he knows he is not injured, the pain is not his own.
The magic sent by the Queen did not hit him,the flash of black intended to kill, avoided but he cannot move, he needs to be, just be and lying on the ground seems the best option right now.
Eyes open or eyes closed, it makes no difference, the image is burnt on his retinas, Regina dark and terrible, looking straight at him and through him, not one flicker of recognition nor hesitation for him and it hurts, he thought that perhaps for him, it would be different.
The silence around him breaks, the air fills with shouts and the rustle of movement. Arms reach round him, set him on his feet, he shakes a dazed head at the activity, mumbles a reply.
He turns, the Prince has Regina in his arms, her arm falling loose against his side, head rolled back, the Prince shifts her weight, pulls her tighter in a protective hold.
"She lives" Little John answers his unspoken question, hand on his forearm, Robin shakes him off, "Do what is needed" he instructs, the words sound harsh to his ears, he didn't mean them to be but finds himself unable to take them back, to soften the order and an order it is. Selfish he thinks as he walks away, selfish like his father, coward he thinks, coward like his true brother but he keeps walking.
His feet take him deep into the forest, not to his camp, where his wife and son wait, not to a clearing where he sat with Regina and saw her the depths of her soul but away to another clearing where nature is perverted by magic, where the air is so cold it burns his lungs, a place of great sorrow and loss he thinks but knows not why.
The sigh that leaves him as he settles against the broken tree releases the tension he feels. Battle weary, a feeling he knows too well.
A battle will leave a man or woman feeling this way, when the fighting is over and as the adrenaline boils away, before the inevitable exhaustion, the body and mind fight on, muscles tense waiting for the next onslaught, mind still sharp, senses heightened until the energy vanishes leaves a dull hollowness.
For him it has always been the same, some rejoice in their survival but Robin's mind always remains on the battle field, replaying every horror for hours after, he has brought death to many a man but never takes it lightly so how then, can he have forgiven Regina for her horrors? has forgiven her sins but cannot forgive his own?
He should be angry with her for the faceless deaths in her name, the carnage that she wrought in the name of revenge, for her part in his wife's death but he knows the rules of war, does not excuse nor like them but he understands the games of war and the cost.
He is angry, anger left unspoken at the time, the first night of her return has festered into resentment, buried itself deep in Robin's heart, a splinter he cannot tweeze out.
He had thought her dead but she was not and she had chosen to help another, leaving her family in despair. She held his heart in her hands then, as surely as he had held Regina's but she had chosen a stranger over her family leaving them for weeks until she had fallen captive to the Black Knights and Robin hates her for it, hates the words that left her lips, the assurances and the confidence that she gives herself that he would have done the same. He hates her for not knowing that he would not have done so. It is our creed she said and he agrees but they were family, love and safety and she chose weeks of sorrow for them when she should have, could have returned, taken the pain away.
Pain that almost took him back down the same path he walked in his youth. Yes he would have helped the Princess of course he knows this but not for weeks, not lived for weeks in a camp with others that could have done what she did, while his family thought him dead.
He has raised the issue since, seeking to shift the dark cloud that clings to him, blaming his connection to Regina, it is her anger he feels not his, knows now that he was lying to himself, he has felt the different colours of Regina's soul residing in his own, this is his anger, anger that only grew as Marian told him she could not have known she would be captured, of course not he does not blame her for the ending but for the choice she made weeks before.
In his minds eye he remembers their fight, the second night of her return, her face defiant, head held high, arguing back that they made that choice when they chose to live as outlaws, a choice that could leave their son an orphan, a choice he made for them she says.
He screamed his rage at her then, didn't recognise the sound of his own voice in his ears, harsh and bitter, he did not force her to chose this life, it was her choice But love she sighs My love for you, chose for me.
Choice it rankles at him, that word and its implications, choice, he chose Marian for his wife, chose their life and it was a good life, a life full of love and laughter despite the danger, they were strong together, a family, his Marian, true love, a blissful reprieve after escaping the life he did not want, leaving behind the selfish demands of his father, his brother's betrayal, the chains of his father's army.
Freedom and choice are important to him, it is the air he needs, cannot breathe without it but he seeks to hold Marian's against her, she had a right to chose but she made the wrong one. He should love her even more for her selflessness but he doesn't.
Regina who has taken his choice from him, who stubbornly refuses to believe that he gets a choice and that she could have been it.
Regina has chosen that Robin should return to his family, should be happy with them.
She has chosen to remove her heart, a selfish and selfless act rolled into one. He begrudges Marian for her choice, her selfless act but forgives Regina for murder and the theft of his choice, it leaves him conflicted, his mind a mess of unanswered questions, of doubt. He doubts himself, what kind of man is he truly? under the guise of outlaw, thief, merry man, hero, father, husband, a good man? A good man who cannot give his wife what she needs, what she deserves, what kind of man is that? a selfish one, grief made him selfish before and it is grief that tugs at his heart now.
Love? But he loves Marian but he misses Regina fiercely.
Both need him, Marian adrift, out of time and place, misses her husband, looks at him in puzzlement at the man he has become, weeps and seeks comfort when their son turns from her asking for his father, the only parent he has known for so long. Marian who reaches for him in the night, Marian who he pushes away.
Marian who screams at him that the woman he chose to move on with, is a monster, a cold heartless evil bitch, the irony that she is indeed right now all three of those things is not lost on him.
Regina needs him she is lost and cursed but she has family who care for her, will fight for her. Perhaps it is he that needs her, he is tired of looking in Marian's eyes and seeing a stranger reflected in them, tired of justifying a past she does not know, tired of looking at her and trying to find common ground that once was so easy but is now so hard.
He misses the way Regina looks at him, like he is the sun and he chases away the shadows. How she comes alive for him and only him in the quiet private moments they have shared.
It is ego perhaps but he loves the way she makes him feel about himself, sees the best of him and Marian used to look at him like that but she does not now.
He misses the softness that Regina shows him, the unguarded looks and touches, how she feels in his arms and the kisses that leave them both breathless, gentle before the curse broke, passionate after with the return of her heart. Heated after the remembrance of a year spent fighting and bickering, tension between them always, a tension he would have gladly broken during that time but held back, respectful of her grief.
He misses her, misses everything, her strength, her stubbornness, he misses the want of her and how she wanted him, all of him, took a chance on him, let him into her heart and her bed. She is not his to want now, he feels the loss keenly.
Better not to want but he cannot forget, cannot stop the want that burns him and its not just desire, although he desires her very much, she is beautiful and never more so when bare in his arms, unguarded and free. He is no fool, has laid with enough women to know the difference between sex and something deeper, that connection there from the start, deepening the desire, heightening the pleasure and after, both dazed and boneless, laughing at themselves, pulling each other closer, hoping to stay forever in that moment.
Regina understands the man he is now, who he was before Marian and after Marian. With few words she saw the scars in his heart, scars that match hers, hurts that have healed, warped and disfigured but faded in the light of her eyes, at her touch.
He pieced together her past during the year together, spent fighting wicked witches, a past with many parallels to his, the cruelty of a power hunger parent, he banished his father from his life just as she had banished her mother from hers. He as responsible for his mother's death, his selfishness the cause as certain as Regina's fist curling around her father's heart, taking what she needed to survive just as he had. Even the pain of a sibling's hatred is a shared pain but the loss of true love bound them deeply. Robin knows her pain, doesn't need a tattoo to divine their connection.
Little John lives for the moment, told him so yesterday, says you cannot live in the past for it is gone and cannot be brought back. Robin laughed at the sentiment, oh but it can. No his friend argues, the past makes changes that cannot be undone, people change because of them.
He was right then and is right now Robin thinks, no matter what the future holds, the past is gone, the future unknown and the present is all they have.
In this present, right now in this moment, in the aftermath of the battle that should never have been, in this cold forlorn clearing, Robin knows he loves Regina.