hello everyone! this chapter is a little bit shorter than the previous one, but I needed to post before the holidays because I realised that I didn't wish you a happy xmas! oh gosh, I'm a horrible, horrible person :( I'm so sorry! Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone! Hope you have a good time with the people you love :)

thanks for all the follows/favs & review, they really mean a lot to me.

hope you enjoy this chapter too!

WARNING: STRONG CONTENT.

It took her days, several dates, before Regina could finally, completely open up her heart to Robin. One day, while they were having launch together in a restaurant across the town, where no one could ever reach them -and Regina was feeling terribly reassured by that-, she decided to talk to him about her marriage:
"things with Victor aren't... aren't going well. From quite some time." she confessed, taking a sip of wine from her glass. Robin was surprised by that statement, but he decided not to say anything and keep on listening carefully at every single word she was saying:
"we, just like you and you ex-girlfriend, tried to have a baby. Victor wanted it more than anything, and I wanted it too, really. We were so in love, even after four years of marriage..." she couldn't help but smile at the old, good times. "we wanted to have our own family, with our kids, you know. We tried, and tried, and tried, until the thing became vital for Victor. To him, it was much more important than our marriage, than us. We had sex so many times a day, even when I didn't want to, he..." she bit her lip. Maybe she shouldn't continue. If she had talked with someone, with Robin, about how Victor forced her to have sex with him, even when she was tired, even when she was back from a very busy day and she was exhausted... it didn't matter how many tears were falling down her cheeks while they made it, he had a goal and he wanted to reach it. No matter what.

She had never told anybody how much she had suffered during that period, and then she was about to do it, with Robin. Her heartbeat accelerated as she continued: "he forced me. Until one day I suggested to stop. There he pushed me to do some blood tests, to find out what the real problem was. I..." a tear fell on the table-cloth and there, Regina Mills realized she had been crying the whole time. Shit. "I was the problem. I can't have children, Robin. I can't." she quickly grabbed her napkin and dried as many tears as she could, until he stopped her by putting his hand on hers, with a delicacy that Regina didn't know anymore. He pulled her chair close to his, took the napkin from her hands and started to wipe away every single tear, to calm every single sigh, until she felt ready to talk again: "he never looked at me the same way since he found out about it. He kept on telling me that a woman who can't have children is not a real woman." another tear escaped from her control, a tear for all the slaps, all the screams she had refused to tell him about. One step at a time, she told to herself.

"I begged him to divorce me, to find a woman who could give him what he wanted the most, since I couldn't. He refused, he told me that marriage is sacred and it has to be honored, no matter what. And if I wanted to preserve my dignity I had to remain his wife. He still doesn't want to divorce me, even though I see how he looks at me in the eyes everytime. Like I ruined his whole life." her mother had always liked Victor and now, listening to her own words, Regina could see why: both of them were convinced that marriage constrained two people for the eternity, no matter what happened between the two of them. No matter if love got substituted by sadness and pain, and tears.

"Regina, you know you can legally obtain the divorce anyway, right?"

"I know! I know but..." I'm afraight he might kill me "I have faith. Maybe he will change, maybe he'll be the Victor I fell in love with again, the Victor I married seven years ago."

Robin immediately took his hand away from hers and stopped drying her tears:
"are you... are you still in love with him?" it was a simple and legitimate question, to which she should have answered "no". Because it was the truth, it was what she had wanted to shout at him for weeks. But, instead, she replied a simple "yes", because it was what was best for everyone. If she had told him she didn't love Victor anymore, she would have encouraged him; she would have made him think that he could build something with her, something she died to build. But she was scared to put him in such danger, because God only knew what Victor was capable of if he eventually found out.

"oh." Robin replied simply, pulling away. "well you... you could try with marriage counseling." there was something different in his voice and his behavior, something she herself had caused by telling a simple, brief lie.

Now what? Had she ruined everything they had? Would they stay friends or not? She would prefer dying rather than staying away from that man.

"yeah. We could. But I don't want to talk about me anymore. Let's talk about you, shall we?"
He smiled at her, but his smile didn't reach his eyes as it usually did. It was rather that kind and elusive smile that he was used to give to everyone else.

You're an idiot, Regina.

That night, Regina couldn't sleep. It'd been three days since their last launch together and Robin didn't even texted her anymore. It was unusual since, since they'd started seeing each other, not a day passed by without a text from one of them, even just to say "hello". Regina knew she had fucked everything up; she had known it since she had pronounced that "no", since she had seen him pulling away, physically and metaphorically.

He had left her with a simple "see you tomorrow", but the day after they didn't see each other. Nor the one after. Regina had thought about texting him, even just to ask how he was, how he really was; but something had stopped her from doing it. That night, however, something changed: she was in her bed, she kept on staring at the ceiling and thinking of him, of how much she missed him in her life; his laugh, his deep blue eyes looking straight into her soul. She turned to the bedside table and looked at the clock: 2 AM. She took her phone and opened the conversation with Robin: "miss you" she wrote and stared at the screen for a couple of seconds. Nah, too romantic. It surely didn't suit the situation. She cancelled it. "miss us." this time she smiled proudly to herself. Yes, it was exactly what she wanted to tell him; it was the pure and simple truth.

She sent it without a second thought and smiled, thinking of him reading it the morning after, right after opening his wonderful blue eyes.

Damn, she wondered how he looked like in the early morning; what did he wear to sleep? What if...oh, god, what if he slept shirtless? She shook her head and blocked her phone, smiling as she put it back on the bedside table. She thought she could finally sleep peacefully.

She was wrong.

"what the hell were you doing?" Victor's voice, not sleepy at all as it usually was, made her shiver. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.

"nothing, I just... wanted to know what time it was." she tried to lie, hoping that the darkness of the room could help her hiding the fear in her eyes.

"oh, really?!" he stretched his arm to her side of the bed and took the phone. He unlocked it and she damned herself for not protecting it with a passcode. The first thing he saw was the conversation with Robin. He scrolled past the old messages and read some of them: "thanks for the wonderful time", "I wanna see you again, tomorrow?" and "we should do it again. Soon."

"what the fuck does that mean, Regina?!" he exclaimed, trying to stay calm as much as he could.

"nothing." she ripped her phone from him with a courage she didn't think she had; a courage that only made him angrier: he grabbed her wrists and pushed them hard against the matress:
"who's that man, Regina? Who's that... Robin?" he ordered her to answer and Regina swallowed hard.

"the new headmaster. We... we went out for launch a couple of times. But it's just the job, Victor, really!" he shot her up with a slap right in her face, succeded by one of her sighs.

"yeah, of course, the job! Who the fuck do you think I am?!" he climbed on top of her; she felt him against her stomach. Hard. That whole situation aroused him. How could he be such a pervert psychopath?

Her stomach hurt and she was nauseated at the only thought of him.

"you left him fuck you, didn't you?"

"No!" another slap. Regina squealed in pain: "I swear to you, Victor, he never touched me!"

"I don't believe you!" he shouted, pulling down her panties. Her head was spinning as she prayed: oh no. Please no. Not again. Please.

For a second she thought that it was all just a dream, but when she felt his disgusting hand slipping into her panties, she realized it wasn't:
"did he touch you like that?" Regina was cold as ice and dry as the desert, but he didn't care at all: he pushed two fingers in her anyway, making her arch her back in pain. "yeah, he did that too, didn't he?!"

"Victor, please, stop. Stop!" she screamed through the tears that were inevitably falling down her cheeks, reaching for the pillow, making it just as wet as her eyes. Victor was laughing crazily while he insulted her, while he treated her like a piece of trash.

Regina watched him getting harder and harder at every move he made and that made her cry even more, if that was possible.

Please, please God, make him stop. Please, she mentally prayed, closing her eyes.

"STOP CRYING!" she heard him shouting.

"p-please... stop..."

"stop? Is that what you told him? To stop? Oh no! You wanted more. A whore like you always wants more, and more, and more." he laughed as he took off his boxers. Regina coughed, then she sighed again. "I told you to stop crying!"

"I'm... I'm sorry. I can't."

Victor liked to beat her up, it turned him on crazily, but the tears and the sighs... they were definitely a turn off for him. Maybe something from the honorable man she had married was still left in him.

"stop crying, or I'll make you!" he repeated.

Regina didn't know what to do. She couldn't stop, not even if she tried to. So she prayed, she prayed unstoppably that whoever was up there, watching over her, could take her life right then. She just wanted to die, before she could live the millionth torture.

"damn it, Regina!" that scream of his was the last thing she heard before she felt his hands closing around her delicate neck. And they tightened more, and more, and more, until she couldn't catch her breath anymore. She choked, but at least she wasn't crying anymore. Victor smiled and tightened his grip even more, while he thrusted all of himself in her.

It hurt, it hurt like hell, everywhere, every part of her, inside and out. She was sure she was about to die, she could feel the life leave her, and maybe, a part of her was happy about that: no more sufferance, no more tears, no more Victor. No more Robin. Oh, Robin... in that exact moment she swore to herself that, if she was ever going to survive that night, she was going to call him, she was going to confess him everything, every single, nasty detail. She was even going to tell him about the feelings she had been hiding from him since the moment she first saw him. About how she fell in love with his smile, with his eyes, with his simple but still so delicate gestures. She was going to ask him to protect her, to hold her tight to himself, as she should have done before.

It's too late.

Regina left go one last tear as she felt him emptying himself in her. Finally the grip around her neck started to loosen and she could breathe again, even though she still found it hard. She saw Victor's satisfied smile as she felt him slipping out of her body, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She felt him falling back to his side of the bed and she stood still, frozen, until she finally felt his regular breath: he had fallen asleep.

She cried every tear she hadn't cried before, every sigh she had to hold back, then she took her phone again and, this time, she composed Robin's phone number.

Five seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds.

It was 3 AM, he wasn't going to answer. There wasn't a chance. However...

"Regina! What the hell...?! it's 3 AM!" his voice. Oh, God, his voice. It felt like coming home after years. Jesus, she had missed it so much, she had missed him too much.

"I-I know, I'm sorry..." she tried to sound calm, while her voice couldn't do anything but tremble, still in shock "I-I..." hung up the phone, Mills, you're being ridiculous. What you think you're doing? Victor is sleeping two inches away from you, he's gonna kill you this time. "can you... can you come pick me up? At my place?"

"now?" he was confused as fuck, and sleepy, and probably angry, but his voice was still able to reassure her like nothing else in the world.

"yes please, it's important."

For a couple of seconds, she heard nothing coming from his side of the phone and she thought she had lost him for good. Then she heard him whispering:
"sure. What's your address?"

Maybe, it was worth trying to live the life she dreamed of, rather than dying living the one she had.

When Robin arrived with his car, he found her sitting in her porch, waiting for him with her purse and a cigarette in her hand. When she saw him, she immediately ran to him, as if he was her salvation. He was.

"I didn't know you smoked." he commented as she walked in, as if he had seen her not even an hour before. As if it was all natural.

"I don't. It was just... a one-time-thing, I guess?" she shrugged "thanks for coming." she throw the cigarette out of the window.

Robin stood still for a couple of seconds, just looking at her: she had a long wool scarf around her neck, even though it was a hot september night. Her eyes were red, full of tears, and her dark hair were completely messed up. Something was happening to that woman, something so serious that it pushed her to call him in the middle of the night.

"Regina... I'm not leaving until you tell me what's going on." he turned the car off and looked straight into her chocolate brown eyes.

"Robin..."

"No! I deserve an explanation. I mean, you call me at 3 AM, asking me to pick you up at your place while your husband is sleeping, like I am your dirty little secret. I come and I found you... like that!" she pointed at the complete mess that she actually was. "please, tell me what's going on."

Regina looked down and held back the millionth tear. He was right. She needed to tell him everything. He deserved to know everything.

"I'll tell you, but first we need to go far from here."

"Regina..."

"Robin." this time, she was the one to interrupt, burying her begging eyes right into his deep, blue ones: "please, take me away."