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There was something horribly familiar about the panic clawing at her skin, about the shock that froze her in place and left her to watch as her love gets ripped away from her, about the burning tears and the sinking feeling in her chest. It’s not a stable, this time, isn’t the sinking of her mother’s arm into her fiancé’s chest, isn’t running up to the person that she loves and finding them dead, but the feeling is the same. She wishes it wasn’t, wishes she didn’t recognise it and that she wouldn’t have to feel it again at the same time.
There’s something terribly traitorous about standing in a ballroom, about watching your soulmate get stabbed by the person who wanted to kill you instead, and thinking of the crushing of a heart and the look on your mothers face. But it’s gone as quickly as it comes, gets replaced by visions of a meaningless future and the echo of the shouting of her name, and the fear she’ll never get to hear him say it again.
She thinks of Daniel again when David steps away from Robin, when she’s crossing the space between them and she doesn’t know anything except the fact that the pool of blood around him is growing, but then her knees collide with a marble floor, and Robin looks at her. Robin is alive. (She recognises the look in his eyes though, has looked at enough faces while she was crushing corresponding hearts to dust to know what a dying person looks like, and she can’t remember why she ever thought it was endearing, that people wanted to live so badly that they’d hold on to their fading strength like it would make a difference.)
After Daniel got killed, in doubtful moments where she briefly didn’t blame Snow, and then after she forgave Snow all together, she blamed it on her own lack of experience. As she was getting trained by the Dark One, as she was conjuring fire and had anything within reach upon a flick of her wrist, she kept thinking that if she had been a fraction less clueless, she could have saved him. She could have stopped Cora, could have run away with him, could have had her freedom and her love instead of a desperate need for vengeance and imprisonment within both glorious walls and empty vows. If she had known magic before she had known a certain princess, she could have saved him.
Or at least, that’s what she thought. That’s what her grief kept telling her, over and over again, and she believed it, because the days where magic held any secrets from her are several decades behind her. But she’s here, now, and she knows magic inside out and backwards, knows entire spellbooks by heart, has cast and reversed the worst curse out there, and Robin is still dying.
It’s beyond her control, really, because the sword that got pushed into his skin was meant to kill her, and thus her magic can’t help him, no matter what the levels of her healing abilities are (they’re not as good as they should be, considering she’s been off the villain path for a few years, but Rumplestiltskin never taught her how to fix people, just how to break them, and it’s a bit daunting to practice, because it’s light magic, and she doesn’t want to have to face the possibility that her battle with Zelena was a fluke, that her magic and her heart are as dark as ever, that it doesn’t matter how hard she tries now, because she can never make up for the sheer amount of death she has created with her own hands but without a care in the world.)
But she has never been good at not being in control, especially because she only gained control of her life once the king was dead and her mother was in a different realm, and she can’t help but think she’d take a bad job at healing him, at slow progress and the remaining of a scar, over not being able to do anything at all.
Robin is dying, right now, is bleeding out on a table less than an hour after he abandoned dancing with her to kiss her while every other couple dutifully kept swirling around them, and all she can do is stand by and listen as Snow White and Prince Charming argue against the saving of his life. Surely, Robin’s life isn’t worth the possibility that Emma could go dark.
It can’t be. They can’t let him die. Not now, not ever. They can’t speak of hope and true love, can’t continue to think of themselves as the heroes, if they let him die. They saved her, once, long before they had forgiven her and she had stopped wanting to ruin their lives, but Robin has to die? Robin, who has a son and will have a second child before the new year arrives, who makes decisions based on honor and righteousness, who is good and kind and loving , and is only in this position because Percival wanted to drive a sword through her bones. (Would they save her? If she was lying there instead of Robin, if it was crimson flooding the white fabric of her dress instead of his shirt, if her life was draining away before their eyes, would they still tell Emma not to use her dark magic? Would they be willing to trade any life for her battle with darkness, or just Robin’s?)
But she is at their mercy, or rather, at Emma’s, because Emma has magic, and Emma was the savior before her name appeared on a dagger, and Robin cannot die. And Regina can’t make a difference, can’t change the fact that the blade was meant to kill her instead, but she can fight for him. Not with magic, not with violence, but with words. She thinks of love is weakness, and for the first time since meeting Robin Hood, she might have to agree. Might, because she currently feels extremely weak, feels out of her depth and desperate in ways she can’t remember ever feeling before, but she also thinks of second chances, of light magic, of unwavering support and feeling invincible with him. (If Cora knew she’d be pleading for her lover’s life like her own depends on it one day, she probably would have spontaneously combusted with rage.) Love makes you stronger, love ruins your life, love makes you desperate enough to be willing to offer Emma Swan all the stars in the sky, even when you can’t actually give them to her.
It works. Somehow. It didn’t even require promises she might not be able to follow through with, just a sob story and many, many pleas. And Emma, the same Emma who was willing to rip Henry away from her without knowing either of them, who waxed poetically about being the savior and never getting a day off because she always has to be ready, always has to do the right thing, the very same Emma who became the Dark One to keep the darkness from killing Regina in the streets of Storybrooke, hesitated.
She hesitated to save someone’s life. Not because she wasn’t certain if she could do it, but because she knew that she could. Because magic is addicting and darkness is greedy, and you can’t really have one without the other.
It’s a very strange reminder that she is actually not that Emma. Their Emma is fading away, is battling the darkness and drowning in it, and suddenly she wonders how selfish it is to force her to do this, to ask her to do something that will only make it harder for her. (Darkness isn’t death, though, and if she can come back from being the Evil Queen, if Rumple can somehow get freed from his darkness, then Emma can survive a trip down the black stained rabbit hole. Emma will find her way back from this, simply because they won’t let her lose her way. Robin can’t come back from the dead. That makes this the logical choice.)
And then he comes back, but the fear has settled within her soul, into the darkest corners of her existence, and she can’t shake it.
Not when she knows that this is borrowed time, when it’s suddenly crystal clear that she wasn’t scared enough, in the past. When she still thought that losing him meant crossing town line, or being incapable of looking at the child he has with her sister without hatred, and not being chosen a second time when the options were his kid or her.
It was foolish, so very foolish, to believe that fate wouldn’t go the extra mile to shatter her heart. Daniel died because he loved her, because she wanted him instead of power, and now Robin will die because she loves him. Because she can’t live without him, because the very idea of existing in a world where he doesn’t, feels like torture.
Maybe they’re not written in the stars as a love story. Maybe they’re written in the stars as a tragedy, only linked together so they can be torn apart.
But he’s breathing, and his heart is once again beating in sync with hers, and she desperately wants to believe that that means they’ll be okay. That he’ll be okay. That history won’t repeat itself, and that it doesn’t matter how similar it feels. Robin is not Daniel. Robin will not die for loving her.
(Marian came back, though, and made him relive the loss of his love. Maybe it’s her turn now. Maybe they should face the fact that they will never be happy enough to cancel out the pain that follows them around when they’re together. Maybe she should stop being selfish, and let him go, because holding on will kill him. She knows that. Knows it with such a strong certainty that every fiber of her being is alive with terror, even when his hands are warm and she can see his chest going up and down.)
“Regina.”
He says her name quietly, but it’s coloured with the same concern that is written on his face as well. (God, he’s the one who had a run in with death, and she’s the one getting fussed over.) His arm rises towards her face, and she wants to protest, wants to remind him that he might not be bleeding, but he’s definitely not healed either, but he ignores her and lets his thumb fall against her cheek, the rest of his fingers disappearing into her hair. For as much as she wants to keep him from moving, it does a phenomenal job at drawing her away from her thoughts and bringing her back from the brink of phantom grief, firmly grounding her in bedsheets and heartbeats in the process. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Regina replies, and she thinks she should move, because she’s on her side, propped up on her elbow, and it doesn’t seem right that she’s essentially staring down at him. But Robin’s hand is still holding her face, and if she moves, he’ll have to move, and she definitely didn’t miss the slight pinch of his eyebrows when he brought his arm up.
He’s frowning now too, but for entirely different reasons.
She knows what he’ll say before he says it, and she thinks he knows what she’ll say before she does too. They’ve had this talk before. In the forest. In her office. In her vault. (Not this talk specifically, because it has never been about death, or at least not his. But her lack of self worth, his unwavering faith and support, the clashing of her pessimism and his optimism, that they’ve done before.) It’s just as annoying now as it’s been every other time, but now it’s weighed down by fear instead of mere worries, and she needs him to hear her this time. This has to be the last time they do this. (She knows it won’t be.)
“He was trying to hurt you. I can’t just stand by and let that happen.”
“Robin,” She sighs, and this is familiar ground too. This reminds her of you need to forget about me, of stolen kisses and frozen hearts and mountains of utterly useless spellbooks. But she moves past it, refuses to linger on past pain when it pales in comparison to what lies ahead of them. “You cannot die for me. You don’t deser-”
“You don’t deserve to-” Robin cuts her off, adjusting his hold on her jaw enough to jostle her head a little. But two can play at this game, and she absolutely deserves whatever Percival would have had in store for her, so she cuts him off before he can finish his sentence.
“No, I do. He told me a story, before he drew the sword. About how the Evil Queen slaughtered his entire village but decided to spare a little boy.” There’s something on his face that shouldn’t be there, something that is almost a smile because she couldn’t even hurt children while she was trying to kill her stepdaughter. It’s so incredibly out of place that it almost comes back to normal, because it doesn’t surprise her that he’s focussing on that part and dismissing the rest. She did something to this man, she thinks, something horrible that she cannot undo anymore. This man who lives for honor and has hated royals for as long as he can remember, and who is now in love with a former queen and is forgiving her sins. Robin Hood should not be in bed with her, should not be disagreeing with her about what she deserves in the aftermath of the destruction that she caused, but he is, and it must mean that somewhere along the way, she has burned him down. And some day, she has to acknowledge that for what it is, and has to stop letting it warm her heart and make her feel light and loved and cherished. It’s a selfish thing, this slow but steady wrecking of her soulmate’s values, and someday she’ll do her best to bring him back to his moral senses, but today is not that day. Today, she’ll think of it as sweet, that he’s willing to overlook so much, simply for the sake of love.
“I ruined his life.” She whispers then, because that, at least, is something Robin cannot deny. “I recognised the anger in his eyes. The despair. The vengeance. And the worst part is that I don’t remember doing the thing that caused it. I have burned down more villages than I can count. I wiped entire towns away, ripped families apart, or destroyed them all together. You can’t rip apart a family that simply no longer exists. And I know that I did those things, but I don’t recall any of the specifics. But he does, and he told me what they were, and I still wouldn’t be able to tell you which town it was. Or when I wrecked it. So you’re wrong, Robin, because I do deserve Percival’s vengeance. And you don’t. So please, please, do not sacrifice yourself for me.”
Robin stares back at her, with something that is both loving and stubborn at once. It makes her think she might have to beg again, still, for his life. She knows enough to know that Percival is not the only one who wants her dead, and while the person holding the sword will be different, she also knows that Robin won’t be. But she needs him to be, desperately, because he is a good person, and he cannot die for the terrible things she has done.
“You have to stop thinking of yourself as a bad person.” Robin finally says, and she almost laughs in his face. But he notices anyway (of course he does), because he adds “I’m serious. You changed. The person you are today does not deserve the harm people want to do to her. And you’re right, because I don’t deserve it either. But it’s not about deserving when I am choosing it. I cannot live without you. I don’t want to live without you.” He might say something else, sounds like he will, but there’s something wrong with this point of his.
“What makes you think I want to live without you? Have you thought about that?”
“Yes. But I have also thought about the fact that my life is worth less than yours to the people around us.” He says it so matter of factly. Like it’s normal to accept that she’s more important , as if their worth depends on their skills and their roles in a town that doesn’t technically exist. (If he thinks she is more important just because she’s the mayor, then this is far from over.)
“Robin. I don’t want you to get hurt on my behalf.” You cannot get hurt on my behalf. Please don’t. Please.
“I can’t promise you that I won’t do this again.” He says instead of the agreement that she wants to hear.
“Robin-”
“Can we please stop talking in circles? I love you. You’d do the same for me. Don’t take this away from me.” It’s so kind, so loving, so, so clear that he doesn’t understand what kind of danger he is putting himself in.
He will die. He will die because someone has it out for her, and she can’t get him to give this up. (She wants to fault him for it, but she knew about the importance of honor from the beginning, and well, that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Honor and love.)
She’s so caught up in worst case scenarios that she forgets to reply, so Robin manages to pull her down against him, and when he says “it will be okay. We’ll be okay,” she wants to believe him.
More than anything else.
But this is far from over, and she can’t. No matter how hard she tries.