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lastbluetardis · 7 years

Text

And Baby Makes Four 4/7

Thanks a million to the fantastic @chocolatequeennk for beta-ing this for me and being an excellent sounding board as I wrote this story.

This also fulfills the prompt of “a helping hand” on @legendslikestardust, and this coincides with the monthly theme of “AU August” on @doctorroseprompts.

Ten x Rose, Soulmates AU

This Chapter: ~7500 words, Teen

The love Rose and James share expands to include one more as they add another baby to their family.

Warning: This chapter is the birth chapter, and there are explicit scenes of labor and childbirth, but I’ve tried keeping the bloody details to a minimum, with much help from Nancy to let me know what was too much.

AO3 | TSP | FF.net | Ch1 | Ch2 | Ch3 | Ch4 | Ch5 | Ch6 | Epilogue

James finished putting Ainsley to bed and when he went to join his wife in the living room, he found it empty. He assumed she was on the loo, where she seemed to spend a majority of her time nowadays.

He decided to tidy up the living room a bit as he waited for Rose to come back, and as he finished alphabetizing Ainsley’s books, he heard Rose shuffling down the hall. He felt her arms wrap loosely around his waist, and her belly pressed tight against his lower back as she nuzzled her face between his shoulder blades.

“My water broke,” she murmured into his shirt, and James’s breath hitched in his lungs.

He spun in her arms and rested his hand on her bulging belly.

“How do you feel?” he asked. “Did it just break now? Any contractions? How bad are they? Should I phone the midwife? Or Dad? Or Jackie? Do you need to sit down? You should probably drink water to stay hydrated.”

“James, breathe,” Rose giggled, and she reached up to cradle his cheeks. “Yeah, it just broke a few minutes ago. The contractions I’ve had have been far enough apart that they’re not uncomfortable yet. We may want to call Elizabeth to let her know that the labor process has begun. And we should let Dad and Mum know so they know they’ll probably need to take Ainsley sometime tomorrow. If you call Dad, I’ll call Elizabeth? Then whichever of us is done first can call my mum.”

James nodded, and retrieved his mobile from the coffee table as he settled himself on the sofa with Rose to phone his dad.

“Hey, mate,” his dad answered. “All right?”

“Yep,” he said, trying to keep his voice even despite his anxious excitement. “Just calling to let you know Rose’s water broke.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Robert said excitedly. “Need me to pop around to collect Ainsley?”

“Not yet,” James said. “Rose says she’s hardly feeling anything yet, so we think Ainsley will be able to stay here until tomorrow.”

“All right,” he said. “Please let me know if something changes, and I’ll be there. How’s she doing?”

“She’s good, I think,” James said. “So far, at least. Time will tell, I suppose.”

“And how are you?”

James swallowed down the butterflies in his stomach. Though he’d already gone through the birthing experience once before, it still had him on edge and worried, but also overjoyed and eager.

“I’m okay,” he answered. “A bit anxious, but really excited.”

“As you should be,” Robert said warmly. “I’ll let you get going, mate. You and Rose should try to rest as much as you can now while she’s still in the early stages of labor. Phone me later and let me know when you want me to collect Ainsley.”

“We will,” James said. “Thanks, Dad.”

James hung up the phone with his dad. Rose was already finished with her conversation with the midwife, and her eyes were closed and she was breathing deeply.

“All right?” he asked softly, rubbing his hand up and down her thigh.

“Yeah,” she said, resting her hand on her belly. “They’re not too bad yet.”

“Let me know if I can do anything to help,” James said, his heart already beating a little too quickly after only that one contraction.

“I told Elizabeth not to come yet,” Rose said. “I told her we would keep her up to date on the progress.”

James eventually made the call to his mother-in-law, telling her that Rose’s labor had begun, but that Ainsley was going to stay the night with them, then go to Robert’s in the morning.

“We’ll call you when my dad picks her up,” James promised. “Then you can go to my dad’s flat and wait there with him and Ainsley.”

After many assurances that Rose was feeling fine and that they didn’t need her to stop by, James ended the call. He then turned to his wife and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“We should try to get some sleep,” James murmured into her hair.

Rose nodded, and followed him down the hall.

Surprisingly, Rose got the most rest out of the two of them. Her contractions weren’t bad yet, and so she managed to sleep through most of them, but James awoke at the tiniest movement from his wife as he checked to make sure she didn’t need anything or that she wasn’t two minutes from giving birth.

Finally, they were awoken when they heard Ainsley’s feet jump down from her bed.

“Stay here and rest,” James urged, getting out of bed. “I’ll call Dad and let him know to pick her up.”

“It can still wait a bit,” Rose said, standing up and arching her back in a stretch.

“I don’t want to be rushing around trying to entertain Ainsley and keeping an eye on you,” James said bluntly.

“I don’t need you to keep an eye on me,” Rose said hotly.

“You know what I mean,” he huffed. “What if the rest of your labor progresses faster? Dad’s at least forty minutes away. What if you’re ready to push and he’s not here yet? I’d have to take care of Ainsley and leave you alone, because we agreed that she shouldn’t see the birth. Don’t make me choose between the two of you. Please don’t ask that of me.”

Rose’s face softened in understanding.

“James, I promise you that I am not that close to delivering this baby,” she murmured. She reached out to squeeze his hand, then she brought it to her lips for a kiss. “You need to trust me with this. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

“I would still feel better if my dad came to pick up Ainsley this morning,” James said. “Even if you’re not close to delivering, you’re still laboring, and I don’t want Ainsley to see you in any pain.”

Rose sighed and nodded.

“All right,” she said. “But let’s have breakfast together first, yeah?”

James smiled and pressed a quick kiss to her forehead, and he opened the bedroom door just as he heard Ainsley’s feet pattering outside their door.

“Morning, darling!” he said enthusiastically, scooping her up into a hug. “Let’s visit the loo, shall we?”

“Already weed!” she said proudly.

“Excellent!” he praised, squeezing her tight. “Did you remember to flush?”

“Uh huh,” Ainsley said, nodding.

“Did you wash your hands?” James asked.

Ainsley’s face screwed up as she tried to remember, and James said, “Better safe than sorry. Let’s wash ‘em again.”

As James helped Ainsley wash her hands (and clean up a few unidentified drops of liquid from the toilet seat), Rose walked into the kitchen and started breakfast for her family.

A strong contraction overcame her faster than she was expecting, and her muscles seized and she leaned against the counter for support. However, she’d forgotten she was holding an egg in her hand, and it cracked and splattered messily onto the floor.

“Shit,” she sighed, tossing the egg in the trash. She then washed her hands and slowly lowered herself to the ground to clean up the mess.

“Rose, are you all right?”

She glanced up at James’s slightly panicked voice, and she said, “Yeah, just cleaning up a spill.”

“You could’ve left it for me,” he chastised. “You don’t need to be bending down and crawling around on the floor.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but when she tried to stand, she found she couldn’t quite balance herself properly. “Though I could use a hand up.”

James pursed his lips, but he set Ainsley down and moved beside Rose to pull her to her feet.

“Still okay?” he murmured, resting his hand on her belly.

“Yep,” she said.

James nodded, then turned back around to Ainsley and said, “Darling, we’ve got some exciting news for you! Your little sister’s coming.”

Ainsley’s eyes lit up and she asked, “When?”

“Sometime today, we think, but maybe tomorrow,” James said. “So you know what that means. You get to spend the night with Gran and Grandad!”

“I wanna stay!” Ainsley whined.

“Ainsley, we talked about this,” James said patiently. “Giving birth to your sister is going to take a long time. It’ll be very boring for you, and I’m going to be very busy helping Mummy.”

“I can help!” she said.

“I know you could, sweetheart,” Rose said, bending down to lift Ainsley into her arms. She settled her awkwardly on her hip and said, “But Gran and Grandad are looking forward to spending the night with you. Aren’t you excited to spend the night with them? I know you love sleepovers with Gran and Grandad.”

Ainsley nodded and said, “Yeah!”

Rose pressed a kiss to Ainsley’s temple and said, “Then why don’t you and Daddy give Grandad a call and see when he can come get you, eh?”

“Okay!” Ainsley wriggled and hopped out of Rose’s arms and ran up to James. “Daddy, gotta call Grandad!”

“Why yes, we do,” James said, smiling. “Come on.”

An hour and a half later, James and Rose were sitting with Ainsley on the sofa reading when the doorbell rang.

“Grandad!”

Ainsley hopped off of James’s lap and sprinted to the front door.

“Ah, ah, ah!” James followed his daughter and saw she was jumping up to unlatch the deadbolt. “What have Mummy and I taught you? You never answer the door on your own.”

“It’s Grandad!” she said with an impatient sigh.

“But what if it isn’t?” James asked, even though he’d seen his father’s car pull up in the driveway. “Always wait for me or Mummy to answer the door with you, okay?”

Ainsley sighed again and nodded, stepping back to let James open the door.

“It’s Grandad!” Ainsley squealed when Robert was on the other side, kneeling down to scoop her in for a hug. “Daddy, it’s Grandad!”

“Yes, well, safety first,” James said, ushering his dad inside. “Ainsley, why don’t you run to your room and get the bag you and Mummy packed?”

Robert set his granddaughter on the floor and they watched her sprint down the hall.

“So how’re things?” Robert asked, following James into the living room.

Rose looked up from where she was reclining on the couch, and she grinned and waved to Robert as he entered.

“They’re going,” James sighed. “Very slowly.”

“These things take time,” Robert said sympathetically. “Your mum was in labor with you for almost two days.”

James winced, begging the universe for it to not take that long. He didn’t think he could stand seeing his wife in pain for that long.

“Got it!”

Ainsley entered the living room, wheeling a small suitcase behind her.

“Excellent! Go give Mummy a hug and kiss,” James said.

Ainsley ran up to her mum and crawled up on the couch to hug Rose.

“Love you, Mummy,” Ainsley whispered, burying her face deep into Rose’s neck. “I don’t wanna go.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Rose murmured, holding Ainsley tight. “But you’ll have so much fun! Way more fun than me and Daddy will have.”

“Come to Grandad’s,” Ainsley suggested, and Rose’s heart broke at the hopeful expression on her daughter’s face.

“I’m sorry, Ainsley, but Daddy and I need to stay here,” Rose said apologetically. “But you are going to have so much fun with Gran and Grandad. Grandad has so many fun toys for you to play with, and so many books for you to read, and that really cool park near his house! Aren’t you excited?”

“Yeah,” Ainsley sighed, not really sounding like it. She nuzzled her face closer to Rose’s neck and sat with her mum quietly for a few minutes before she pressed a wet, sloppy kiss on Rose’s cheek and crawled down and sprinted into James’s legs.

“I miss you,” she whimpered, and James’s heart stuttered when he heard the tears in her voice.

“I’m right here, darling,” he said, reaching down to pick her up. She dug her face into his shoulder and clung to him, and he looked helplessly at Rose and his dad. “Hey, you’re all right. Remember all the fun things you’ll be doing with Gran and Grandad!”

“Gonna miss you!” she wailed, hugging him tighter.

“I’m going to miss you, too,” James whispered, stroking his fingers through her hair as he pressed kisses to her head. “So much. But it’s only for a little while. I promise.”

James held his daughter until her tears stopped, and he wiped her eyes dry with his thumb.

“I love you, Ainsley,” he whispered, pressing kisses to her forehead.

“Love you, Daddy,” she said.

“Ready to go?” he asked, giving her a final squeeze.

She nodded reluctantly, and rested her cheek on his shoulder so she could turn to look at Rose.

“Bye, Mummy. Love you.”

“Love you,” Rose responded, waving. “See you later.”

James walked with his dad to Robert’s car, and he buckled Ainsley into the car seat.

“I’ll see you later, darling,” he promised, making sure Ainsley had her favorite stuffed animal, a stuffed wolf, with her in her seat. “I love you. Be good for Gran and Grandad.”

“Bye bye Daddy,” Ainsley said, hugging her wolf tightly. “Love you.”

James pressed a parting kiss to her brow, and shut the door.

“Call me if you need something,” James said, giving his dad a quick hug. “I’m giving Jackie a call as soon as you leave. She’ll be at your flat later this afternoon.”

“Don’t you worry about us,” Robert said. “Worry about Rose and your baby. We’ll be fine. Keep me updated on the progress when you can.”

James nodded, and stepped away from the car as Robert got into the driver’s seat and pulled off down the street.

He then turned on his heel and walked back into the house to wait out the rest of Rose’s labor.

oOoOo

Robert was playing on the floor with Ainsley when he heard a knock at the front door.

“Let’s go see who that is,” he said, pushing himself to his feet to let Jackie in.

“Gran!” Ainsley squealed, bouncing excitedly when she saw Jackie standing on the other side of the door.

“Hello, sweetheart!” Jackie said, crouching down to pull Ainsley into her arms.

Robert ushered Jackie into the flat, then he bent down and picked up her suitcase to take it to the guest room.

“Sianin’s coming, Gran,” Ainsley said.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Jackie said. “Are you excited?”

“Uh huh,” Ainsley said. “She’s comin’ out of Mummy’s baby hole.”

Jackie blinked. “She’s what?”

“Comin’ out of Mummy’s baby hole,” Ainsley repeated. “Daddy helped put her there.”

“Oh, he did?” Jackie asked.

She glanced over and saw Robert biting his lip against a laugh, and Jackie pursed her lips as her own amusement bubbled up inside her.

“Yeah. It’s a small hole,” Ainsley said sagely. “Daddy had to find it.”

“I’ll bet he had no trouble with that,” Jackie mumbled under her breath, and the sound of Robert’s laughter made it clear he’d heard her.

“But she’s comin’ out now,” Ainsley said. She paused and her face screwed up in thought. “Is Daddy helpin’ get Sianin out?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Robert answered. “But your Mummy will be doing most of the work. Now, shall we get back to building a fortress around the princess’s castle?”

oOoOo

As the afternoon waned into the evening which waned into nighttime and there was still no hint of a baby, James began panicking that something was going wrong.

“I’m fine, love,” Rose said, giving his hand a squeeze. “I promise, I’m just fine. We’re both fine. My contractions are still pretty far apart.”

James nodded and soothed himself with the knowledge that Rose would let him know immediately if something felt wrong. He also reassured himself with logic, as he kept careful time of her contractions.

Rose’s sleep that night wasn’t as peaceful as it had been the night before. Her contractions were getting stronger and closer together, and she became more uncomfortable throughout the night and into the morning.

They gave Ainsley a video call that morning to say hi and to tell her that it was looking like she would have to spend another night with her grandparents.

“I don’t wanna,” she whimpered, her eyes welling with tears. “I wanna go home!”

“I know, sweetheart, but your little sister is taking a long time to be born,” Rose said. “Are you having a good time with Gran and Grandad?”

Ainsley sniffled and then started talking about everything they had done together, including a trip to the park, and a visit to the bookstore so she could get a new book.

“Look!” Ainsley said excitedly. She hopped down from Jackie’s lap and ran out of the frame of the video call.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Jackie asked sympathetically.

“Like shit,” Rose answered, digging the heels of her hands into her tired eyes.

James rubbed her back softly, and then he and Rose plastered on wide grins as Ainsley returned.

“Got new books!” Ainsley said, holding up two books.

“How many did you get, darling?” James asked.

“One…” Ainsley help up the book in her left hand. “Two!” She held up the book in her right hand. “Two books!”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you a lucky girl to have Gran and Grandad get you two new books?”

“Yeah!” she said, grinning. “Daddy, read to me?”

“I will when I see you next,” he promised. “Until then, ask Gran or Grandad to read it to you.”

After a few more minutes of chatting with their daughter, James and Rose ended the video call and returned to the long and arduous process of laboring.

As her contractions grew to be under ten minutes apart, James began offering to call the midwife every half hour.

“James, I will tell you when to call Elizabeth!” Rose snapped shortly after lunchtime. “We’ve still got ages to go.”

He swallowed nervously and nodded, his fingers still itching to do something. Never before had he felt so useless. Not even when Ainsley was born, as he’d been busy trying to calm Rose and assure her that their daughter, though five weeks early, would be just fine. And she’d been ready to push mere hours after arriving at the hospital.

So much for second births being easier, he thought bitterly as Rose whimpered through another contraction.

He tried to keep Rose as comfortable as possible, and he helped her walk around the house and change positions from where she was lying on the couch. At it grew closer to suppertime, Rose’s contractions were under five minutes apart and lasting about a minute each. They were getting close. That thought both terrified him and exhilarated him.

And so James waited, and fretted, and catered to Rose’s every whim. Rose had lain down on the couch after a simple supper of toast and ginger ale. James sat down with her, with her head in his lap, and his heart broke every time he watched her body tense with a new contraction.

James stroked her hair away from her sweaty face as he waited for the latest one to pass.

“Want to take a bath, love?” he asked softly, still petting her hair.

“I want this baby to get out of me,” Rose grumbled miserably, rubbing her hands across her face. They were almost at the forty-eight hour mark since her water had broken, but that felt like a lifetime ago. Rose was thoroughly exhausted and didn’t want to be laboring anymore. “And I want to see my other baby,” she whimpered. “I miss Ainsley, but I don’t want to scare her with the birthing process, and I just want to not be in pain anymore.”

“I know,” James soothed.

“But yeah, a bath sounds nice,” she mumbled, pressing her fingertips into her eyes as pain pounded in her temples, adding to the overall ache that had consumed her body.

“Let me get it set up,” he said, slipping out from under her head and shoulders.

A few minutes later, James held out a hand for Rose to help her waddle to the loo.

“Can you sit in here with me?” she asked, sinking down into the warm water. “Please?”

“’Course, love,” he said, stripping off his clothes.

He settled into the water behind her, and encouraged her to lean back against him. He grabbed a flannel and dunked it underwater before he used it to moisten her skin. He then squeezed out a dollop of body wash and slowly worked on washing away the sweat and grease from the day.

He was washing her belly when he felt the muscles under his palm spasm, and Rose stiffened and whimpered out a breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, rubbing his hand across her stomach as he kept a mental count of the contraction. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I’m sorry.”

“If you apologize one more fucking time, I’m going to kick you in the bollocks,” she growled, panting through her contraction. “Jesus fuck, is this done yet?”

“This is a long one,” James noted as his mental timer made it to sixty seconds and she was still suffering through it.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed, you fuckwit,” Rose gritted out. She blew out a heavy breath, then slumped back against him once more. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” James said immediately. “By all means, curse at me until you’re blue in the face if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It doesn’t though,” she murmured, sounding so exhausted. “You’re being so bloody nice, getting angry with you only makes me feel like I’ve stepped on a puppy.”

James pressed his lips to her temple as he absently traced his fingers across the bubbles still smeared on her thigh. He then moved his hands to her back and started mindlessly kneading at her lower back, where Rose had been aching constantly for the last week or so.

She sighed in gratitude and leaned forward as much as she could to give him better access.

“Want your hair washed?” he asked quietly after a few minutes of rubbing her back.

“Sure,” she murmured, not particularly caring, but knowing she ought to take this opportunity to get washed.

He stood up long enough to grab the detachable showerhead, then sat back down behind her. She was hunched over her stomach and her hands shot out to grab at something, which happened to be his legs. Her nails bit into his shins as she let out a sob. His heart twisted in his gut as he watched his wife writhe in utter agony as she worked on bringing their second daughter into the world.

“You’re doing so good,” he whispered, massaging her lower back again as she continued to cry. “I’m so proud of you, and so grateful for you for bringing our little Sianin into the world.”

“I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “How am I supposed to actually start pushing when even sitting here feels like a chore?”

“Your body will help you,” he promised, walking his fingers up her back until he was working at the tight muscles of her shoulders. “And so will I, as much as I can.”

“You’re an utter saint, you know,” Rose said, leaning back into his touch. “You’re so bloody perfect.”

“Only the best for my perfect wife,” he joked, pressing a kiss to her neck. “Let me get your hair wet so I can wash it.”

When her hair was sufficiently damp, he squirted her shampoo into his palm and slowly worked a lather across her head. He massaged her scalp as he did so, and was relieved when she hummed contentedly.

He slowly washed her hair and conditioned it, all while continuously draining the tub and refilling it so the water stayed warm and clean for her.

They’d been in the bath for nearly an hour when Rose decided she needed to get up and move around.

James helped her out of the tub, and handed her a towel as he dried himself off too. He slipped on a pair of boxers and held out a warm, fluffy robe for Rose. Just as she was tying the sash, she bent over double and her legs started to shake as she groaned lowly. Rose dropped to her knees and hugged her stomach, and James fell to the floor after her.

“Rose? Rose, are you okay? Talk to me, love. Please, Rose!”

“Shut up,” she growled. “Just shut up, shut up, shut up!”

He clicked his mouth shut and clenched his hands into fists as Rose bent over on the floor.

“Time to call Elizabeth,” she managed to grit out. “God, I didn’t think it was possible, but the contractions are getting worse. More intense.”

James nodded, but stayed kneeling beside her.

“Didn’t you fucking hear me?” Rose snapped.

“S-sorry,” James stuttered, carefully lifting himself to his feet. “Thought you might want help standing.”

“M’fine here for now,” she said, panting as she tried to catch her breath.

James nodded and ran to their room to get his phone, then he immediately returned to Rose and sat on the bathroom floor with her as he alerted their midwife to the progression of Rose’s labor.

“She’ll be here in twenty minutes,” James said, hanging up the phone. “Will that be soon enough?”

“Yeah,” Rose said. “Contractions are still about three or four minutes apart. We’ll be fine.”

James nodded and then glanced at the time. Eight at night. “Ainsley might still be up. Want me to phone? We can say a quick goodnight.”

Rose nodded and shakily pushed herself to her feet, grabbing onto James as he helped steady her.

“FaceTime or just a call?” James asked, pulling up his dad’s contact information on his phone.

“FaceTime, please,” Rose said, settling into their bed.

When they were both settled in bed, James sent a video chat request to his dad.

His dad answered almost immediately.

“Hey, mate. Hey, darling. Still no baby?”

James sighed and shook his head. “Not yet. Close, though, we think. Is Ainsley still up?”

“Daddy!”

James couldn’t help but grin at his daughter’s excited voice, and the room on James’s phone spun as Robert wheeled the phone around so Ainsley could see her parents. But just before her face could enter the frame, James saw Rose’s face pinch into a grimace, and he quickly aimed the camera just at him as Rose rode out her contraction.

“Hi, Daddy!”

“Hi, darling!”

“Is Sianin here?” Ainsley asked, her eyes scanning across the phone as though looking for her little sister.

“Nope, not yet,” James said. “Almost. When you wake up tomorrow, she’ll be here.”

“She better be here by then,” Rose muttered, and James smirked at his wife before leaning closer to her so she could be in the call. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Mummy!” Ainsley said happily. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Ainsley,” Rose said softly, then her brows furrowed. “Wait. Why are you naked?”

“Oops, she was changing into her jammies when you called,” Robert’s voice said sheepishly. “Bottom half is good. Just no top yet.”

“Getting dressed like a big girl!” Ainsley announced proudly.

“That’s right. My big girl,” Rose said.

They watched Ainsley pull on a t-shirt—and watched Robert help her spin it so it was facing the right way—but before they could continue a conversation, Rose bit her lip and said, “Talk to Daddy for a sec, sweetheart.”

James turned the phone towards him as Rose doubled over, but he couldn’t mute the sound fast enough, and Ainsley’s face pinched in fear as she heard Rose’s gasping moan of pain.

“Mummy? Mummy!”

“Mummy’s fine, darling,” James promised as the image of his daughter went out of frame, then returned with her in Robert’s arms. “We talked about this, remember? Giving birth to your sister is hard work, and it hurts, but this is completely normal, darling. Nothing to be afraid of. I promise. Mummy is just fine.”

“See, all better,” Rose said shakily, as she reached out to turn James’s phone back to her.

“Does it hurt, Mummy?” Ainsley asked through the thumb in her mouth.

“A little bit,” Rose said, her heart aching to pull Ainsley into her arms and soothe her. “But it’s only for a little while. You go on off to bed, sweetheart. Have Gran or Grandad read one of your new books to you, and when you wake up in the morning, you’ll be a big sister.”

“Okay,” Ainsley said. “Love you, Mummy. Love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, darling,” James said. “Goodnight. Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite!” Ainsley finished, grinning.

“No bedbugs in this house,” Robert vowed, blowing a raspberry into her neck to make her giggle. “Goodnight, you two. Good luck. Let us know when Sianin arrives.”

“We will,” James promised. “Night, Dad.”

They ended the chat a minute later, just as the doorbell rang.

James slid out of bed and let the midwife into the house, before guiding her to their bedroom.

He settled himself into bed beside Rose as she curled up onto her side, hugging a pillow to her chest. He lay that way with her for over two hours, holding her hand and stroking her hair out of her face and comforting her as best he could as her contractions became closer and closer together until hardly any time passed between them.

Elizabeth mostly stayed in the background and let James and Rose have their space, but she occasionally checked on the state of Rose’s dilation and the baby’s heartrate.

An hour before midnight, when her contractions were virtually non-stop, Rose gasped in a sharp breath and her entire body began shivering.

“Rose?”

“I need to push,” she grunted, struggling to roll off the bed. “The baby’s finally coming.”

“Good, that’s good,” Elizabeth soothed, moving with James to help Rose clamber to the floor at the foot of the bed, where an absorbent, sterile pad was waiting atop many layers of blankets and protective floor coverings.

James crouched down in front of Rose beside the midwife, helping her balance as she squatted down to start the pushing process.

“Push with your contractions,” Elizabeth instructed after verifying that Rose was completely dilated. “Work with them. Push into them.”

Rose gripped James’s forearms tightly as she let out a whimper and began to push. Her nails bit into his skin, but he hardly felt the sting. He was too focused on supporting his wife as much as he could, which he felt wasn’t nearly enough. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be able to take her place, and not have her be in any more pain.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and it felt like Rose had been pushing for hours, and James didn’t believe the clock when it read that she’d only been at it for fifteen minutes. She was dripping sweat and her face was bright red, and her entire body was trembling with exhaustion and pain.

“You’re doing great, love,” he murmured after she sobbed that she couldn’t do this anymore. His heart was racing in his chest, both in anticipation of his daughter’s birth, and at the agony lacing Rose’s every cry. “You’re doing so good, Rose. So good. We’re almost there. We’ve almost got our little girl in our arms. You can do this. I know you can.”

“Give me your hand,” Elizabeth said softly.

Rose let go of James’s forearm, and the midwife guided both of their hands between Rose’s legs. James’s lungs hitched when his fingers brushed up against something firm, hot, wet, and hairy. His daughter’s head, he realized breathlessly.

“Come on, Rose,” James urged, keeping his fingers against Sianin’s head, feeling more of her slip out every second. “Almost there, love. Keep pushing. You’re being so strong. She’s almost here. Oh, I can feel her, Rose. She’s beautiful!”

“Can’t feel beauty, you nutter,” Rose grunted, her face going bright red as she held her breath to push out their baby.

“Your nutter. And yes I can,” James argued. “You and Ainsley are so beautiful, it makes me ache. And now Sianin, too. My beautiful, precious girls. Remember to breathe, Rose.”

Rose let out an agonized cry, and James felt Sianin’s head rush out towards him. He glanced down and saw dark hair on their daughter’s head.

“Head is out,” Elizabeth announced. “Does Dad want to help catch the baby?”

James glanced between Rose, the midwife, and the partially-delivered baby.

“Better decide soon,” Rose growled when he continued blinking stupidly.

James pressed a kiss to her temple and took his forearms away from her grip to help deliver their baby. Rose instead reached back and fisted the blankets on their bed in her hands as she continued birthing their daughter.

“Got her head?” Elizabeth asked, positioning his hands. “It’s going to be tempting to pull her out, but try to not do that. Her shoulders won’t fit. So we’re just gonna help her.”

His mouth went dry as he nodded, holding one of his hands around Sianin’s neck as the other was poised to catch her body. Her skin felt so hot in his hand, and he watched in awe as Rose’s thighs trembled as she pushed. Sianin’s head began to rotate, and James saw the tip of her top shoulder peek out.

Elizabeth covered his hands with hers and guided him in angling Sianin’s head down so her shoulder could completely pop out. Then she told him to lift up on the baby, and James watched as his baby’s second shoulder slipped out, and suddenly her little body fell out in a rush into his waiting hand just moments before Rose’s legs gave out and she fell to her knees.

“Oh!” he gasped, holding their little girl in the palms of his hands. His muscles moved automatically to cradle her close, and he was frozen in awe as he stared down at the tiny human he and Rose made, and that he had just helped deliver. She was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, equal only with her sister and her mother. “Oh, Rose!”

The midwife efficiently cleared out the baby’s airways, and rubbed a cloth across her briefly, causing the baby’s face to scrunch up as she opened her mouth and let out her first cry.

“Give her to me,” Rose said weakly, reaching for the baby. “Please, James. Please give her to me.”

He transferred the baby into Rose’s waiting arms, and watched as his wife cuddled Sianin to her chest. James’s ears were ringing and his eyes were stinging as Rose curled her body around their baby, sobbing as Sianin took ragged, crying breaths.

A damp towel was suddenly handed to him.

“Clean yourself,” Elizabeth said, “then we can more thoroughly clean your daughter and wife.”

James took the towel as he watched the midwife rub a cloth across the baby’s body.

“Turn her over, Rose,” Elizabeth said, and she wiped down Sianin’s front while clamping the umbilical cord.

James took the shears she indicated to, and he snipped away the connection that had bound mother and daughter for the last nine months.

“Well done, Rose,” James whispered raggedly, kneeling next to Rose. “Oh, love, you were fantastic! Look at our beautiful girl! I told you she was beautiful! Oh, where’s my phone? Gotta show Dad and Jackie.”

“They’ll probably be asleep, and anyways, you’re not taking a photo of me right now. I’m completely starkers,” Rose chastised, batting his arm as he moved to find his phone. “Just give us some time to be alone with her first, yeah?”

James nodded, and settled back beside her. He stroked his fingers down the baby’s arm as she quieted against Rose’s breast. Her eyes were wide open and she was looking up at them alertly.

“Hello, my darling,” he whispered through the lump in his throat. “Hello, my beautiful Sianin.”

He trailed his fingertips across her plump cheek and then up across her eyebrows.

“Wonder what color her eyes’ll be,” he mused, staring down into the murky blue eyes his daughter currently had.

“Maybe beautiful blue like Ainsley,” Rose murmured, sounding thoroughly exhausted. “Or maybe brown like one of ours. Won’t matter. S’beautiful no matter the color.”

“Quite right,” he agreed.

Sianin began squirming and grunting, and James watched with wonder as she nuzzled her way across Rose’s breast until she found a nipple.

“God, she’s so smart!” James whispered with reverent awe.

“It’s instinct,” Rose countered, wincing as Sianin latched on incorrectly. She stuck her finger at the corner of the baby’s mouth to break the suction she’d started, and she helped Sianin to latch on properly. “There we go, sweetheart. That’s better, isn’t it?”

Rose leaned heavily against James as Sianin nursed for the first time. He wrapped his arm around Rose’s shoulders and nuzzled his cheek into her hair as he watched Sianin suckle at her breast.

“James. Watching you deliver Sianin was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” she said, blinking back fresh tears.

“Was one of the most beautiful things I’ve done,” he admitted, his throat swelling with emotion. “When she’s done, can I get a turn with her?”

“’Course,” Rose said. “Maybe I can catch a kip. Feel like I could sleep the rest of the year away.”

“You’ve earned a solid bit of sleep,” James said. “As soon as we get you settled into bed, you can sleep as long as you want.”

Rose nodded, and resumed resting her head against his shoulder. James pressed kisses to her hair as he observed his family, while the midwife silently delivered the placenta.

Rose groaned against him as her face pinched into a grimace, and James tightened his grip around her shoulders, wishing he could take away all of her discomfort.

“Almost done,” Elizabeth soothed.

“You were so brilliant,” James said, trying to distract Rose. He trailed his fingers across their baby’s body then traced his fingertip across all five perfect fingers, which were splayed across Rose’s chest. “Really, Rose, you were so brilliant. You were amazing. I love you so much.”

Rose tilted her head up to peck a kiss to his jaw.

“I love you, too,” she replied. “And you were amazing, too.”

He scoffed. “Me? Nah, you did all the work.”

“You were a great support,” Rose said. “I couldn’t’ve done this without you.”

James smiled, and continued to press lazy kisses to the top of Rose’s head.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, tucking his finger under their baby’s palm and enjoying the way she gripped his finger tightly.

“I’m exhausted and my body aches,” Rose said bluntly. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a hundred lorries.”

“But otherwise?”

“I’m really cold,” Rose admitted, and James cursed when he realized her body was covered in goosebumps.

“That’s normal,” the midwife assured. “Birth ratchets up your body temperature. We’ll bundle you up in bed soon enough.”

James held Rose closer, trying to give her as much of his warmth as he could as the midwife finished up.

A few minutes later, Sianin unlatched from Rose’s breast. Rose brought her up to her shoulder and nuzzled her nose into their daughter’s hair as she rubbed and patted the baby’s back until she let out a tiny burp.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Rose whispered, pressing a kiss to Sianin’s brow, “time for a cuddle with Daddy, yeah? You’ll love it. He gives the best cuddles.”

James grinned stupidly as he took the baby from his wife. Her skin was warm against his as he lifted Sianin to his chest. Bubbles of warmth and happiness consumed him as her body pressed flush against his. His skin seemed to buzz every place Sianin’s skin touched his, and he suddenly seemed so drowsy and content.

“I love you, my darling,” he whispered, nuzzling his nose into the wispy strands of her hair. “So much. I can’t wait for you to meet your big sister. She’s pretty amazing, you know. The best big sister there is. She’s been so excited for your arrival. Her name’s Ainsley.”

James continued speaking quietly to their daughter as the midwife cleaned Rose and got her dressed and into bed. When Rose was settled and bundled under a thick layer of blankets, Elizabeth came to him and had him help her measure Sianin.

“3.72 kilograms and 52.2 centimeters,” she said, handing Sianin back to him. “Skin tone looks good. Breathing sounds great. Reflexes are strong. You’ve got a very healthy baby.”

“Thanks,” James said with a smile. “And how’s Rose? Everything all right?”

“Yep, she’s just exhausted,” she soothed. “Births are a trying ordeal, as you already know.”

“This one was more trying than our first,” James admitted. He then glanced around at the macabre scene that was their bedroom.

“I’ll take care of this,” Elizabeth said. “You may want to get a nappy on her before she decides your chest will do.”

James glanced down and realized Sianin was still very much naked.

“All right, darling,” he whispered, carefully standing while keeping Sianin cradled close.

He walked down the hall, speaking softly to his baby and pointing out the various rooms to her, despite the fact that the baby seemed half asleep and was intent on staring up at James through her drooping eyes.

When they made it to the nursery, James gathered a nappy and onesie before he set the baby on the changing table.

“Let’s get a nappy on your little bum, eh? I wouldn’t fancy cleaning up whatever you weed on. Or pooped on. Nope, let’s keep all of those bodily ablutions safely contained, eh?”

He expertly secured a nappy under her bum and around her waist, the task still so ingrained in his muscle memory that he knew he’d be able to do it in the dark, like he’d been able to do for Ainsley.

He lifted her legs into the air and brought his lips down to press kisses to the soles of her feet before he set them down and grabbed the onesie he’d picked.

“Ah, this’ll do nicely, eh Sianin?” he asked, carefully easing her into the soft white and purple striped onesie.

He then found a blanket he could swaddle her in to keep her warm.

“There we go,” he said proudly when he picked up his burrito-esque baby. “Nice and snug. Bet that feels lovely. Like being wrapped in a permanent hug. What do you say we go back and find Mummy, eh? She’s probably asleep. Bringing you into the world was really hard on her, harder than it was for Ainsley. But she did so good, Sianin. I’m so proud of her. Anyways, we can lay down beside her and keep her company, and maybe steal a snuggle or two. Mummy snuggles are the best, you know.”

“Blimey, no wonder your eldest is so verbal,” Elizabeth teased when he walked back into the room.

“Rose says the same thing,” James said, smiling sheepishly. “My mother-in-law thinks I speak too much like an adult to Ainsley, but what good’s baby talk going to do?”

The midwife nodded in agreement, then she said, “I’ve got a few forms to fill out, and then I’m going to let you, Rose, and your baby have some time alone together.”

James nodded and settled himself into bed beside Rose and he cradled Sianin in his lap. He fished for his mobile and when he found it, he snapped a photo of his daughter and sent it to his dad and Jackie.

“Say hello to Miss Sianin Noelle,” he typed. “Born 11:22pm on March 20. 3.72kg and 52.2cm. She and Rose are doing well. More pics to come in the morning after we get some sleep.”

He set his phone back onto his nightstand and returned his attentions to his baby. Everything about her looked so soft, from her pudgy cheeks to her brown hair which was sticking in every direction. His heart felt like it was trying to burst out of his chest, and he could feel his pulse thrumming throughout his body.

Rose’s labor left him feeling wrung out and emotional, and holding his baby seemed to exacerbate those feelings. He lifted Sianin to his shoulder and nuzzled his nose against her soft skin, wanting to live in this moment of peacefulness forever.

After about a half hour, the midwife stood, and she set a few papers on his nightstand underneath his phone.

“Here are the documents you and Rose need to fill out for Sianin. I won’t need those back for another few days, so there’s no need to rush. I’ll be on call if you need me, and I’ll be back in the morning to check on everyone.”

“Thank you very much,” James said. “Ehm, can you show yourself out of the house?”

She nodded, and quietly walked out of the room, leaving James alone with his family.

Conversions for Sianin’s height/weight: 8lbs 3oz, 20.5in

#doctorroseprompts #legendslikestardust #ficandchips #dwfic #doctor who #ten x rose #au #soulmates au #pregnancy #birth #kid fic #my fic #perfectly matched series

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ninzied · 7 years

Text

Impulse [Bandit OQ]

When Regina double-crosses him on a job, Robin is forced to reconsider what she might mean to him, and how he plans to return the favor – after he escapes from the Queen’s Guard, that is. (Based on the prompt: “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”) ~15k. [ffn | ao3]

Happy birthday to my dear friend @loveexpelrevolt. I’m so thankful fandom brought me to you, with your spunk and talent and your generous heart. You are truly one of the most inspiring people I have ever met (which we can finally say we’ve done in person!). Anyway, you gave me this word prompt many moons ago, and it was actually intended as last year’s birthday fic, but by the time I finished it there were only so many months until this one, so I figured I’d wait :)

(I would like to thank @starscythe, @sometimesangryblackwoman and @revolutionsoftheheart for all their help in shaping this fic, and to @starscythe especially for inspiring me with her amazing manip.)

They’ve been marching for days, it seems.

Robin gives the rope around his wrists another vigorous tug, but the knots there are as damnably stiff as they had been five minutes previously, stubbornly refusing to loosen. The guards have already confiscated his satchel of lock picks, and of course it would be just his luck to reach for the dagger in his boot – bending himself awkwardly as he feels for the handle, hop-stepping so as not to break his stride – only to find that it’s mysteriously vanished.

Well that's just bloody wonderful.

“Whatever it is you're doing back there, d’you mind maybe not doing it for a while?” grumbles the man in front of him – a lumbering, overgrown sort of individual, filling out the edges of a rich red tunic that looks as though it’s seen better days – and then there’s a pointed yank at the rope where they’ve been tethered together. The man tips a hairy chin sideways to prevent his words from carrying toward the head of the line. “The last thing we need is for them to think you’re up to something.”

“Right. My apologies.”

“No harm done,” the man – giant, really – grunts good-naturedly, shrugging one large boulder-like shoulder. “But, you know, if it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to avoid getting tossed in those shackles again.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Feeling properly chastised, Robin drops his arms back down behind him and struggles to contain his rising frustration. Some quarter-hour that already feels like an eternity earlier, while plodding along single-file and chained at the ankles through some particularly perilous terrain, a fellow prisoner had stepped most inopportunely into quicksand, dragging several others down with him before the guards had managed to react in time.

It had been an ordeal, to say the least, to dismantle the remaining restraints before any more casualities occurred; the Evil Queen had, after all, promised her men considerable amounts of money in exchange for the realm’s most wanted, and what use was a heart that was no longer beating?

One of the guards, with a face that might have been handsome if not for the cruelty hardening its features, had given Robin a sound beating after he squandered his sole chance at escape in favor of extending a tree branch toward one of the men as the earth began to swallow him whole.

“That one was hardly worth a sack of gold anyway” had been the guard’s only comment, and while Robin staggered back to his feet, the man turned away to consult a pocket mirror, ensuring that not a lock of his golden hair had fallen out of place in all the commotion.

Robin sincerely doubted he could say the same for the state of his own hair – or the rest of his body, for that matter.

Wincing around the throbbing eye and an uncomfortably swollen nose – broken now, surely – that he’d gotten for his troubles, he forces one foot in front of the other, feeling useless in his anger and wishing, above all else, for open skies (for freedom) above a campfire pit, and for the company of John and his men, likely kilometers behind him now and at an utter loss as to what’s become of their leader.

He should have known better than to trust that woman.

“What I wouldn’t give for a pint right now,” the giant speaks up again then, sounding wistful, and Robin musters a rather humorless chuckle for his benefit.

“Something stronger, perhaps.”

“We’ll drink our way through Sherwood Forest after we’ve escaped,” his companion decides, in a firm tone that Robin doesn’t have the heart to dispute, though his thoughts have already begun to turn on him, chasing some thread of desperation brought on by a growing sense of hopelessness at their predicament.

If he manages to scrape his way out of this one intact, he vows to be done with it all. With the thieving, and the crime, and the at-times thankless job of living with a target on his back just so the poor may never know hunger. He’s going to retire from the business, he is – something he’s been meaning to do for years, though he’d never quite found the right time for it, as is the way of kicking old habits.

This time, however, he’s certain (he must be) that things will turn out differently. This path he's on can only end one way – with his reckoning, at the hands, if not the mercy, of the Queen – and he's no intention of dying such a thankless death today.

After he's broken free – after he’s put no less than half a kingdom between him and her army – he’s going to go make an honest man of himself, whatever that means. He’ll put down roots in some remote town, someplace so ordinary, so easily overlooked that even an outlaw could lose himself there. Perhaps he’ll find a proper woman to fall for while he’s at it, if the fates are permissive and she not so quick to judge a man for his past and his dubious codes of honor.

Once upon a time, he might have thought to look closer to home (to his heart) and hope, but the instability of his profession has hardly afforded him such luxuries, and the only woman he’s ever found himself thinking of, caring for of all damnable things, is the very woman responsible for landing him in this mess to begin with, without so much as a second thought.

And as soon as time draws them together again – it’s always but a matter of time, whenever they’re concerned – he’s going to settle the score between them, once and for all.

He owes her a reckoning too, that Regina.

…

It’s an easy job, she’d told him. A two-man job, one she’d have clearly preferred to do alone if reason hadn’t won out over pride, and here she’d looked him over, sharply appraising, before announcing that she supposed one of him would simply have to do.

We’ll be in and out by first light, she’d told him (that is, if you’re half as useful as they say you are), and then she’d named their target – a traveling dignitary in possession of several ancient scrolls, worth quite a lot to the nobility in some neighboring kingdom – and asked to borrow his horse, in a way that made Robin wonder whether he had any true say in the matter.

He scowls now to think on how little he had said by way of objection – how unreservedly he’d relinquished the reins to her and let things fall as she’d planned them. He’d been more than satisfied with the opportunity to observe Regina in as natural a habitat as she would allow him, something inside him stirring to wonder at what he might learn of her with or without her permission.

But she’d revealed her true colors to him today, she had, and putting his faith in places he shouldn’t – staking his life on some illusion of friendship with a woman who can hardly spare him a smile on most days – is not a mistake he intends to make a second time.

Robin’s distracted enough by his recollections that it takes a moment to realize the fellow walking ahead of him has taken to stealing furtive glances in his direction, jaws unsticking before clamping back shut as if chewing carefully over the things he's about to say.

“I'm a, uh, big fan, by the way.” He mumbles his way around the words in a rather bashful manner, but then the moment is fairly ruined when he asks next, sounding desperately curious, “How the hell did they finally manage to pin down someone like you?”

Robin attempts a smile that comes out feeling more like a grimace.

Clearly aware that he’s touched on a sore spot, the man continues, “Not that it didn’t, you know, require a whole army to put their backs into it.” And he’s not wrong about that, though it had taken the work of a single woman to drop Robin’s guard long enough to find himself hopelessly surrounded by a squadron of soldiers who barely know left from right without their Queen to tell them so. “I'm just…surprised, is all.”

“As am I,” says Robin, endeavoring not to dwell on those dark, inscrutable eyes he’d been less than wise to trust, and how she’d winked his way before all but shoving him into the path of the oncoming cavalry, leaving him stranded in the woods without a horse or his share of the treasure.

Her duplicity had, much to his chagrin, thrown him so thoroughly he could do more than stand there while she flew between trees to save her own skin, never once glancing back as he shouldered the humiliation of getting caught, which – judging from the sheer turnout of massively armed forces – had more than likely been intended for her.

As innumerable as the notorious Robin Hood’s own impressive undertakings of lawless misconduct have been, not a living soul in the Enchanted Forest is clueless to the legend that is one Regina Mills, as deadly as she is rumored to be beautiful, wanted above all else for her unspeakable crimes against the crown.

“Sounds like there’s a story there.” The giant is looking at him with such an earnest, hopeful expression now that Robin feels almost genuinely apologetic for letting him down.

But he’s reluctant to delve into the details of Regina’s treachery – the tight spaces and dark corners, warmth and breath unwillingly shared, hands fumbling too-close (or so he told himself) – and then the sudden chasm that had opened and stretched and stretched from her eyes to his, separating them in a way that felt startlingly permanent even before she mounted his horse and rode away from him.

No, Robin thinks, he’d rather not relive those less-than-favorable moments, the itch of displeasure he can’t quite get rid of, and so he carefully deflects with a polite “Indeed,” followed by, “Please forgive my ignorance, but I don’t believe I’m as familiar with your work.”

“Oh,” says the giant with an awkward, embarrassed sort of chuckle, “the name’s Anton, but – err, my friends call me Tiny.” He mumbles something sheepish about harps and magic beans, a collection of pastimes that sit rather oddly on this rather large man, and Robin is wondering if he hasn’t simply misunderstood him when his thoughts are sidetracked by a rippling disquiet that’s just reached the end of the line.

He peers around Tiny’s colossal frame, somewhere near the level of his elbow, to find a guard up ahead extending an imperious hand, signaling for their party to stop. This particular man, by Robin’s estimation from his current distance, would hardly come up to his own elbow, squatly built as though the gods had taken a regular-sized person and pressed him down from head to toe rather than shrinking him into something more properly proportioned.

A bulbous nose protrudes from between two narrowed eyes, and a snarl involving all of his teeth has started to show through his beard as he points a gloved finger just off the road, into a thick patch of forest that has suddenly gone far too still to escape anyone’s notice.

The guard previously so preoccupied with his hair nods meaningfully to the dwarf before advancing on the bramble, sword at the ready for whatever might have endeavored to hide on the other side. He slides the blade between branches, slipping through the undergrowth until all Robin can make out of him is a swish of black cape, then nothing.

Five heavy seconds of silence follow, then the sound of many things happening, suddenly and all at once – an agitated horse’s whinny, the dull thud of things landing where they probably shouldn’t – and Tiny is startled backwards, nearly trodding over Robin’s boots.

The guards are wearing matching baffled expressions, rooted there with indecision as to how they ought to proceed, while Robin’s fellow inmates begin clamoring loudly, cheering on their invisible champion as the noise beyond the bushes escalates to an alarming degree.

Robin seizes his opportunity in the face of everyone else’s distraction, and he’s digging into the rope with fingers and nails and renewed determination when the thicket just beside him gives a great rustling twitch.

He barely has the time to react when out canters a wild-maned, riderless horse, which Robin might have thought to recognize had he not been so concerned with avoiding getting trampled underfoot when the mare kicks onto her hind legs and takes off into a gallop across the road, scattering the Queen’s men and prisoners in various directions.

Robin is awkwardly attempting to help Tiny back onto his feet when he hears the guard call out, victorious and gleefully sinister, “Going somewhere, princess?”

He stills, and a dreadful sense of foreboding begins to prickle up his spine and spread.

“I don’t see anyone coming to your rescue this time,” continues the guard, his taunting merciless despite how winded he sounds, and the renewed signs of a struggle – a disturbance in the leaves, the pained cry that soon follows – seize Robin around the middle, squeezing at something there. “Looks like you won’t be smuggling your way out of this one.”

“Charming, as always,” comes a second voice then, biting, scornful, and Robin’s heart quickens at the familiarity of it – so often directed towards him, with a dark roll of her eyes to match (and a refusal to stay for that drink she’d once promised him when he caught her in one of her better moods) – but no.

It can’t be. Not her.

The guard eventually emerges from the tree line, looking disheveled but terribly triumphant as he hauls a struggling Regina behind him, wrists bound behind her back, stubborn heels digging into the dirt.

“Still has a dog do all her dirty work, then,” she remarks contemptuously, with a futile jerk of the rope as it pulls her forward, forcing her footsteps into an echo of his.

Her captor freezes for a split second, his expression severely unpleasant, but it edges into something dangerously close to delight as he turns to smirk at the look of her, captured all the same despite the sharpness held in her words, her gaze, though she even now manages to stare down her nose at him.

For all Robin’s bitterness regarding her betrayal, this is not a fate he’d ever wish for her, and it takes a monumental effort – plus a quelling flick of Regina’s eyes in his direction, so swift he might have imagined the contact – not to launch himself forward when the guard levels his sword point to the pale white of her throat.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he tells her, his tone disturbingly casual.

“I’m sure Snow White would prefer to do the honors,” Regina speaks around the blade, with a carelessness that has Robin clenching every part of his body.

“That’s Her Majesty to you,” corrects the guard, almost sternly, like a teacher scolding a schoolgirl. “Besides, I can still deliver you to her without hands, or a tongue. Your heart is what she’s after, and there are ways to ensure that it still beats even if the rest of you is in pieces.”

“Considerate of you,” says Regina, unfazed (foolish, Robin thinks, so foolish, and he is so desperately angry with her), even as her words take on a hoarse, strangled quality. “Tell me, Charming, when do you think Her Majesty—” she curls a lip, less than subtle in her mocking “—will finally see you as more than just an errand boy?”

A titter towards the front, poorly concealed, sets off a chain of gleeful reactions that the other guards can’t seem to contain, despite their warnings and the threatening way they step forward with their weapons half-drawn. The dwarf, currently installed some distance away and looking rather surly about the delay in their travels, makes no indication that he’d heard the dig apart from a single crack in his expression, frighteningly smile-like, that’s gone too quickly for Robin to guess at its meaning.

Tiny, meanwhile, is muttering unintelligible things to himself, slack-jawed with some revelation, and then he’s jamming a large elbow into Robin’s ribs with such enthusiasm that Robin nearly loses both his breath and his footing. He glances upward to find the giant looking intently sideways at him, eyes wide and almost comically awestruck as he whispers very carefully out of one corner of his mouth, “Is that…is she who I think she…?”

Personally, Robin never has been able to find much of a likeness in the posters depicting a face with her name (wanted, in black and bold letters, for murder, treason, and treachery); they lack the fire, the spark to her scowl that he’s been known to burn himself on whenever he’s not careful.

They will not reduce her to something so colorless, so flat.

No. No, they will not.

Tiny continues to gape at Regina in an openly stunned fashion while Robin weighs his options and quickly settles on the only way he will allow this to end, already grimacing at the prospect of another blackened eye or perhaps breaking something more vital than a nose this time when he creates the diversion to help her escape.

Now all he needs is an excuse to—

“She’s something to look at, she is,” Tiny is still carrying on under his breath, starstruck in his admiration, and he suddenly seems to be standing a good deal straighter than before. “The sketches do her absolutely no justice. Say, you don’t suppose she’s…y’know…taken?”

Robin utters a silent apology for his new friend as he tightens his hands to fists and braces himself for impact, preparing to drive his head into the underside of the man’s gobsmacked jaw.

The guard has pressed his blade with enough force to crease Regina’s skin now, though he’s yet to draw blood (time is of the essence, and Robin tenses, turning, ready to stir up some trouble). The dwarf speaks up then, growling out an irritated “Quit messing around so we can get on with it,” and the guard obligingly lowers his sword and raises an arm, backhanding Regina across the face instead.

Robin becomes vaguely aware of something large and hairy stepping into his sightline, the sensation of hitting nothing but wall when all he longs for is to move, to break through worlds if that's what it takes – oh but how he needs to destroy that bastard for what he’s just done—

There’s a murmur of “Easy there, Robin Hood” somewhere above his ear, barely heard over the pounding rush of blood there, seeping to touch his vision until he’s seeing red.

“You’ll only do her more harm than good,” Tiny is whispering urgently, and he doesn’t ease back until Robin gives him a tight-lipped jerk of a nod in understanding.

His muscles are still singing with the desire to tear the guard apart by the limbs as the man wrenches at the rope and shoves Regina roughly forward, a glove buried in her hair, yanking, twisting, smirking like the sick son of a bitch he is, until her jaws clench from the effort of not crying out. A stream of scarlet has blossomed just above her upper lip, and Robin’s fury finds a new target as he fights the compulsion to reach for her, shake her, demand of her just how she’d let herself finally fall into enemy hands.

Looking too pleased with himself, the guard eventually releases her hair and steps ahead to take the lead, leaving Regina to trip and stumble after him. She waits until he’s turned fully before swiping her mouth against her tunic, wincing when the motion aggravates something in her shoulder, and she rolls it gingerly back and forth, testing the extent of the injury.

Robin has become well-acquainted with the guard’s savagery these past many hours, the aching soreness where brass-covered knuckles have no doubt painted his face in lurid shades of purples and greens. Still, he knows Regina to be equally deadly, if not more so – light on her feet, exceptionally clever in tight situations, armed with a sharpness that cuts deeper than any blade – and by all accounts it makes no damn sense that she would’ve been caught so easily.

What had she been thinking, to linger so close (so recklessly) to the roads, while men who would gladly see her hang for her crimes seek passage to the castle – to the Queen – that she’s spent a lifetime outrunning?

He’ll have words with her on the matter soon enough, Robin decides with grim determination as he watches them draw near the end of the line. Regina, clearly guessing the path of his thoughts, looks pointedly elsewhere when the guard stations her just behind him.

It occurs to Robin that seeing the two of them side by side may trigger certain unwelcome memories as far as the guard is concerned – a heist interrupted, a trap lain in a hijacked carriage, an arrow landing shy of the Queen’s head (but only just) – and it won’t improve their already dismal odds of survival if the guard comes to recognize him as the one who’d helped Regina escape that first time, so many summers ago.

Robin is carefully dropping his gaze to his boots when the guard grabs at his own bound hands, moving for the loose end of rope dangling there. Chuckling quietly, the man loops it noose-like around Regina’s neck, tightening, tightening (something deep inside Robin’s chest straining in answer), until she’s all but hissing in pain.

The ground goes unfocused beneath his feet, seeming to shift away from him with increasing unsteadiness as though the two have been separated in some irrevocable way, but something else has weighed him down, resisting his every urge to act, to unleash whatever form of hell he can, to do something other than simply go on standing there.

The guard is just within reach and just distracted enough that Robin could aim a devastating if not fatal blow to some of his more vulnerable body parts (he’d so like to see the man try to smirk with a fist in his throat), if not for even the off-chance that any sudden movement on his part might end disastrously for Regina.

And so he stays motionless, unable to so much as scowl when the guard begins patting his palms up and down Regina’s backside, dallying too long near her hips before roughly working his way toward her front. The rucksack she’d secured to her belt earlier with their hard-won scrolls is gone, Robin notices, must have been surrendered to the woods in the heat of her capture, but its loss is nothing in the face of all else he’s too close to losing, now.

A more-than-thorough survey of her legs, a thin blade confiscated from the lacings of her boots, and the guard is leering over Regina again, with a grin vile enough to turn any stomach playing across his features. “Better keep up, if you want to keep your own head,” he murmurs to her, almost in the cadence of a lover, before sauntering off to rejoin the front of the group.

Robin closes his hands and wills the shaking to stop.

For a long, miserable moment there’s nothing to take note of but the slow restoration of order to their party, the quiet, shuffling defeat in their steps and the occasional word, testily exchanged, between guard and dwarf up ahead. Tiny offers Robin a brief, rueful attempt at a smile before facing forward and shuffling on, and though his generous size has them rather effectively hidden from view, Robin doesn’t look back. He holds himself stiffly, quietly, willing the guards to forget Regina briefly enough for him to work his mind around their current dilemma.

It would have been a fairly easy thing, gambling with his safety alone on some half-baked plan of escape, but he’s her to think of now – her head, that heart so long sought after by the Queen, all things too valuable for him to risk the way he might have his own life – particularly when she can’t appear to be bothered about attending to such matters herself.

He won’t allow his sacrifice, involuntary as it was, to be entirely for naught now that she’s marching to near-certain death with him.

Robin’s shoulders soon begin to protest from the effort of extending his wrists as far back as he’s physically able, lending what slack he can to the rope around her neck, and it burns away at him, more than being double-crossed or cheated out of some trivial fortune, to find that his hands are tied, and her life along with them.

They are thieves, after all, meant for only fools to trust (he’d been the fool to believe anything more than that lay between them), but this, this he’d never asked for, when all he’d truly desired to steal from her someday remains well-guarded and untouchable as ever to him.

…

Midday slides into early afternoon as they near the mouth of a stream, its babbling current providing them something of a cover when Robin’s failure to acknowledge her in any way seems to provoke Regina enough to break the silence first.

“You look terrible.”

Her nonchalance, maddeningly ill-timed, stirs Robin’s temper, and he replies, as evenly as he can manage, “No bloody thanks to you.”

A beat, then she remarks, “You sound upset.”

“You don’t miss a thing.”

She doesn’t seem to have a response to that, and he carries on, curious to see what it will take to force a confession out of her. “I should’ve known you had some ulterior motive when you invited me along on that job.” His tone grows dry. “And here I thought you’d grown genuinely fond of my company.”

“Still can’t get over that, can you,” sighs Regina, and she actually has the audacity to sound bored with him. “I needed a ride, and something to distract them with in case we were found out—”

“It’s nice to know that’s all I’m good for,” Robin deadpans, though he can’t help but feel somewhat offended. He hadn’t earned his reputation – or the substantial bounty on his head – by being no better than a distraction. “I’m flattered, truly.”

“Besides. You weren’t supposed to…” She trails off, and for a moment he wonders if the forest hasn’t simply claimed the last of her words when they eventually reach him again, tight and evenly controlled. “You were the one actually stupid enough to get caught.”

He recognizes the slight for what it is – the closest thing resembling an apology he’s ever likely to get from this woman – but still he can’t help needling her, can’t resist the image of her scowling at his backside the instant she finds her own words being used against her. “Still can’t say sorry, can you?”

She falls silent again, and he’s satisfied.

The men up front have not let up on their squabbling, irritated snatches of “But I found her first” and “Yeah? Who do you think Her Majesty’s going to believe?” rising to filter through the trees, and in their preoccupation Robin finally ducks his head back for a glimpse at Regina. It won’t be much longer, he reckons, before the guards tire of arguing, and the nearby source of fresh water tempts them into stopping for a drink; once they’re stationary, he’ll have better luck at securing their means of escape, the jagged edge of some stone, perhaps a thin-pointed branch he can wedge into the rope and loosen its knotting.

Regina is twisting around in her makeshift noose while he watches her, but at the feel of his gaze on her she stops, looking stonily askance. Her cheek is still smarting from the blow she’d received, a thin trace of blood staining her upper lip in a gash that will surely scar, and Robin feels a twinge in his chest at the thought.

“At any rate,” he tells her, softening, “I think we can both agree that neither of us have been particularly perceptive in our choices today.”

Regina snorts out a laugh. “Speak for yourself.”

Irritation rattles him down to the bones, and he forgets his composure a moment. “Need I remind you how much your head is worth to these people?” he growls to her quietly, jerking his head toward the men who’ve been no doubt quarreling on that very same topic. “To the Queen?”

“Twice as much as yours, at least,” she’s quick to remind him (always), looking smug of all things, and it vexes him that even now she could reduce this to something as petty as a competition between the two of them.

“That’s hardly the point,” Robin mutters, returning to his careful scrutiny of their path ahead. He signals back to her as best as he’s able whenever the ground levels off unexpectedly or a protruding root upsets his footing, and he can only hope she’s not so proud as to ignore even these small warnings.

She makes an impatient sound in her throat when he doesn’t make the effort to lecture her any further. “So are you done, or…?”

He ducks beneath a low-lying branch that’s overgrown the width of the road, slowing his gait to allow Regina time to do the same without, quite literally, risking her neck. “We’ve still much to discuss, you and I.”

“Maybe later,” she tells him dismissively once their pace has found a regular rhythm again.

“Oh?” And in spite of everything, he finds himself battling a smile. “You’ve more important matters requiring your attention, I take it?”

“Now’s just not a great time.” She sounds increasingly distracted as they tread along, picking their way around cumbersome ferns, sidestepping hollowed bits of walnut shells that litter the soil. The stream has started bending eastward as the trail takes them further north, and too soon they’ll have reached the outermost corners of Sherwood Forest, of home.

“We’ve another day’s walk to the castle at least,” Robin argues for the sake of appearances, given that he’s no actual intention for either of them to see said walk to the end. “Tell me, then, when would be more convenient for you? After we’re comfortably settled into our prison cells? Or just before our beheading?”

He can practically hear Regina’s eyes rolling behind his back, every inch of her likely poised in retort, when Tiny swivels around to regard them both with a dour expression.

“Would you two knock it off for a while?” the giant wants to know, before adding a disgruntled “You’re kind of making my ears bleed.” He hazards a glance over Robin’s head then, and whatever he sees there has him beckoning Robin forward with a shifty-eyed twitch of his chin, dropping his voice so low that the words barely make it past the length of his beard. “Listen. I’ve given it some more thought, and she’s all y—”

Robin never quite catches that last bit, distracted as he is by a sudden, odd pulsing of light in his periphery, too bright, too deliberate to have come from the sun.

Before he has a chance to wonder if he’s seeing things, Regina closes in at his heels, forcing him to stagger-step in tandem with her strides (pressing, relentless) before she topples them both over, trapping his hands somewhere between the lambswool of her vest collar and the smooth belted leather at her waist.

“What the bloody – Regina, what are you—”

“Do me a favor.” Her request is even-toned, almost offhand in the way she lets it settle into his ear, but he doesn’t miss the restrained sense of urgency behind it, and his eyes instinctively dart back up to the front, where the guards are still negotiating the terms of their claim to the Queen’s most precious cargo.

He exchanges a look with Tiny, who appears to have caught on to the sudden shift, and the giant nods wordlessly to him before facing meaningfully forward again, straight-backed and vigilant.

Robin inclines his head toward Regina until he can feel stray wisps of her hair tickling his jawline. “What will you have me do?”

“There’s another dagger – there – in my vest. I need you to get it.”

Unbelievable. “And you didn't think to mention it earlier?” he says, aggravated, though given her track record (notoriously bad at sharing, for one) he supposes it’s hardly shocking that she would have thought to keep such crucial details to herself.

“I was waiting for the opportune moment,” she hisses, and it’s his turn to roll his eyes while he finagles his hands into a position better suited for (he sighs) more or less feeling her up, carefully laboring his way through her muttered guidance – to the right, down, then down more (pay attention), and do you feel it yet (well what’s taking you so long)?

“Watch it,” she warns in a rush when one hand strays farther right than either of them wanted, knuckles brushing against the unmistakable swell of a breast beneath her collar, and he curses, curses, curses this woman, thinking of how he’d rather perish at the hands of the Queen than a part of Regina’s anything, her razor-like gaze, those deceptively soft curves, that knife she’d stabbed into his back at least one time already.

“Got it.” He retrieves the dagger, gripping the hilt like a lifeline and feeling relieved in more ways than one as Regina finally steps away, giving him room to recover his balance and find that breath he’d quite forgotten to take.

His thumb catches on a groove in the handle, tracing over the engraved surface of a lion’s mane that he’s felt a hundred times before, could likely sketch out to minute detail from sheer memory alone.

“Hang on. This is my dagger.”

“You don’t miss a thing,” she drawls.

“You do realize this marks the second time, now, that you’ve more or less proved to harbor some death wish against me?”

“Well there’s no need to be dramatic about it,” sniffs Regina. “You’re lucky I got caught when I did. Unless you were waiting to reach the Queen’s doorstep before choosing to do something about it, you clearly needed someone’s help.”

“Because you stole my dagger.”

“You would’ve done the same thing,” she mutters exasperatedly, as though she’d had every expectation that he would be this difficult, and he manages to breathe through the height of his temper before turning to regard her again.

“No,” Robin tells her evenly, and he likes to imagine he’s more than unsettled her, that scowl of hers beginning to slip at the firm tone he’s taken, and she looks almost confused by his unwillingness to play by their usual rules. “I wouldn’t have.”

Regina seems to recover the next instant, and she stares mulishly up at him, her face inscrutable now.

He slides his gaze away and toward the ground, not wishing (not ready) to see her reaction as he goes on, matter-of-factly, “You and I both know I would never do a bloody thing that put you in harm’s way.”

Her answering silence cuts at him more than he’ll willingly admit, and then her voice is reaching to touch him again, half in challenge, half in entreaty. “So cut me loose.”

Robin obliges without another word, sawing swiftly through the rope, and the fibrous twining gives bit by bit until it’s falling away, freeing her from him.

She’s suddenly pressing herself along his backside again, with the distinct sound of a smirk against his ear as she whispers, all teasing warmth for having gotten in the last word with him, “Try to keep up this time.”

Not even a sodding thank you.

And then she’s gone.

“She’s something,” Tiny remarks, with wonder evident in every towering inch of his frame, and together they follow her flight through the trees as the forest, down to its very leaves, seems to part at her command, swallowing her safely out of sight.

Something doesn’t even begin to cover it.

…

At least she’d had the decency to leave him with more than just a blow to his pride this time around.

Robin turns the dagger point inward, working it deep into the knots binding his wrists together. It’s a far trickier task than simply slicing away at the rope, taking care not to cut himself too badly on the blade, but he soon finds a manageable rhythm and his mind begins to wander, inevitably it seems, to chase after Regina.

She’ll likely have found a more expedient form of transportation by now, absconded with another’s horse or charmed her way into someone else’s carriage, and Robin tells himself he’s glad for it. The greater the runaround she can give the guards the better, though it’s not that particular distance so much as the one growing and growing between the two of them that he finds he’s so preoccupied with at the moment.

Regina hadn’t given him that much of a head start, and he wonders what good it would do him – how much a horse and his portion of the scrolls are actually worth (knowing full well the worth of other things) – even if he does choose to pursue her, once he’s made his escape. They’ve always been so terribly careful, so calculated in their space and their debts, their reservations and the risks they’re willing to take with one another.

What would they be without any of these things standing between them, Robin wonders, and it’s the hope of discovery, that thrill of what’s yet uncharted as far as Regina is concerned, that fuels every impulse he’s ever ignored in the past to simply go after her this time.

As absorbed in his thoughts as he is, he hardly pays attention to Tiny’s small-sounding “Uh oh,” nor the deafening stillness that’s overtaken their party, until it’s spread halfway down the line, and he nearly runs into the giant from behind before coming to an uneasy stop himself.

The guards, from the sound of it, have settled their differences for the time being and begun a routine sweep, taking stock of their prisoners and loudly debating which of their sad-looking lot will be fortunate enough to receive a sip of water once they’ve procured more from the stream.

The golden-haired guard is, naturally, the first to take note of Regina’s absence.

“Where is she?” he roars, raising hell as he stalks toward Robin, drawing his sword and shaking it outward in a blind sort of fury. “How the hell did she escape? Leroy! Search the woods! She won’t have made it far on foot!”

Nothing for it but to go down fighting, Robin thinks grimly as the rope finally begins to budge and loosen. And if he can take this bastard down with him, so much the better.

“You!” growls the guard, livid, sword point coming within rather uncomfortable proximity to Robin’s chest. “Which way did she go? You must have helped her do it!”

Robin leans in close enough for the blade tip to just nick the leather trim of his vest, confiding with a solemn, “Not for the first time, as it so happens,” and then he winks at him.

Not to be toyed with, the guard presses further, thundering, “Tell me where she went,” when the bushes beside them give a great, violent shudder. Robin backs away with hardly a second to spare before the mare is bursting back through, powerful legs lowering to tread the path where he’d just stood.

This time, she isn’t riding alone.

“Looking for me?” a voice above them wonders, and Regina reins the horse to a stop inches in front of the guard’s incredulous face.

In the brief moments since they’d been separated, Regina had worked herself completely free, with chafed-red skin in place of the rope around her wrists and neck, and Robin looks upward to find her gaze startlingly warm on his.

She turns to address the guard once more, tilting her head almost coquettishly as she clucks her tongue at him. “Honestly, Charming, did you really think I was going to leave without saying goodbye?”

“You should’ve run while you had the chance, Regina,” he sneers up at her, swinging his sword in a slow, lazy arc that has the mare prancing backward, tossing her head with a loud, wet snort. The sword advances with another wide sweep, more deliberately paced this time. “I’ll deliver you to Her Majesty in a coffin if I have to now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen,” Robin interrupts them gravely then, and he tosses the leftover pieces of rope aside. They flop to a useless pile on the ground, the remaining length of it still dangling from Tiny’s bound wrists.

The giant lets out a low, impressed whistle as Robin, fingering the hilt of his dagger, brings it casually into view.

The guard – Charming, Regina had called him, though Robin has every intention of questioning her peculiar choice of labels later – looks from one to the other, visibly weighing his odds.

Regina makes the decision for him then, urging the mare to canter forward and force the guard into a hasty, stumbling retreat, completely taken aback by the boldness of her move.

“Go release the others,” she orders Robin, and he opens his mouth to object (a cheeky Are you sure you don’t need me to distract him? on the tip of his tongue) when she expertly maneuvers the reins, rearing the horse back onto her hind legs, and Charming, cowed, nearly loses his balance.

Well, then.

On second thought, he’s quite certain she’s more than capable of handling herself.

Tiny is practically beaming at her, and Robin, shaking his head with something like admiration himself, turns to untie the man when a large palm the size of a salad plate clasps him firmly around the shoulder. Robin feels himself being hauled backward, coming face to face with a remarkably familiar, bushy-bearded grin.

“John?”

“Miss me?” beams his oldest friend, thumping Robin soundly across the back before retrieving a set of blades from his boots. “Let me assist you with that.”

“Oi! Robin!” calls out another voice, originating from somewhere within the dense greenery several paces ahead of them. Seconds later, none other than Will Scarlet emerges from the underbrush, dragging behind him a gagged, bound and rather surly-looking dwarf. “What should I do with this one, d’you reckon?”

Robin has hardly recovered from his astonishment when, as if on cue, no fewer than a dozen of his men are bursting out of the woodworks, brandishing axes and crossbows and shouting spectacularly as they descend upon the flustered guards up front.

“Well we weren’t about to let Regina have all the fun, you know,” yells Little John, looking pleased with Robin’s expression – still cautiously suspended somewhere between delight and utter bewilderment – as he goes about freeing the rest of the prisoners.

“Are they with her?” Tiny wants to know, rubbing the soreness out of his wrists and blinking about in a state of absolute wonder. Robin’s men have already begun to make quick work of the Queen’s, if their exuberant shouting is any indication. Regina, on her part, has effectively trapped Sir Charming between her horse and a nest of prickly vines. “This is hands down the most amazing rescue mission I’ve ever seen.”

Robin would have scowled and set the record straight on who, exactly, his men answer to, had he not noticed one of the guards jostling loose from the ongoing skirmish and about to make a run for the trees. His overlarge helmet has been knocked comically askew, an empty scabbard clanking against his armor with each hurried step.

Politely excusing himself, Robin breaks into an easy jog after the runaway guard.

Incapacitating him ends up taking such little effort on Robin’s part that he’s fairly embarrassed by it, slipping behind the unsuspecting guard and applying but the slightest pressure with his blade to the softness beneath the man’s jaw before he’s throwing up his hands in surrender.

Robin tosses him in with the rest of his lot, now sat clumsily down on the dirt with their backs in a circle, shackled at the ankles and wrists and looking altogether worse for the wear while the Merry Men help themselves to their weapons and supplies.

“The Queen will see all of you burn for this,” the dwarf is snarling from where he’s been crammed between elbows, and Robin cheerfully bends down to twine a piece of cloth around his mouth and spare everyone else from the noise.

By the time he’s turned to seek her out again, Regina has already dismounted, carting the last of them behind her like a dog on a leash.

She’d certainly done a number on him, and Robin might have winced on the guard’s behalf if the sight of him weren’t so bloody satisfying.

Charming looks badly banged up, with his hair now severely deflated, a significant dent in his breastplate shaped curiously like a horseshoe, and somewhere in the thick of a struggle he’d somehow managed to misplace his sword.

Trying and failing to tuck back a smile, Robin strides forward to meet Regina halfway, and then they carefully trail to a pause once they’re at arm’s length away, something like shyness still holding the both of them back.

He’s known many things to stand between them before, but never an uncertainty quite like this, an unspoken wonder at what else they might prove capable of feeling, and it thrills and unsettles him in equal measure.

“You know, I had everything under control,” he tells her, teasing, an echo of the first words she’d ever spoken to him so many summers ago, and she purses her lips in a poor attempt at looking stern with him.

“You’re welcome.”

He inclines his head. “Thank you, milady.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I brought you something.”

He tilts his head sideways and pretends to consider her offering, while Charming spits blood on the ground and glares daggers at Regina’s back.

“And I suppose you think this makes up for everything I’ve had to endure today?” Robin keeps his tone light, playful, his smile never leaving him, but it seems to throw her all the same. Her gaze shifts away from his as she fiddles with her braid, the action entirely self-conscious and entirely disarming to him.

He takes another step toward her.

“What’s all this?” Will is demanding suddenly, marching up to them with a reproachful eye for Robin. “You planning to help the lady out or go on standing there all damn day? It’s not like she hasn’t already done the hardest parts for you.”

Shaking his head, the lad relieves Regina of her burden, tutting at a petulant-looking Charming to “hurry along now” and yelling ahead for Friar Tuck to “add this bugger to the pile” before they pitch the keys into the river.

Several of the recently freed convicts have gathered to welcome the guard, massaging their fists with gleeful intent.

“All right, all right,” Robin hears Will conceding to them, “you can rough him up a bit more – just bear in mind that we still want our message to the Queen to be fairly recognizable by the time it’s delivered to her, yeah?”

Regina is biting back something suspiciously like a smile when Robin ruefully meets her eye again. Without anything to occupy her hands now, she shoves them under her arms, pulling a face when the movement reminds her of her injured shoulder.

“Let me have a look.” Unable to recall why space had seemed so crucial to keep between them earlier, he reaches for her, just grazing her elbow when she eases out of his grasp.

“Later,” she says, and he will hold her to her word, whether she’d meant it genuinely or not.

The horse, having grown fidgety from the recent lull in action, trots over to join them, nudging a nose into Regina’s arm and sniffing around for any apples she might have stowed there.

“Dapple,” Robin greets his longtime riding companion before muttering a half-hearted “Traitor” under his breath, earning a true, unrestrained smile from Regina this time, and the loveliness of it leaves him fairly out of breath.

“You have excellent taste, don’t you,” she hums to his mare, rubbing an affectionate hand over the muzzle, but there’s an unfocused look to her now, taking her far enough away from him that he feels the distance like a palpable thing.

He wonders if she hasn’t grown as restless as his horse, eager to move on – ready to forget whatever they’ve finally begun to uncover between them and go back to pretending they’re little more than sometimes-friendly rivals with a bad habit of accumulating debts with one another.

“We’ll have to be more careful from now on,” Regina says, pulling his gaze back to the front where his men have chained Charming to a tree, the guard beaten nearly beyond recognition but for the murderous eye he’s trained on them both. They may be walking free today, but at too steep a price, and he will come to collect with a vengeance, tomorrow and every day after until they’ve no place left to run.

As loath as Robin is to admit it, they can hardly call this a victory, knowing the Queen will not suffer the embarrassment in silence.

“We’d be better off getting rid of them in a more…permanent fashion,” he murmurs, already guessing Regina’s answer.

She shakes her head, toying with Dapple’s bridle while Robin’s men take one last turn around the heap of guards, finalizing arrangements and readying themselves for departure. “I won’t be the monster she is. Or the monster she thinks I am.”

Robin heaves a sigh of agreement, nodding to Little John when the man beckons, yelling earnestly about the ale that awaits them at Granny’s tavern.

The invitation had been all-inclusive, the crooks and thieves they’d liberated already exchanging the heartiest of chuckles and backslapping the Merry Men like old friends reunited, but Regina seems to have read it as her cue to take her leave instead.

“Until next time, then.” She extends the reins to Robin with a formality that he’s rather disinclined to accept from her, not now, after all they’ve been through together.

His hand closes around hers, sliding a gentle thumb over the bony part of her wrist. The ropes had scraped deep, leaving raw, angry welts on her skin, and he resolves to tend to those too, once he’s seen to her shoulder. “You really think I’m going to let you go that easily.”

She arches a brow in challenge, though she’s yet to shake him off, and he’ll take his victories wherever he can.

“At the very least you owe me that drink,” he bargains with her, feeling suddenly bold, reckless even, and he throws in a crooked sort of grin to tip her over one way or the other.

“One drink,” she allows, thinning her lips together, though whether to press back a scowl or a smile he’s not entirely certain.

He schools his expression into one of polite interest, shrugging at her in an indulgent manner, “If you insist,” and she rises to the bait with a single dirty look.

Relatively reassured that the chances of her taking off again are somewhat lessened now, at least until she’s found a way to settle the score, he loosens their fingers where they’ve come together, releasing the reins as he gestures for her to mount.

“After you, milady.”

…

Little John leads the party in the general direction of their encampment, detouring slightly west to pass through the alleyway behind Granny’s tavern. He and several of the other men disappear into the back bearing various accoutrements they’d acquired from the guards, emerging shortly thereafter with barrels of ale, cured meats and an assortment of cheeses fit for a feast.

“Courtesy of the Evil Queen!” crows Will, punching the air in triumph, and the men start up a round of song as they resume their journey, with the promises of celebration, starlight and cavorting round a campfire not far ahead of them.

The day’s events have worn Robin down more than he’d realized, and the exhaustion begins to make itself known as the sky fully darkens, filling his body from head to toe with a heaviness he hardly has the strength to fight. More than once he finds himself swaying sideways, his vision blackening, only to be jerked out of a creeping slumber as the ground beneath him lurches unpleasantly and Regina’s glowering face shifts into focus.

“Are you trying to break something else now too?” she wonders grouchily, throwing his arms more securely around her middle, and he curls instinctive fingers into her tunic, wondering if he’s imagined the slight hitch where he flattens his palms just below her ribcage.

“Are you suggesting you’d actually like me in one piece?” he teases into her ear, and she turns to stone in his arms, stiffly facing front again and scoffing under her breath about how she should’ve checked him for head injuries.

He smiles to the back of her hair, thoroughly enjoying her noise of protest when Dapple gives some thorny bramble a wide berth and the movement rocks Regina solidly into his chest.

Robin marvels at how he’d been able to fall asleep at all with her nestled into him as she is, warm against his thighs, firmly pressed between his palm and belly, the faintly floral scent of her tickling his nose every time she shakes a fallen lock of hair from her face.

Will trots past on his grey saddlebred, side-eyeing them while looking strangely smug about something. Only then does Robin become aware of his hands and where they ought to be or not, one of them already straying dangerously beyond the boundaries of what’s considered strictly decent.

His fingertips have just settled back into the notches between her ribs when Regina carefully slips the reins into his grasp, muttering something about making himself useful for a change, and he’s grateful to have another place to put his hands for a while, where they’re much less likely to get him in trouble.

He feels an odd amalgamation of relief and disappointment when an enthusiastic whooping sounds from the front, announcing their arrival home.

Robin dismounts first, extending a hand that Regina brushes impatiently aside, and the sight of her rigid back as she stalks off to join the others drops something dull and heavy into his chest.

He keeps himself busy for a while, thanking each of his men for their timely assistance and receiving more than a few good-natured quips in return. Will gleefully remarks on what a pretty damsel in distress Robin had made, with his bruised-up eye and the sorry state of his nose, and Friar Tuck reassures him between bouts of their laughter that he’s the necessary herbs and medicines to speed along his recovery.

“And Regina is far easier on the eyes than any knight I’ve ever seen,” continues Will, earning an emphatic nod of agreement from Tiny. “It’s a lucky thing she found us, really. You should’ve seen the look on her face when she—”

But Little John has chosen that moment to trundle by, distributing an armful of flagons amongst their circle, and Will, distracted by the prospect of a drink, never quite finishes the thought.

“How did you wind up so far north near the Queen’s roads?” Robin asks them curiously, wondering at the fortuitous timing of things between Regina’s hard-earned escape and her happening upon his men in the woods, recruiting them to ambush the royal guard and come to their leader’s rescue.

But for now they all appear too preoccupied with celebrating said victory to concern themselves with rehashing every detail leading up to it, and the question seems to fall entirely on deaf ears.

Frowning thoughtfully into his untouched ale, Robin ducks carefully out of the conversation and continues to make his rounds about the campfire. The strays they’d taken in that day are eager to make his acquaintance, and they express their profound gratitude to him, as if he had been the one to personally orchestrate their escape.

His protests are quickly written off as an unconvincing show of humility, and Robin, chagrined, can only smile and drink to their hearty toasts, hoping that the true mastermind behind the rescue mission won’t consider this as yet another one of his numerous offenses against her.

As for his own men, they continue to remain bafflingly mum on the part they’d played, and though there’s little room for paranoia when one lives and works amongst thieves, Robin is under the distinct impression that they’re avoiding something every time they respond to his questions with a longer than usual drag from their ale.

Regina, on the other hand, seems to have decided on ignoring him entirely for the remainder of the evening, always suddenly and mysteriously elsewhere whenever he approaches to exchange pleasantries with another cluster of men who swear to him they’d only just spoken with her.

The fact that she’s not actually left yet ought to reassure him to some degree, but still Robin finds himself half-worrying she’ll disappear on him completely before he’s a chance to – well – to be honest he hasn’t worked out what, exactly, but it feels important, somehow, that she’s chosen to stay while he does.

…

The crowds are beginning to thin a bit by the time he completes his circuit, some of their new compatriots electing to retire and find their respective ways home before night has crowded too close to the roads. Tiny is one of the last to grip Robin’s arm in farewell.

“Would you like an introduction before you go?” Robin teases him, nodding across the campfire toward the unmistakable silhouette of Regina (slight, hair wild in the growing winds), where she’s currently deposited on an overturned log and deep in conversation with Little John. “I can put in a good word, for whatever mine’s worth to her.”

A hearty chortle, then, “Nah, it’s all right. I know a losing battle when I see one.”

Robin looks quizzically at him.

“Anyone with eyes can tell she’s already spoken for,” shrugs the giant in an offhand fashion, as though it’s no big secret who could ever be so bold or so successful as to claim the heart of one Regina Mills. All Robin can do is stare at him, wondering what sort of conclusion he’d already come to in mere hours that Robin had been unable to see in all his time of knowing this woman.

“Wow. You’re a clueless one, aren’t you,” his friend remarks. “I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that her capture was probably not an accident?”

Robin finds that he has no answer.

With a smile that pulls at his beard, the man hefts the bag Tuck had packed him, bulging with bread rolls and the like. Whistling a cheerful tune, he departs through the trees, leaving Robin to puzzle over the truly ludicrous thought that rescuing him might have been Regina’s plan all along, that she had…but no. She wouldn’t.

But had she?

Running short on excuses to distract himself from the inevitable now, he circles back around the campsite, weaving unnoticed through his liquor-soaked men and keeping close to the shadows until he’s nearly reached their log.

He loiters there longer than is strictly polite, telling himself that he’d rather not interrupt the very serious discussion they appear to be having between bites of dinner and sips of ale.

Their backs are to him, and Robin observes with some amusement that Regina’s head barely comes level with John’s shoulder, despite his friend’s slouching posture as she jerks a chin up toward his ear.

“Thank you,” Robin hears her say, words he’s never known her to be capable of, and they sound rough on her tongue but sincere all the same. “For your help.”

John is shaking his head with a chuckling sigh, talking around a mouthful of porridge. “That was, without a doubt, the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I was in.” His spoon scrapes the bottom of his bowl, and he nods his thanks when Regina relieves him of the cutlery and passes him a fresh pint of ale instead.

“However.” He waggles a stern, slightly tipsy-looking finger in her face. “You forgot the bit about how you were supposed to await my signal before making a scene. And I don’t recall that being a part of the plan either.” He makes a broad gesture, calling attention to her general air of dishevelment, the ginger way she’s still holding her shoulder, the rope burns she’d sustained.

The cut on her lip that should never have come to pass.

“Well what was I supposed to do when Charming stormed at me through the bushes?” Regina drawls, shrugging off her injuries, though even in this dim lighting Robin doesn’t miss the painful tick in her jaw at the movement. “I had to improvise.”

John harrumphs.

“Besides,” she says dismissively, “we got what we came for. Mission accomplished.”

“Suppose I can’t argue when you put it that way,” relents John gruffly, sounding like he’d very much love nothing better than to do exactly that. “Are you ever planning on telling him that part of the story?”

She’s suddenly fascinated by a bit of dirt on her shirtsleeve.

John smiles in a resigned sort of fashion. “I thought as much. Well, lass, your secret is safe with me, for as long as you wish it. By the by…” He rummages around for something in his tunic, retrieving a knapsack and handing it over to Regina. “I kept them safe for you, as promised.”

“Sorry,” Robin speaks up behind them then, unable to hold himself back any longer. He steps within the circle of firelight as they both start and fall silent. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Regina’s expression closes off as she turns to glance at him over one shoulder, while John’s eyes go comically wide, cheeks turned ruddy as though they’ve just been caught in some awfully compromising position.

Robin’s gaze never leaves Regina’s, searching there, waiting for her to reveal something of herself to him, but she’s as miserably inscrutable as ever.

“Right, then,” John announces loudly to no one in particular, “I’ll just go…refill…this.” He jerks at the near-full drink in his hand, liquid sloshing over the rim as he stands in a hurry and scarpers.

Robin advances with caution, approaching Regina as one might some creature in the wild, for fear of startling her into flight should he make any too-sudden movements. He indicates the spot John had just vacated. “May I join you?”

“I’m not stopping you.” She looks away as he takes a seat beside her, a near-imperceptible stiffening to her spine, and though he carefully gives her space, placing himself flush with the edge of the log, he’ll not let her off the hook so easily in other regards.

“You still owe me that drink,” he reminds her, gaze steady and unrelenting even as she dallies obstinately for several seconds before meeting it again.

Her mouth immediately opens on a scowl, as if by some instinctive need to make things difficult for him, but the words seem to fade as she looks him slowly up and down, cataloguing all that she sees until he begins to shift in discomfort, unsure what it is that she wants from him, what else she might be waiting to hear him say.

“Here,” she says at last, brusquely pushing her pint into his hands, “you can have mine,” and then she’s shoving herself from the log with such force it lurches backward, leaving him to find his balance again while she stalks purposefully away from him, clutching the scrolls John had just returned to her.

Well that was…not entirely unexpected, Robin supposes, given her track record thus far, though he takes very little comfort in the fact. Her abandoned drink weighs rather heavily on his spirits as he resigns himself to this distance she seems intent on keeping between them, now that their debts have been squared away and he’s no longer in need of her rescuing.

He’s raising the flagon to his lips when she returns, her arms laden with various cloth bags, a few precariously balanced bowls of noxious-smelling substances that couldn’t possibly be edible – unless, of course, her plan is to poison him.

Freezing, Robin can only stare as Regina reclaims her seat on the log, dumping the pile at his feet before turning to face him with a stern, business-like expression. He feels the flagon being pulled from his unresisting grip, and then she’s thunking it down on the ground with the rest of her things.

“Come here,” she orders him imperiously, a hint of her royal upbringing showing through, and what can he do but obey, musing all the while about how differently this story might have turned out had Regina been the one on the throne instead of the famed Snow White.

“You first,” he attempts to bargain with her when she reaches to address his wounds, and her surly expression earns a gently teasing smile from him, one she quickly casts aside with a firm grip on his chin.

“Hold still,” she mutters irritably, shifting forward and peering down at the state of his nose with a look of intense concentration, lips pursed, eyes narrowed as though his injuries might heal on their own if she simply glares at them hard enough.

“Just a scratch,” he can’t help but murmur, and she bristles in a predictable fashion as he struggles to better contain his smile this time.

There may as well have been a dragon perched on the log beside him at that moment instead, for all the smoldering ire just behind her eyes as she leans ever closer, breathing fire and bearing down on him with deadly intent, and Robin might even have feared less for his safety had that actually been the case.

He braces himself for imminent contact, but then Regina’s testing the length of his nose with a tenderness he hadn’t expected, pressing gingerly, quietly huffing her exasperation when he flinches on instinct away from her hand.

“Hold still,” she repeats, but kinder now, softening her scowl with every wince that he makes. He thinks it a rather difficult thing to ask of him when she’s sitting so close as she is, one knee pressed into his thigh, her face hovering just above his at a distance too tempting not to do something about, and he forces his eyes shut against the view.

She inspects his nose a minute longer as an easy silence falls between them, filling with the light, fitful cracklings of the campfire, pulling out snippets of conversation from the not-so-distant rumblings of his men as stories pass over clinking pitchers. John is bellowing something indistinct about which bones to break first in a fight, Will joining in soon thereafter, until the lot of them are nearly overflowing with laughter and ale.

Robin finds himself grateful for their distraction, his men entirely oblivious – or at least behaving that way – to the two of them on their remote little log, wrapped up in one another out of necessity, or perhaps something more, this time.

He eventually cracks his eyes open again when he feels Regina moving away from him. “Definitely broken,” she announces shortly, and he grimaces to have guessed as much while she swoops down to collect some of the supplies she’d brought with her, selecting several bags as well as a bowl with a particularly pungent odor before settling the lot into her lap.

She carefully measures out pinches of dried herbs, grinding them to dust between fingertips over the bowl and swirling a thumb into the mixture. “The good news is that your face is no more crooked than usual for it, so there’s no use in trying to set it back.”

“Lucky indeed,” Robin deadpans, and she gives him something vaguely resembling a smile before she bends over him, her lips pressing back together in a thin, focused line.

The touch of her fingers to his face is so light he might not have felt it but for a rapidly spreading sensation of coolness where the salve begins to work some kind of magic, chasing away the worst of the pain, clearing out his nasal passages. He breathes in, pleasantly surprised to discover that the herbs she’d added appear to have neutralized the scent, coaxing it toward something clean and mint-like, crisp as the air after an early morning drizzle.

A buzz of warmth has begun to fill him, reaching the farthest parts of his chest, and he knows it’s not just gratitude he feels for her, this woman who is so determined still to act as though he’s little more than a sometimes-rival to her.

He knows better now. He does.

He does.

Robin tries not to let his gaze wander too obviously down to her mouth while she works, wondering at what the consequences might be of such boldness – wondering whether he cares – but the gentle way she’s lifted a steadying hand to cup the side of his face lulls him into recklessness, loosening words from his tongue.

“So,” he says, “I have it on reasonably good authority that you allowed yourself to be captured by the Queen’s guard.”

He suspects for a moment that she will deny it – As if I’d do something that careless and stupid, he can already hear her say in scathing dismissal – but Regina doesn’t falter, fingers never breaking stride as she replies evenly, “Were you under the impression that they could ever catch me on purpose?”

Robin bites down on one corner of his smile. “Of course not. My mistake.”

She shrugs her good shoulder in a lofty sort of manner and tells him, primly, “Wouldn’t be your first.”

“No,” he agrees, then, because she’s made it all too easy for him, “And I’ve certainly made my fair share of those today. Trusting you not to sell me out after that job, for example.”

“Bandit,” she reminds him immediately, but she can’t seem to meet his eye, and her hands drop from his face to busy themselves with scraping restless little circles into the bottom of her bowl. Forgetting any need to exercise restraint with her, Robin eases a palm over her fidgeting fingers, and he understands how truly vulnerable he’s found her in this moment when she doesn’t bother pulling away from him.

“There is honor to be had amongst thieves, as you’ve well proven,” he argues kindly, running his thumb along her wrist with as light a touch as he can bear, careful not to frighten her off, poised for flight as she is, has always been, with him. “Besides, some mistakes are worth regretting, and that was hardly the gravest of the many I have made today.”

“No?” she asks tonelessly, intent as ever on avoiding his gaze, as though such a thing will do far more damage than any sort of physical contact between them.

“No.” Robin lets his eyes fall to touch her mouth at last, stumbling over her upper lip where the smoothness there had broken open, marked by little more now than a thin, dried splinter of blood.

There’s a sharp, audible hitch when he lifts a daring hand to stroke his thumb across the wound, her breath coming out in warm, shallow puffs against his skin. He splays his fingers over her jawline, trailing another finger down to the redness around her neck that the guard’s makeshift noose had left behind.

“I’m fine,” she tells him, quietly insistent.

“Perhaps.” His voice has dropped to a murmur, rough and low as it passes from somewhere deep in his throat. “Be that as it may, milady, I believe it’s your turn to hold still a moment.”

Her eyes finally swing upward to land most unnervingly on his, unblinking as she stares at him, wary. She doesn’t move to stop him when he raises his other hand, still loosely joined with hers, and touches the raw-pink underside of her wrist to his lips.

“Robin…” His name escapes her on a sigh, in warning or exasperation, some half-made attempt to convince him that the sudden kick in her pulse has little to do with the kiss he’s just pressed there, or the second, or the third when he realizes he’s gotten away with the first two.

She never quite recovers her voice long enough to protest further, and he shifts forward on the log, bringing his mouth within centimeters of her own. He flattens her palm over his chest, willing her to sense the madness beneath it, the thundering, and know that she’s the one who has caused the storm there.

His thumb has drifted down to catch at her lower lip, gently tugging, and her mouth parts at his touch, gaze growing warm and heavy, the look of her utterly impossible for him to resist now.

The bowl tumbles forgotten from her lap, landing with a soft thump onto the earth at their feet as he snakes an arm around her middle, coaxing her close, closer. The rigid lines of her body seem to soften against her will, curving slowly into him until he’s certain he’ll never again feel quite whole without her pressed against him as she is.

He carefully brushes aside a lock of hair that’s come loose from her braid, twining it around his fingertips and cupping her cheek in his palm. She bumps the tip of her nose into his, as if to test how well the salve has settled, and Robin’s mouth slides sideways into a mischievous grin as he returns the favor with far less delicacy, smearing leafy bits of paste across her skin.

Her face scrunches in a captivating manner, her answering scowl only half-formed, out of habit, and the air between them goes hushed and still, as though they’d both in their teasing neglected to take a proper breath.

“Regina,” he murmurs.

She blinks, bewildered, as he leans further in, and then her lashes are fluttering closed.

Her lips touch his with an aching uncertainty, cautious and brief, pulling away almost as quickly as she’d brought them together. His eyes open to find hers in some state of turmoil, wild and borderline fearful, as if she’s just done a terrible thing and simply can’t fathom how he might respond.

It is ridiculous – she is ridiculous – and Robin might have thought to point out as much were he not so focused on how he longs to kiss her again.

So he does.

He eases his mouth over hers, gently, ever so aware of that cut he’d rather not reopen, but then her lips are parting, soft and full and oh so inviting, and he cannot help but slip his tongue out to meet hers halfway, sliding, and tangling, and gods.

He kisses her, kisses her, kisses her until they're both breathless from it, and still it isn't enough, that heady sensation each time their lips come back together, how she sighs into him whenever he dips in to taste her again just so.

Regina’s breaking contact once more, too soon, bending to reach something on the ground before he’s even fully recovered his senses, and then she’s closing his hand around a rucksack, several rolls of parchment taking some vague form at his fingertips.

He lifts a searching gaze to hers.

“Take them,” she says, voice gravelly-rough, scratched bare with some emotion he can’t quite identify, and he’s having trouble reading her now. “They’re yours. You should take them.”

Robin feels her watching him as he turns the scrolls over in his palm. He pauses, testing their weight, and then his grip tightens, lifting them up before carefully, deliberately, tossing them into the firepit some yards ahead. There’s a flare of light as the flames eagerly lick up the cloth and its contents, pounds of gold upon gold now gone to waste, and neither of them move to salvage what remains.

“Those scrolls were never what I was after,” he tells her simply while Regina stares and stares at him, speechless but for all the tenderness and something like wonder left unspoken in her eyes as as he presses his lips back to hers.

He’s lost to her again in an instant, gathering her hair to the nape of her neck, angling her slightly as he tilts his head in kind. He takes her lower lip between his teeth for a quick little nibble before slanting his mouth fully back over hers, deepening the kiss, relishing the feel of her, silky, warm, and still tasting vaguely of ale.

She’s humming soft things into his mouth, sighs and other sounds he’s never heard from her before – a throaty mmm that spreads heat low in his belly, a muffled squeak of surprise when he slides a palm down her back, the other locking under her knee to hoist her sideways into his lap.

The movement jostles their lips apart, just long enough for Robin to catch his breath and then thoroughly lose it again as he takes in the sight of her. With her back to the firelight, it’s difficult to make out more than shades and shadows, but there’s no mistaking the rosy flush to her cheeks, the look of swollen pink lips now well-seen-to – and the hint of a smile, alluring in its disbelief, as her fingers creep upward to dance almost tentatively along either side of his neck.

He holds her gaze steady with his own, trying to communicate to her the things that he thinks might scare her away, were he to say them aloud.

She drops her eyes away from his before too long, clearly not comfortable with whatever she’s seen in them, but she seems content to let him hold her in other ways for now, and he takes the opportunity to press a kiss to her injured shoulder, inquiring lowly, “How does it feel?”

“I’d forgotten about it,” she tells him, sounding perfectly sincere, but there’s a teasing turn to her tone when she mentions next, “I must have gotten distracted by something.”

“Oh,” says Robin with mock seriousness, “yes, I’ve been told that I can be a very…” He makes his way across her collarbone, threads of her fur collar catching in his stubble, “…very…” then up the column of her neck to find her pulse point, and she opens her throat to him, dragging fingertips into his scalp as he explores her skin with lips and tongue, “…good distraction.”

He noses slow, open-mouthed kisses up to her jawline, enjoying the way she arches into him, the content little noises that catch a bit before tumbling out of her, and then she’s stilling suddenly, sounding winded but stern all the same as she accuses him, “You’re rubbing everything into my hair.”

Robin leans guiltily back, pulling with him matted strands of her hair that have stubbornly clung to the remaining paste around his nose and eye. She carefully sweeps them aside, with a scowl she doesn’t quite sell, and then she’s sighing when he offers her a sheepish sort of grin in return, resigning herself to something as she bends over his good eye and dots a kiss to his brow.

“I gather a reapplication will be in order, then?” he wonders, playfully innocent, as she fusses irritably with her ruined handiwork. “And while you’re at it, my back is starting to feel a bit sore as well…” He trails off suggestively, winking up at her once she’s settled back enough to see it, feeling terribly tempted to kiss away each downturned corner of her frown.

“Keep it up and that won’t be the only place you’re hurting,” Regina grumbles, and he can’t quite suppress his smile – there are many things he simply can’t seem to help around her, as it turns out – while she looks increasingly flustered, unsure how to handle him flirting with her so outrageously still.

“I’m afraid I’ve a spot here that may also need tending to,” he carries on solemnly, shamelessly, relinquishing the hand he’s settled over her thigh to run a thumb along his lower lip, and she appears torn between blackening his other eye and kissing him again if only to shut him up for good.

Meaning to make the choice easier for her, Robin leans in to capture her mouth again when she shifts in his arms, finding a soft spot between his ribs with a wayward elbow, and his breath leaves him in an audible grunt. He winces dramatically and Regina looks stricken a moment, hands hovering at his hemline, prepared to untuck it from his breeches and investigate any injuries that may have escaped her notice when she catches the look on his face.

“If you wanted to remove my clothes, all you had to do was ask, milady.”

Irritation colors her cheeks. “Was this your plan all along?” she demands to know, with an obstinate glare at some point near his chin, just beyond the reach of his scrutiny. “Getting caught so I'd have to come save you?”

The memory of her bursting through trees and whatever else stood in her way – guards and queens and perhaps the walls around Regina’s own well-caged heart – flashes across his mind, again and again, and it both pains and warms him to an unbearable degree, that she would be so careless with herself, and for him.

He wonders at – and knows, without question – the lengths he’d have gone for her in his place, but it hardly comes out even, somehow, everything she had already risked over what he’d give up without hesitation. His pride, his freedom…his heart, of course, has long been off the table, tucked into her breast pocket alongside his dagger (hers, now, too) before either of them could be fully aware of the change, though it feels nothing like loss to him.

Wordlessly, selfishly, he nudges in another kiss just below her ear before murmuring there, “Admittedly, it has rather worked out in my favor.”

Regina huffs at him, but there’s little heat behind it, and her fingers splay on either side of his jaw, nails scraping gently over stubble, thumbs finding his dimples as they deepen into another crooked smile.

“That being said,” he continues while she gazes down at him, “how much longer are we going to pretend throwing me to the wolves wasn’t all just an elaborate excuse of yours to come chasing after me?”

“And I suppose this is your idea of payback?” she returns. “Discovering all these new injuries so that you might trick me into staying?”

“You wound me,” Robin tells her, swallowing carefully around the sudden sensation of his heart settling up in his throat. “And I do mean that quite literally.” He manages to keep his tone light, while the rest of him feels insupportably heavy all at once, sobering at the thought of them parting ways, now, when there’s so much yet to discover about this woman. The fit of her in his arms without all the usual bickering and glowering between them. The feel of her sharpest edges cautiously gentling for him alone.

What other sounds, soft or otherwise, he might be capable of stealing from her.

The indistinct clamor of his men and their merrymaking has finally begun to reach some conclusion, dispersing from the circle they’d formed to redistribute themselves amongst the camp. One passes close enough to the dwindling firelight that Robin can just make out Will’s profile, the lad glancing very obviously everywhere else but them, ducking his head almost shyly and hastening off toward his tent.

Stirred by the commotion – by the feel of so many trying not to look their way, though he knows she’d never admit it – Regina eases down from Robin’s lap, situating herself back onto the log beside him. She seems a lot less concerned with the matter of space and how much of it belongs between them this time, resting her forearm over his thigh, curling a hand above his knee, and the ease of it – of them, however just-formed they may be – feels so right, so familiar to him that he can hardly comprehend the days leading up to this one, the near-misses and the not-quites and how close they’d come to being nothing at all.

Still, there’s something like wistfulness in the sound of her sigh, the ginger way she leans a shoulder into his chest as he winds an arm around her back. He finds her waist and settles his hand there, needing to feel her – warm, whole and quite possibly his – and know that she has stayed, for him, for now.

But this night of so many beginnings will also come to some unavoidable end, and Robin doubts that she could be so willfully tamed – that they could come together without fumbling some first – when her one inclination has always been to run, no matter the direction, and his to catch up to her only when she’s stood still enough to let him.

He angles his body into hers, reaching for her other hand. She opens her palm to him, and he traces the lines there, wondering. “How else could I persuade you not to go? Tell me.”

Her smile is soft, secretive, and he knows her answer before she’s spoken. “I've already put you – put both of us – in enough danger today.”

It’s a difficult point to argue without downplaying all the bruised egos and broken noses and wounds that will surely scar, but he closes an arm tighter around her waist regardless, weaving their fingers firmly together as though she couldn’t just as easily pull them apart.

“It certainly was more eventful than most,” Robin finally allows, pressing a kiss to her temple, then a smile in her ear. “But I do so like when you come to my rescue.”

“Are you always this useless?” she asks him, fondly.

“Around you?” he murmurs, mouth falling sideways in that way he’s learning she likes so well, and his voice takes a turn for the very, very serious. “I’m afraid it can’t be helped, milady.”

Regina might have rolled her eyes, might have scoffed and made him out to be some kind of fool – she has a weakness for such things, when it comes to him – but then he’s kissing her again, most thoroughly, before she’s the chance to fall into old habits. Perhaps she’ll discover a way, still, perhaps he’ll blink and find her gone by morning, but she’s opened enough of her heart to him now that if she expects him not to follow…well.

Certain habits are harder to break than others, after all, and he never could resist the thrill of a hunt, of teasing a scowl – and perhaps something more – out of this woman, who may very well have been biding her time, running, and waiting, for the moment he finally caught up with her.

#outlaw queen #oq ff #oq fic #outlaw bandit #bandit oq #my scribbles #loveexpelrevolt

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