a|n: regal believer + outlaw queen, in the missing year

"What are you afraid of?"

She does it for Henry, in the end.

Though she had nearly convinced herself it was for Henry's sake that she didn't, for a time.

That it wasn't Robin's gaze, but the campfire lighting the air between them, which pressed like a heated kiss over and over to her skin.

That it wasn't happiness she felt, but despair, as he'd gathered her close and said he was hers—long before she saw the tattoo and knew that she could've had him longer, had she not turned her happiness away at the expense of his back then too.

She knows that it's a futile thing, to be happy without Henry, so why even bother to try?

"But Mom," goes her darling boy's voice in her ear when she finds herself running again, away from Robin, and it's her hope (her fear) that one day she'll pause to look back and he'll have stopped running too, "What are you afraid of?"

Of happiness, she thinks at first, of feeling even a shadow of it without Henry by her side, because how would that be possible, how could she even think it to be so? The guilt is a plague; it lies heavy in her bed at night when Robin's not there to warm it, and he is a salve over her heart that cracks and bleeds when he's gone.

She realizes it's not happiness itself that she fears, but that she will try to be happy, and that she will fail.

That this—this thing, with Robin, whatever it is, will unravel faster than it has come together, and is still coming together in many ways, ways that leave her breathless and terrified and always wanting more.

But the fear is a testament to her old self, one who had loved and then lost and gone rotten to the core; it is not a testament to her new second skin, who had also loved, and lost, and must now find a way to love again. For Henry. He would never forgive her, if she got in the way of her own happiness, didn't even try for fear of letting him down.

Well. He would forgive her, in the end, because otherwise he wouldn't be her Henry; but a disappointed Henry he would be, and it's that phantom ache, to feel worthy of her son's faith in her, that has her finally taking the leap.

She flies, and Robin's arms are there to catch her when she falls.