A/N: It's been so long! Hope this was worth the (very lengthy) wait :)

The first thing Regina notices when she finally comes to is the unmistakable smell of fresh, damp hay. It presses like a blanket over her nose, nearly smothering her—a sensation not terribly surprising, she realizes as the remainder of her faculties return to her, because whoever's seen fit to kidnap her has pitched her body face-first into an unconscious slump on the ground. Dirt digs into her nails and stray bits of hay jab her cheeks where they've encountered earth. Soft, worried whinnies and light, restless clomps of hoof to soil sound from behind closed stalls.

She opens a single bleary eye—the one that's not currently caked shut in mud—to take in the blurry sight of the barn from this brand new angle. It's decently well-lit, apart from the flickering flame of the torches overhead, throwing its equine occupants into occasional shadow.

Yet all she can see is that expressionless stare on Marian's face as she'd been drugged and dragged from the ballroom balcony.

Regina wonders if it had even crossed the woman's mind to call for help—before her focus would've been more pleasantly diverted by the arrival of her newly betrothed, the announcement of their pending union. Surely Shadowfax would have returned with her rider by now, though Regina's really in no position at the moment to know for sure. Maybe, if she could turn her head just so without setting off a lance of pain down her spine, she would find a white, wet muzzle poking anxiously over the corner stall door.

Or maybe it would be empty as it's always been, before a certain young man with his besotted blue eyes and crooked, dimpled grin had stolen into her life and back out with her heart.

Either way, she's here and he's not. He'd loved her, and she'd lost him. And she has no one to blame for it but herself and her own foolish weakness, her relentless fear despite his undying faith. If he's making slow, leisurely turns about the ballroom in the arms of another woman now, with the intent of taking her hand till death do them part, it's because Regina has pushed him there, again and again until he'd come to the same realization she'd dreaded all along: that he deserves better. He deserves more.

He deserves someone she will never be. Someone he can waltz with, who will glide instead of fumble, bear her own face with pride instead of hiding it behind a mask and someone else's magic, and Regina may have lost to the marchioness after all, but Marian is the one who's won, in the end.

She can't allow even the small, darkly hopeful parts of herself ponder whether there was some extenuating circumstance behind the fact that Marian had appeared neither shocked nor troubled to see her go. Because if she's to believe that this will be the best thing for Robin, that Marian is right for him where Regina is all kinds of wrong, then she has to believe in Marian, too. Has to trust that the woman is no criminal mastermind capable of abducting any would-be threats to her future as Lady of Locksley.

There's already enough of that in Robin's life, and it was enough to ruin any shot Regina would've had at her own chance at happiness with him (and now she can no longer deny her growing apprehension that she'll be getting more than just the lash of a whip on her back this time).

Still, knowing who is or isn't responsible for Regina's current predicament doesn't make it any less intolerable or demoralizing, as her elbows buckle beneath a weight they can't quite withstand, and she collapses back into the dirt, muffling her groan of pain. Her body protests all over, dejected and downtrodden, and she suddenly feels overcome with rage, so acute she nearly blacks out from it; it rushes in like a tidal wave, washing out the piteous self-loathing that's gritted into her soul like obstinate grains of sand.

Maybe if her damn fairy godmother hadn't come along when she did, with her tantalizing promises of how things could turn out rather than how they are meant to, Regina would've found the strength to end them long before someone else took it upon herself to do so. Or perhaps if Zelena had amounted to more than just some enchanted objects and a long string of bad advice, Regina would've found another ending altogether. One worthy of fairytales, that didn't leave her abandoned in a barn, dead to the world and to the only person in it whom Regina no longer knows how to live without anyway.

Why—why—had Robin chosen her, of all people, to burden with the strength of his love?

And why couldn't she have just let him, instead of torturing herself and, in turn, punishing him for it?

But it's pointless and she knows it, to point fingers at anyone but herself. She has no one else to blame for the rough, hacking cough that erupts from her lungs now as she inhales a mouthful of dust and hay; the tenderness in her back from having lain bent and twisted for so long; nor the sudden fear that cripples her senses, when she realizes she is not alone.

She hears it in the abrupt uptick of tension amongst her fellow pure-bred companions—the quickening of their hooves as they plod in place, their unsettled neighs as someone approaches—more than she does the man's actual footsteps, their heaviness absorbed into the dirt-packed ground. Black scuffed boots come to a stop mere inches from her face, which she lifts stolidly up now to meet a cruel, cold gaze.

Dark eyes glint from within a thicket of brown bristly hair and a beard to match, and a thin ugly mouth arranges into a leering smile as he addresses her, "Look who's finally awoken." Then, with a sinister edge, "you'll wish soon enough that you'd stayed asleep."

But Regina's done lying around waiting for someone else to deliver a sentence she doesn't deserve. "Don't touch me," she spits out like venom, and then spits on his boots.

He bends forward and backhands her across the face. She sees stars, tastes metal in her mouth.

"You mean like that?" he asks almost conversationally. "Bet that'll make you think twice before seducing the marchioness' son," and he grabs fistfuls of her hair, yanking, hard, until she's biting down hard to keep from crying out. "Fuckin' whore."

Her cheek burns where his knuckles had caught and broken skin, the blood beneath it simmering to a boil, but she won't give him the satisfaction of knowing his words have cut deeper than his hand had done.

"I'd rather get paid for pleasure," she sneers at him, "than for being a spineless guard dog."

But he only chuckles, seems more amused by her spite than riled up by it, and Regina doesn't know why she even bothers to be surprised by his response; the marchioness' personal guards had been hand-selected for their skills as brutes and borderline sociopaths, not as kind-hearted keepers of the peace. "Pleasure, eh?" He fingers his leather whip, looped around and strapped to his belt. Defiant eyes meet his direful ones, a silent challenge to deliver his worst; it's nothing she hasn't seen or survived before, and it definitely won't be the last.

But then her heart does a spectacular nosedive into her gut when he reaches for his belt buckle instead.

The man is laughing—to himself, or at her, she can't tell—as he tosses it aside and goes for the waistband of his trousers next. "Let's see if your famed cunt is as enticing as the tales of it claim."

"Over my dead body," she snarls—That can be arranged once I'm finished with you, most certainly, he responds with an air of excessive geniality—before rolling off her belly and onto her side, aiming the heel of her shoe right under his kneecap. He lets out an oomph of surprise, maybe even a slight sound of pain, but it's not enough to hold him back from having his way with her, and he advances forward, dogged and determined as ever.

Her fingers claw into the earth.

"Over yours, then," she amends furiously, as she lobs a handful of dirt into his face.

He yells, temporarily blinded as his hands scrabble to free the soil from his eyes, but then he's recovered remarkably fast, too fast for her to put enough distance between him and where she endeavors to stand on unsteady feet, his eyes red but his grin gleaming, white and lascivious once more.

"You feisty bitch," he chuckles, grabbing her by the arms and throwing her to the ground. She lands on her elbow and feels a pop. "Do you realize how stimulating it is to watch you fight back?"

"You're disgusting," she utters as pain blooms and brings unshed tears to her eyes. "But I'm not surprised. How else would you get a woman to sleep with you?"

He howls his laughter at that. "I like you," he admits, and her insides writhe in revulsion. "I can see why His Lord opted to keep you around for as long as he did."

Robin. Cheeks suddenly damp, she shudders from the deep ache in her chest at the mere thought of his name, and she longs, oh how she longs for him, because as much as she'd feared his leaving her, she'd never felt safer as she had when with him. (Wrapped in his embrace, with his fervent whispers of love hot in her ear, and the endless kisses he'd dropped onto her shoulders, the hollow of her neck, her jawline, her mouth.)

"But now that you have no one to claim you," the guard continues, crouching down to trail a finger under her dress and up her bare calf as she cradles her elbow, wincing, teeth gritting, "I'll happily do the honors."

Regina cries out when he makes a savage grab at her ankles; she kicks back against him with all her might and earns a sharp dig of nails into hips for her struggles as the man hauls her forward, dragging her skirts to bunch at her waist, then shoves her over onto her belly. Her injured elbow throbs as she feels his weight press against her bottom, and then his palm is cupping her, almost caressing, and she's struck with a profound hatred for this man.

"Let—go—of—me!" she growls, wrestles uselessly against his hold, but her anger is no match for his strength, and she has nowhere to turn, no way to move—her arms are all but pinned beneath her own body, every effort to free them rewarded by shooting stabs of agony. He grinds down onto her and her answering sobs are stifled by dirt as his hand shoves against the back of her head, knocking her teeth into the ground.

Regina trembles and quakes with fear and loathing. She still holds her virtue, but for how much longer? Robin had cherished it invaluably—had seen to it that they never went farther than deep, full kisses, his touch always hungry yet gentle over layers of lace and muslin. He'd wanted to wait until she was ready, until she was absolutely sure (and she was always sure of how much she loved him, but not of how truly, how freely she'd wanted him to know it). Had desired it to be perfect when it happened, their first time, and every time thereafter.

The tightening grasp on her hair pulls her out of her thoughts until she's gasping for air. "I want to hear your screams," the guard murmurs, nose to her ear, and she squirms, shakes her head, gnashes and bites when he swipes a grimy, soiled finger almost tenderly across one tear-stained cheek, and then he's wrenching her head forcefully backward again, with new, unexpected vigor. His ecstatic bellow drowns out her desperate yells, but then he cuts abruptly off, pulls and pulls until her hair slips from his grip, and she falls violently forward as his weight lifts inexplicably from her body. Legs freed, she kicks out, meets air.

What—

She hears a chorus of whinnies and the resounding crash of something heavy heaved against wood. There's a splintering noise, then a loud, pained grunt, followed by the unmistakable strikes of fist to flesh and bone. Regina pushes herself onto her good elbow, cranes her head, but all she can see is a stall door, or at least what remains of it; one part swings nearly off its hinges, others are scattered in wooden shards across the stable floor, edges jagged, some just within reach of her outstretched fingertips.

"Wait—no—"

It's the guard. Pleading.

"If you ever go near her again," another voice is thundering, full of perilous promise, "I will end you. I will end you."

A stammering response. Another forceful, bone-crunching sound. Then silence.

A figure emerges from the depths of the stall and pivots around to regard whatever lies within it. Regina's gaze focuses on a familiar green riding cloak, the nape of his neck, the back of his hair that she's spent countless hours running fingers through, as he had done hers.

Robin.

An anguished gasp of relief escapes her lips as she folds forward, spent.

His back is still turned to her, shoulders heaving with each weighted breath, as though grappling with the decision of whether or not the man has yet to see a full and proper beating. Regina tries to speak, tell him no, it's not worth killing a man over unless it's by her own hands, but she can't find the words.

And then he's by her side the next instant, gripping her face and lifting her off the ground with warm, calloused hands. His eyes are wild, at wit's end, as they meet hers, scan over the dirt smudged across her face, the cuts in her cheek, down to the shaking hand over her elbow and then back up to her eyes as tears fill them, unbidden, again.

"Are you all right?" he demands. "Where are you injured? Did he touch you? If he laid a single hand on you I swear to God I—"

"I'm fine," she finally manages, and she is, now that he's with her. But why is he? Her lungs protest at the effort as she asks, "What are you doing here?"

Robin stares at her like she's grown a second head, even as his thumbs trace the trickling path of tears down her face. "Marian," he explains at last, and it takes everything Regina has not to flinch, to pull away from him, because there's something about the tenderness in his voice as he says her name that stings more than the knowledge that there would be no Marian, were it not for her.

"Marian told me you'd been taken," he continues, and Regina ohs in quiet understanding. Of course she had; it would have been a heavy thing indeed to weigh her conscience down otherwise. "And I am eternally indebted to her for it. I—if anything had happened to you—"

But it has, Regina wants to tell him, everything has happened, and if only she had the power to take it all back—if only she had a genie for a fairy godmother instead, she would exchange every last wish to reset time, to the moment she'd declared his love for her to be a dishonorable thing, and then—

Yes, and then what? she admonishes herself. She's through being selfish, and he's made his choice that she has no choice now but to honor.

Still, old habits must die hard, she supposes, as he has yet to relinquish his hold on her face; breathing seems to be an ongoing struggle for him, deep and heavy as though he's just run kilometers at top speed, and there's a residual panic evident in the way his eyes can't keep still, unable to settle on one part of her for long before skirting elsewhere to ensure the rest of her remains intact. But then they fall on her lips, slightly parted as she takes in her own shallow breaths, and the sight of them seems to have a calming effect, transfixing him in place.

But it dizzies her, the way he's caressing her skin with his heated gaze and soft touch, so Regina removes his hands, disentangling her fingers as soon as he tries to weave them with his own. She pushes him gently away, says, "You should go," not for the first time, and why is she always telling him this? Why can't she just let him stay?

Right. Because he's engaged to the woman who'd sent him here to rescue her.

"Go," he echoes.

"Back to the ball," Regina clarifies, hopes her voice doesn't sound as tremulous as she feels. "To announce your engagement." If he hadn't already, that is. She realizes with a disquieting sensation in the pit of her stomach that she has no concept of how much time has passed—how long she'd lain there, how long she'd struggled, before he'd come in search for her—since he has become officially spoken for, since he has officially belonged to her no longer.

"Ah," is all Robin says, not in confirmation, but not in denial either. A definitive response one way or the other would have been vastly preferable to the vague one he's given instead, his expression blank and unreadable. But she supposes that's his business to withhold now, and she has no right or reason to pry. Grimacing at the numbness in her chest as much as the pain in her elbow, Regina holds the joint at a delicate angle as she pushes herself up to stand, brushing away the arm he shoots out to steady her as he rises too.

"Is it—" he starts, reaching for her elbow next, but she nudges his hand back.

"It's fine," she insists with a tight smile that he doesn't seem to find terribly reassuring. "It's not broken. It just…doesn't feel particularly great right now."

"Let me have a look," he says, frustration creeping into his tone, but Regina keeps him at bay with a simple, quelling stare.

"I'll have Mrs. Lucas bandage it up later," she replies firmly.

His jaw tightens as though about to argue, but then he seems to think better of it. "At the very least allow me to escort you back to your room." He interrupts before she can protest, "for my own peace of mind, if not yours." His voice lowers, a quiet entreaty. "Please, Regina."

She hears her traitorous voice speak against her will, "Fine," like a broken record.

"You're shivering," he observes then, and yes, she realizes dully, the wind has picked up pace, howling in the rafters, rattling the stable walls and sending bitter gusts of air in through the open doorway. But she feels cold all over, not just where her skin's been exposed to the chill.

"Here." Robin shrugs his cloak off, as he has so many times before on their twilight rides through the woods, and slings it over her shoulders, hands lingering long after they've fastened it in place with a bronze leaf clasp she's never noticed before. She fingers the foreign metal edges as she drops her gaze to avoid his, taking note that their feet are suddenly a lot closer together than they'd been a moment before.

"Thank you," she tells him, because she hadn't yet, and not just for the welcome comfort of his cloak, still warm in all the places his body had been, but "for saving me. Thank you." She chances a glance back up at him, takes in the tortured furrow of his brow, like he's still torn about the extent to which he can permissibly ensure her safety without overstepping the bounds she's set for him. He looks absolutely miserable. Pure instinct has her surging forward then, aiming for his cheek, but he moves just as she does and her grateful kiss lands on his stubbled jaw instead.

She feels him start at the touch of her lips, and she freezes as he turns toward her, nose skimming her cheek, a gentle graze, until his mouth is scant millimeters from hers. The air they share between them crackles, tense and intoxicating and going nowhere because she's forgotten how to breathe, can't recall when she had reached for his tunic, fisting his collar into a white-knuckled grip, and is she dragging him forward or is he leaning further in? Does it matter? Her mind is an incoherent mess at the sight of his eyes going deep sea blue the way they always do when he's thinking of kissing her, his chin tilting sideways, lids fluttering, lips parting, and—

No. This needs to stop. They can't do this.

She can't.

"We should go," she murmurs, words like a bucket of ice water dumped over both their heads, and the gap between them widens as reality seeps back in. Her palms push him away now instead of pulling him in, dropping down to clutch either side of his cloak, drawing them around her body in a phantom embrace, his scent lingering but his warmth fading, and it falls dismally short of the real thing.

"Right," Robin rasps after a moment, clearing his throat as he steps aside to let her pass. "As you wish."

Regina tugs his cloak tighter and leads the way.

She takes a faltering step at the sound of a snuffle and an agonized moan coming from the stall with the broken door. "What exactly did you do to him?" Regina asks, hesitant to look too closely as they walk by. The last thing she needs right now is someone else's blood on her hands, or Robin's hands on her, curbing her rage, holding her back. The greater the distance they can maintain from each other, the better. Easier. Less traumatizing to long for his touch, than to have it and have to drive it away.

"I gave him no more than he deserved," Robin responds shortly, and she'd never heard such iciness thread through his voice before. "Less, as a matter of fact. I'm afraid I will find nothing short of eternal torment to be satisfying enough punishment for what he's done." She levels him with a look of surprise, receives a grim yet rueful smile in return.

"I will personally see to it that neither he, nor anyone else, will ever violate your body or defile your honor ever again," he swears lowly. "You have my word."

And Marian has your hand, Regina thinks faintly as they proceed toward the castle, her heart as heavy as the growing quiet between them, her feet like lead with every step that takes them farther and farther away from the stables. Away from happier times, from a place she had once deemed sacred. A treasure trove of nothing but good memories—of saddled horses and stolen kisses, of rich, worn leather and the fresh scent of pinewood forest—until now.

Robin's watching her, almost puzzled, as though he can't quite determine what to make of her silence, what thoughts she might be keeping from him, and she chastises herself for always leaving him in darkness, for failing to be the light he deserves. For monopolizing so much of his evening, for needing to be rescued—for forcing him to make one last vow to her when he's already promised himself to another. She should make this easier on him, she thinks, on the both of them. Give him her blessing. No hard feelings. No minced words.

"I'm happy for you," she tells him—a loaded half-truth, but if she truly loves him, then someday she'll learn to mean it with all her heart, to coexist in peace with rather than in spite of the pain. "We could be friends," she suggests then, firmer than she feels.

"We could," he agrees, but she can't look his way, too frightened she'll find that he's no longer looking back.

"Good," she says.

"Wonderful," he says back.

Regina releases the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, but it comes out with a hitch at the end, and it's positively excruciating, the sensation of suffocating when her lungs are full of air. She prays he doesn't notice when she bites down on her lip to hide its tremble and keep the tears but a shine and glisten in her eye.

They're nearly halfway to the castle now, its turrets awash with moonlight and rising against an otherwise pitch-black backdrop of sky. Robin appears deep in contemplation as his pace slows, then stops. "Regina," he begins casually, eyes perusing the ground, "as friends, there is something that I've been rather curious to know."

She responds with a noncommittal "Hmm?", scratchy with tears that have yet to fall, as she tries to remind herself that this is for the best, that his quick recovery and pleasant, conversational tone don't devastate her beyond all belief.

"I've been wanting to discuss this with you for a…long time, actually," he carries on, as nonchalantly as if they were discussing the weather. "And it seems prudent to do so before we go any further."

"Okay?" she says, wonders what he could possibly be talking about.

He chews thoughtfully on his words before he voices them aloud. "It is very important that you be perfectly honest with me."

And when am I not? she's about to retort, but she bites her tongue before she can catch herself in another lie.

"You're missing your engagement party," she reminds him instead.

"Yes, so it would seem," he concedes, but still he stands there, calm and unhurried.

Regina stares, baffled, thinking he must have lost his mind; she's nearly about to lose hers if he prolongs this walk any further, every inch forward a mile of agony, every step back just denying the inevitable. "We should be on our way then," she prompts him. "I'm sure your mother is waiting for you."

"We can keep her waiting a while longer," Robin shrugs. "There's no rush."

She huffs out her frustration. Has he still yet to learn by now that his mother is not a woman to be trifled with? Had the guard gotten a decent blow in before Robin had knocked him to the ground? What other explanation could there be for his utterly bizarre behavior now?

"You see," he continues, stepping closer, eyes lifting up at last to meet her glare, expertly deflecting it with a sudden, lopsided grin, "contrary to what I had intended for most people to believe, I'm not engaged yet."

Oh.

And "Oh" is all she can say.

"I do plan to be," he admits, and the look he's giving her now has her dazed and winded, "though perhaps not to the woman you're thinking of."

"No?" she asks, but she'd seen the way he'd looked at Marian before he'd ridden to town, had witnessed the engagement glow elevating the woman's beauty to a divine degree at the ball, and where is he going with this?

The world spins to a heady pause as he holds her bewildered gaze in his and sinks down to his knees.

"What—" she gasps, "Robin. What are you doing?"

"Regina," he says, all formal but for the fire he's lit beneath her skin, "I made the mistake of letting you walk away from me once. And I promised I'd never do it again."

His words steal into her soul. Gather together all the pieces of her heart she thought he'd left behind. Melt them back into something whole.

He takes her hand into both of his.

She can no longer speak. Can't even breathe.

"Regina…" And it stuns her into a delirious state, the raw hope in his eyes as he asks her next, "Will you marry me?"