based on the word prompt: collection

sky breaks

Her castle has always been immune to many a wayward spell or out-of-control bit of magic - which had proved useful in Regina's earlier days of learning the craft, and things tended to go unpredictably awry, but also later on when she needed the protection from other practicing witches and warlocks out to usurp her throne.

Of course, nothing like this can be perfectly foolproof. There'd been that time, back when Rumple was still someone she both feared and admired, that a transmogrify spell he'd attempted to teach her backfired, and resulted in half the armory wandering off. There'd been that other time, when a hex missed its mark and bounced off the railing of her balcony instead – it didn't collapse right away, and so she would have to suffer the consequences of being saved from that fall by a fairy much later.

And now, it seems, it would be a thief's turn to come to her rescue.

Regina's been careful to lock all the magic away in this place, since her castle turned into a shelter of sorts. (She'll always blame Snow, because it's easier than admitting her own hand in this one act of kindness that's continued to inconvenience her so.) There are children, and the elderly, plus those who simply like to stick their noses where they most certainly do not belong – and no one is more guilty of this than those forest-dwelling peasant people.

They like to make themselves useful – which is only a polite way of saving they like to stay busy by getting their hands on just about everything that they can. Yesterday it was cataloguing the armory, which – admittedly – Regina had been meaning to do for ages, vaguely suspecting that some things might still be roaming the castle somewhere. Today, however, it's cleaning said armory, and she doesn't know where they found it, or how they managed not to get themselves hurt in the process, but they've come across her self-scouring potions, and poured them by the bucketful to sponge up all the armor.

It all might have remained an event-free affair, if not for one small thing.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" Much has come running, as fast as his long gangly legs could allow him, finding her caught unawares while taking her afternoon tea in the solace of one of her gardens. She's always had a bit of a soft spot for the boy, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't burn him alive right away for interrupting her like this.

"Your Majesty! Come quick! We've—" The face he's making does not bode well. "I'm afraid we've done something quite bad."

"What now?" she sighs, and follows him down to the lower levels of the castle.

When they reach the armory, it turns out that there is, in fact, no armory left at all. The worst thing she'd been expecting to find is that they've all marched off again, but now she realizes that was too much to hope for. She looks down at the gaping hole where the armory once stood; remains of the floor looking like it had been burned straight through – charred at the edges, and still smoking slightly, giving off a rancid aroma that also smells faintly like citrus.

"How did this happen?"

"Well, we was cleaning," says Much.

"They looked as good as new," says Alan.

"But, um—"

"Well, it—"

"Spit it out, please, I don't have all day," says Regina.

"They looked as good as new, but did not smell so good as new," hedges Much.

"That would be the essence of corpse lily," Regina tells them, impatient. "I tweaked its parasitic properties to feed off dead organic matter. It's a very effective cleaning agent, after bloodbaths in particular. Go on."

"Well, I, you see, um." Much's face pinches guiltily in the middle. "I thought I might add…some…lemon? For a bit of zesty fragrance?"

Regina closes her eyes. "You didn't."

"No, I did," Much says in earnest.

Alan clears his throat. "I believe Her Majesty meant that rhetorically, son."

She dismisses them before she finds herself inclined to do worse, and then sweeps downstairs to assess for lasting damages. The room just below had served no exceptional purpose; storage for king Leopold's things, mostly, so Regina's filled with a perverse pleasure seeing it all more or less melting before her eyes into a black putrid goop.

She's standing in the center, lazily casting a spell across the room to slow the process of decay, when she hears it. When she hears them. Hearts in the wall, beating, beating, beating, beating. It starts out a low hum, the air practically pulsating as she draws nearer, one palm out, with a faster-pumping rhythm in her own chest. She should have recognized sooner her mother's crypt was on the other side of this wall.

She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees it, perfectly intact as ever. She can't even smell that awful smell anymore. Her hearts, on the other hand—

"Milady."

Regina nearly jumps out of her skin. She's not one to be snuck up on, but apparently this thief's never gotten the message.

"I came as soon as I heard."

Regina scowls at him, not understanding his meaning. "And what did you think you were going to do about it? Give your men a good scolding? Or congratulate them on destroying my property?"

"I thought, perhaps," says the thief, "if anything here were in imminent danger, I might be of assistance to you." He smiles crookedly at her. "I am, as you know, well-versed in the art of, ah, the relocation of precious items."

Regina stares at him. "Oh," is all she can say for a moment. Then, "Is that what you call it?"

His dimples flash at her again. "Your Majesty should be flattered; I usually skip the part where I ask the owner's permission."

Regina looks away. "Well, I suppose if you can stomach the work—"

He doesn't ask questions, and she finds she has a hard time reading him as they pull out chests of hearts one by one. He must know what he holds in each hand; even the most obtuse kind of person could not mistake that telltale beat: constant. Relentless. Universally, fatally vital.

She half-wishes he would just ask her. Who? What had they done to be condemned so, to deserve this gruesome kind of fate? A hand on their heart, a lifetime of servitude? She wants him to ask her, if only to see the look on his face change when she does.

He's only ever looked at her one way before.

Regina turns, steeled with all the hard truths she could give him. The heart he's just set down, for instance; that one belongs to a farmer, whose family she'd killed for failing to kneel when her carriage passed by. That farmer hand-delivered his crops to the castle for years afterward.

She wants to tell the thief all of this, and that she'd also sought out a countryside vineyard, striking up a similar arrangement of murder and blood magic just for the prospect of never running out of wine.

She watches the thief, carefully arranging heart after heart into a pyramid along the opposite wall. She's supposed to be inspecting the stone, sealing it up with some spell while he works, to keep that deadly lemon concoction from seeping destruction into this room. She almost wants to be destroyed. She wants to say things she can't take back, to let the ghosts roam freely haunting and break down the very foundation of this lie he seems to believe about her. About second chances.

What she says instead is:

"I've thought about giving them back."

She has no idea where this has come from, and that almost frightens her as much as the fact that Robin – the thief – doesn't seem surprised at all.

"I could help you with that too," he tells her, and removes another heart from her wall, with more care than she knows her own would have deserved.

It feels like more than just theft, that he could treat her this way and leave her speechless, wanting more things that aren't hers to want.

"I'd like that," she says, and when he smiles at her again, she thinks she has stolen from him too, but can't be bothered to regret any of it.