When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire
-Stars, "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead"

Regina ran her fingers lightly along the ice walls, glancing at the girl who rocked back and forth on her knees in the corner. There was powerful magic here – in the girl, in the walls – uncontrolled though it was. She watched Robin pull a dagger from his belt and strike at the ice, only for the blade to shatter in his hand. She turned back to the wall, pressing her hand more firmly against it this time, and felt a sudden heat race through her blood as she conjured fire and sent it exploding outward.

Nothing happened.

She frowned, staring at her hand. There hadn't even been a spark. She tried again, this time concentrating on her magic in a way she hadn't had to for years. She let it build inside her, felt the flames expanding and licking hungrily along the pathways of her body as they surged forward…only to falter somewhere before they hit open air.

She tried to teleport instead, aiming for the town line, the last place she remembered before Elsa had trapped them. Nothing. She tried to teleport two feet to the left. Nothing. She tried every simple act of conjuring she could think of, a dart of panic rising in her chest as each attempt failed – and not only failed, but left her scrabbling for her magic when it should have come easily. And then the threads of magic abandoned her completely, snuffed out like a dying candle as her hands hung uselessly in the air.

The cold crept closer in its absence, and she shivered for the first time. It didn't make sense. She had torn through Elsa's ice magic just days before, and surely the walls that surrounded them now couldn't be much different.

She turned to question the girl but stopped short as a jagged, loose piece moved inside her at the sight of him – Robin – in her periphery, the edge catching somewhere deep by her lungs, and suddenly she knew.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," she muttered to herself.

Robin still prowled along the boundaries of their cage, searching for a way out, but at her words his eyes sought hers out, and then he came to her.

"Anything?"

"No," she said, not quite able to look him in the face.

"But your magic…isn't there something you can do?"

"I –" she swallowed heavily, wondering how she could explain this to him. She settled for, "No, not this time."

He nodded once, accepting her answer, and she thought she saw something more, like he knew he had something – everything – to do with their current situation.

"Let me talk to her," she said, gesturing to Elsa, mostly because she wanted to go back to pretending he wasn't there. Why did it have to be him? She could have taken Gold, Emma, Mary Margaret, anyone but Robin right now, but, no, it was him who had come after her and gotten them both stuck here when he had startled the girl.

"Elsa?" She crouched down next to the girl, gently resting a hand on her back.

Elsa raised her head, her eyes wide and wet. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't know how to take it back."

"It's all right. We can work through it together."

"No, I-I can't."

"You can," Regina said firmly, and it took everything in her not to snap the words.

She didn't want to admit that her magic was gone, that they were helpless unless Elsa could bring the walls down herself. That kind of pressure would probably just scare Elsa more, and Regina didn't have time to waste on coddling and coaching and waiting for this girl to pull herself together while she and Robin turned into popsicles. That was not the way Regina Mills intended to leave this world.

She and Elsa locked eyes and rose together at the sound of muffled voices coming from the other side of the ice. Regina couldn't pick out words, or who the voices belonged to, but she had a pretty good guess as to who else would be investigating a city-wide power outage in the middle of the night.

"Emma?" she called sharply.

There were shushing noises, and then the unmistakable voice of the Savior hesitantly called back, "Uh, hello?"

"Emma, can you hear me?"

"Regina? Where are you?"

Honestly, how Emma could qualify herself as the Savior and a sheriff when she possessed no observation skills boggled Regina's mind.

"Are you, by chance, standing next to a large block of ice?"

"Yes."

"We're inside that."

"Oh. Do you need help?"

Regina sighed and rolled her eyes at Elsa, half-turning away from the wall. "Well, that's it, we're doomed."

"Hey! I heard that, Regina!"

"Good for you."

"Who else is in there?"

"Elsa and Robin."

"And Elsa would be…?"

"The engineer behind this rather lovely ice cave and the walls around our city, yes."

"Can't you just poof yourselves out of – "

"No."

"…Okay. Can I talk to Elsa?"

"Talk. She's right here." Regina pushed Elsa forward, trying to smile at her encouragingly. "Oh, and Emma, we'd really like to not freeze to death tonight."

"No one is going to freeze to death." Mary Margaret sounded slightly exasperated through the ice.

"Then you'd better hurry."

She walked away. The Charmings would doubtlessly begin lecturing Elsa about the power of love and believing in oneself, and Regina wasn't sure she could stomach that at the moment.

"Regina." Robin's voice carried easily across the enclosed space, and she couldn't ignore him. "We'll stay warmer if we sit together."

Robin was already sitting against one of stalagmites, knees pulled up to his chest, blowing warm air into his hands. Neither of them was dressed appropriately for the weather, but at least Robin was wearing pants. She sank down next to him as close as she dared, keeping her legs underneath her and pulling the hem of her dress over her knees.

"I hardly think this is the most effective way to conserve our body heat, Regina."

"I hardly think Marian would find such close contact between us appropriate," she answered coolly.

"She would find it preferable to our freezing to death, I assure you." She stared at him and slowly raised one eyebrow. "To my freezing to death, at least," he conceded with a half-smile. "And I still need your help for that."

They were both shaking, badly, as she settled herself between his legs, resting back against his chest, and thank the gods they could blame it on the cold, on reflexes they had no control over, and they didn't have to acknowledge that it went deeper than that. Robin hesitated before closing his arms around her, binding them together.

It was uncomfortable, being this close to him again. The way they still fit together so well despite the distance that had grown between them, despite the new edges they formed as they tried to share warmth, only warmth, and nothing more.

"Ah, there's this."

He held a small, leather-bound flask in front of her, and she didn't have to ask what was inside.

You still owe me that drink.

The memory, the echo of his voice made her shiver, and his arm tightened around her, seeking to sooth her, before he remembered himself. She wondered if he had always carried whiskey with him, or if this was something new.

"I'm pretty sure that will just kill us faster."

She felt him shrug behind her, and, after a minute, she shrugged back. They were going to die in here or they weren't, and she supposed a little whiskey wouldn't tip the balance any particular way. And she could really use a drink if they were going to do this whole we-just-broke-up-but-now-we're-going-to-intimately-exchange-body-heat thing.

They passed the flask back and forth in silence, the whiskey pleasantly burning on its way down even though Regina knew it was doing nothing to stave off the cold or the hypothermia that would eventually set in. That was already setting in.

He made her take the last sip, and sometimes it was so easy to hate him and his effortless chivalry and the way it reminded her of all the reasons they didn't belong together. But the anger only ever lasted for a moment before it gave way to the aching, fierce love he always stirred up within her, and that was worse. It would be easier if she could hate him.

She closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself feel, really feel, Robin's body curled around hers. His heartbeat against her shoulder blade. The way she rode the rise and fall of his chest every time he breathed warm air against her neck. His smell – different, less forest-y than it used to be. Polished wood. Snow. Smoke. Whiskey.

This was how it was meant to be between them.

"Don't fall asleep." His voice in her ear, words rumbling through his chest and into hers like the beginning of a landslide.

"I know that."

"We need to keep each other awake."

It was a good idea, but she snarked anyway. "What do you want to do, play charades?"

"I don't know what that means."

"You think of something, then."

After a moment. "Animal, vegetable, mineral?"

"Fine." Of course he would suggest the most boring guessing game in existence.

"I'm thinking of an animal."

"Is it human?"

"Yes."

"Is it a woman?"

"Yes."

"Is she in this room?"

"Yes."

"Robin, if you're thinking of Elsa, I will let you freeze to death."

"…Damn," he said softly, and she could almost feel his smirk through the layers of clothing that separated them.

"Really? That was pathetic. How can you be so bad at your own game?"

"I couldn't think of anything better! Thinking…is becoming a bit of a problem, actually."

She knew what he meant. It was getting harder to string coherent thoughts together, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol they had drunk. She looked over at Elsa, who seemed to be in deep conversation with one of the walls, and hoped she was making more progress than it appeared.

"Maybe we should just talk."

"And what, exactly, do we have to talk about? Your wife? How I tried to kill her all those years ago, and how I'm paying for it now?"

The words poured out before she could stop them, and Robin stiffened behind her.

"I was thinking more along the lines of 'strange weather we've been having lately.'" He didn't even sound angry. He never got angry with her, just resigned and hurt and sarcastic when he should be throwing it all back in her face. "But, okay, we can talk about Marian."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

She fingered the empty flask beside them and wished there was more. She wasn't even sure why she wanted it: to feel braver, or to feel warmer, or to forget, or to let the cold take her faster.

She wanted him to leave. Ever since the day Marian had come back and he had chosen her (and she understood, and she had loved him for his nobility even as it destroyed her), she had waited for Robin to take his beautiful, mended family and never look back. She could bear that. She couldn't bear his kindness, or the way he was there, always there, every time she turned her head. Not anymore.

"It's easier if we just…don't," she whispered.

"All right."

They fell back into silence, everything colder between them. They were both losing heat, and the temperature was still dropping, and Regina didn't know how long they had been sitting there, but it had been far, far too long.

Elsa flitted back and forth across the ice, still muttering to herself or maybe to the Charmings. She stopped once to kneel in front of them and placed a hand on Regina's cheek. Regina couldn't feel it, and she knew that was a bad sign, even more telling than the concern in Elsa's eyes.

"Just keep talking to them," she told the girl, hoping that the words were clear. "They'll figure something out. They always do."

Robin's arms hung more loosely around her, and his breaths came more slowly, the rise and fall of his chest barely rocking her now.

"Robin?"

"Mmm?" he hummed, the vibrations running up her spine and reminding her just how little of her body she could feel.

It was hard to tell under this light – the ice made everything a shade darker than sky – but she thought his fingernails were turning blue. She supposed hers were, too. She reached for his hands, taking their weight and touching skin-to-skin and remembering that, once, she had had reason to claim him as her own.

His hands were cold and heavy in hers.

His hands were cold.

His hands were cold.

It stuck in her head like a scrap of melody, replaying the same four notes over and over. Her heart took the words, reshaped around them, beat them out until her blood was running with that one thought, and she felt a heat rising through her, a wildfire, gone as soon as it had broken out.

Somewhere, very far away, someone was saying her name again and again, or maybe it was the wind rushing past her ears as sound and movement bled together and all the colors drained from her world, and she was left in a coldness and a darkness so profound she couldn't even shiver, couldn't even draw breath, couldn't even

Heavy, and warm this time, surrounded by light she could see even through her eyelids, and a constant beeping keeping time perfectly with her heartbeats. Hospital. The word flickered up from somewhere, and, with it, pieces of what had led her there.

She kept hers eyes closed, trying to feel out the shape of her surroundings. There were approximately one thousand blankets piled on top of her. The voices of Emma, Charming, and Mary Margaret burbled in the corner like a radio with its volume all the way down. Someone was holding her hand, but it was too small to be the one she wanted.

"Mom, are you awake?" Henry whispered next to her, and she felt a lazy smile spread across her face.

"Regina?" Damn. The one time the Charmings were paying attention, she didn't want them to.

"I'm here," she said blearily, blinking until the room came into focus around her.

"How do you feel?" Mary Margaret asked.

"Like I'm being smothered." The blankets spread over her – only two, not a thousand – were horribly pink.

"I hear that's a common side effect for people brought back from the brink of freezing to death." That was Charming with his usual dopey smile and inane commentary. Gods, how she wished Mary Margaret had left him at home with the baby. Permanently.

"Well, don't look at me. I didn't trap myself in a giant block of ice." She sighed. "Is she all right?"

"Elsa? Yeah, still a little shaken up, I think, but she'll be fine," Emma said.

They were going to make her ask, weren't they? Bastards. "And Robin?"

"He wasn't in great shape when we brought him in, but he was awake, talking, and they didn't have to resort to any aggressive," and here Emma gestured to the IV running into Regina's arm, "reheating measures."

Unlike you was the unspoken end to that sentence, and Regina had to look away from them all and their concerned faces.

"They kept him overnight for observation as well, but they'll be releasing both of you in the morning as long as you keep showing improvement."

"How did we get out anyway?"

"Robin thought you were dead. Everybody kinda panicked and…here we are."

Regina looked up at Emma, unable to mask the surprise in her voice. "You?"

Emma nodded. "Yeah. Me."

"Thanks," Regina said quietly. "I'd still feel better if you could figure out how to use your magic under conditions that don't involve mortal peril, but…thanks."

"You and me both, Regina."

She spent the next few hours drifting in and out of sleep, sharing the bed with Henry even though he kept kicking her in the shins. She told the Charmings they could go home, but Mary Margaret just shook her head and laughed, saying, "Trust me, I'm used to sitting up all night with family now. And you're a nice change from Neal. Less whiny."

Emma and Charming wandered from the waiting room to the coffee machine to her room, sometimes bringing back updates about Robin and his family or gossip about the nurses.

Mary Margaret waited until they left for another lap around the hospital and made sure Henry was completely out before she moved her chair even closer to Regina's bed, her eyes serious.

"Did something happen between you and Robin?"

Regina's hand froze where it had been stroking through Henry's hair. Her eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry, have you been living under a rock for the past, I don't know, five months?"

"I meant last night, Regina. Did something happen last night?"

Something red and hot was choking her, climbing up her throat, and she clenched the blanket tightly to keep from flying apart. She could barely get words out, but once they broke loose, she could feel herself losing control, and they grew, vicious and loud and painful.

"I couldn't use my magic because he was there. We drank some whiskey of questionable quality. We barely looked at each other. We almost died. Are any of these things ringing a bell? I'm sure I could narrow it down a little if I knew exactly what it was you're trying to accuse me of."

Mary Margaret held up a hand to stop her, glancing at Henry.

"I'm not accusing you of anything. It's just, Robin was frantic when Emma finally broke through the ice, and he seemed to think there was a reason he was okay and you were…not so okay. That you had done something to yourself, to him, to, well, make sure he got out alive even if you didn't." The last few words came out in a whisper, as if Mary Margaret was afraid to speak them aloud.

Regina stared at her, her body still taut, and wondered how people could spend their whole lives surrounded by magic and not understand it. Ironic, really, how the girl held up as the purest example of true love had no clue how the power behind it worked.

Finally Mary Margaret settled back in her chair and let the conversation drop.

"If you want to talk about it, you know I'm here."

They sat together without speaking until the doctor came in and cleared Regina to leave, removing the last of the needles and wires from her. She was stuck wearing some of Emma's clothes – oversized and cheaply made but, admittedly, comfortable – because Henry had deemed everything in her own closet unsuitable.

"Do you really want to wear a pantsuit home from the hospital, Mom? I don't think so. You'll thank me later."

She almost laughed when Emma elbowed him and leaned down to mutter, "Well played, kid. Well played."

The Charmings went to wait for her outside while she signed off on paperwork at the front desk. And there he was. Robin, also dressed in clothes that weren't his, things that looked like they had been pulled from the very back of Charming's closet. He looked ridiculous. And beautiful.

He was pale. His eyes were wild. He was angry with her, and now she could see the dangerous animal inside him, the one that stole and killed, and she thought perhaps those dark undercurrents of him belonged to her alone.

"You used magic on me."

"It wasn't intentional."

"You could have died," he growled. "I thought you had."

She looked away. "I said it wasn't intentional."

How could she explain to him that magic, like blood, redirects itself when a body starts shutting down? It didn't matter that she wanted to run away from him, that it hurt her to touch him, her magic had identified him as her most vital part, the one thing that must be preserved even at the cost of all others.

She felt him take half a step towards her, and she snapped.

"Why did you follow me? Why, why, couldn't you let me go after Elsa on my own?"

And she saw it there, as he finally looked away from her, the muscles in his jaw working: the ties between them holding fast despite vows and broken hearts and wives raised from the dead. The same trap had caught them both – fate, or true love, or whatever stupid name you wanted to give it – and he was just as powerless to escape it as she was.

"Regina, I think we should go." Mary Margaret had appeared at her side, one hand on Regina's back, and she was glaring – glaring – at Robin as fiercely as she could.

She told herself not to, but she looked back once, just before Mary Margaret guided her through the double doors and out into the sunlight. Robin was watching her, his eyes burning everything they touched, and it didn't make anything easier, but at least Regina was the one walking away this time.

Note: Not a very happy OQ fic, I realize, but I did want to write something about the inevitability of these two, and about Robin being just as torn up/unable to let go as Regina is, even if he doesn't show it as much. Thanks for reading, and leave your thoughts!