Chapter One: Guts.

"Robin," Friar Tuck says. "You have to stop this, Roland needs you. Marian's death wasn't your fault, there was nothing you could do."

"But it was," Robin says flatly, because there must have been.

She is infamous and terrible, imperious and unapologetic, and he ought to offer her little more than the ceremony she insists upon in that black, vulture-like dress. Yet she leapt forwards to sweep his boy from harm when no one else would, swept away potential fears with a well-placed gift and an incongruously warm (beautiful) smile, and now he finds himself willingly indebted, helplessly intrigued. She stands before him in the snowy dark uncompromising and powerful, as resolved as she will find that he is - he cannot let her stand alone, not when he owes her so much.

"And you think you can stop her?" the Queen says.

"Maybe," Robin says, "maybe not, but I have to try."

("You'll marry me?" Robin asks, heart painful with hope.

"I will," Marian smiles, and the future opens before them.)

Marian is alive.

("Marian, please, meet her, she's not at all what you think - "

"Wait, were you two... are you two together?"

"She's a monster!")

Everything's a mess.

Robin is almost physically pulled in two when Regina walks away from them, his chest and arms meaning to follow but his feet and head insisting he stay. Marian is lost in a foreign time and Roland is fading fast with emotional upheaval, he must stay, he is needed here, more. Regina is hurt and uncertain and he wants to reassure her almost as much as he wants to be reassured and grounded by her, but she's left at a quick pace and his tether to Marian and Roland limits his reach.

His head is a mess most of all, he can barely think straight with it.

He looks to Marian and Roland and feels a muffled painful joy that Roland should have taken to Marian so instantly, because how much guilt did he feel for so long, that Marian would never see her child grown and Roland never see his mother at all? How much would he have given, unquestionably, to see Roland doze off wrapped like a monkey around Marian's neck as he does now?

But he's wretched with it, too, because Roland took instantly to another woman who even now walks away alone, had clung to her hand and refused to let go and made that unhappy woman smile openly and hopefully. He had smiled too, to see it, and now he is sick with guilt that though he never sought to replace Marian with Regina some small part of him had seen Regina and Roland and hoped... even so early, and now it feels like he should say he never meant to replace Regina with Marian, either.

He could never have imagined Marian would return but it still feels like a betrayal, of both of them at once, somehow.

The sheriff, Emma, gives them a lift back to the forest. It's David that initially offers but with a newborn baby to care for and a truck with limited seating it becomes quickly obvious that Emma would be a better choice to fulfill it, so he accepts gratefully on all of their behalfs and they clamber awkwardly into the back of the yellow snail-like thing and try not to rouse Roland unduly.

They drive in silence, Marian hugging Roland to her and staring wide-eyed as they trundle along smooth black roads, Robin staring at her in turn as odd shadows from the glass windows make her features in the dark at once recognisable and wrong. In the front Hook turns his head to glance at Emma occasionally but Emma never seems to turn her head towards him, and no one says a word, Roland's breathing loudest over the engine as it lengthens into lazy sleep. Robin is scarcely used to cars himself and wonders if Marian even knows what it is she sits in, and though she always was (is?) so brave about new things when he reaches out a tentative hand she grips it gratefully and doesn't let go.

Eventually they pull over when Emma asks if she has the right spot and Robin answers affirmatively, gravel loud and jostling as they leave the road surface, Marian's fingers tight around Robin's when the car finally comes to a halt and even the engine and gravel noise stops.

Robin gets out first (second, climbing over Hook's turned-down seat), and reaches back into the darkness to take Roland from Marian. She passes him, but hesitates, and when Roland fusses and starts to make displeased noises he thinks for a moment she will never let go.

"Marian," he says lowly, "it's not a terribly short walk to the camp from here."

She lets go and he takes Roland's full weight, taking some comfort from the familiarity of it as he settles his boy against him and feels Roland's arms tighten around his neck reflexively, familiar curls tickling his chin and blocking his view of the ground to the side.

"I know," she says, quietly too, emerging from the shadowy interior unsure of her footing, "well, not that, but..."

Emma rounds the car and gives Marian a hand stepping over the seat in her long skirt, standing tall on the ground at last, dusting herself off.

"How's your head?" Emma asks, and there's some lick of guilt to it that makes Robin's eyes narrow.

"It hurts, it's okay," Marian's eyes flick to the side and he remembers this, knows she's hiding other thoughts behind a face of politeness.

"If you vomit or anything, you should probably go to the hospital and see Whale, I should've taken you already, really."

"I don't know where -"

"I know it," Robin says. "If there's a problem I can take her. I've been there before, I know the way."

"Well, we'd best be off then," says Hook, making to pass between Robin and the car door to rectify his seating arrangements awkwardly with just one hand.

Emma smiles at Marian one last time, troubled and forced, Robin thinks, but with only the headlights and a crescent moon for light it's hard to be sure, and then the two of them are in the car and gone, taking the harsh orange light of the headlights with them in a cascade of pebbles, Robin and his son and his wife left alone at the edge of the forest in the cold.

They walk home, Robin leading the way.

He can barely talk to Marian, only short pointless nonsense about the route and this new world, the long-forgotten familiarity of her smell and her voice making his mind swim with forgotten memories, ill-fitting and distracting now that he is so old as to be a different person. It exacerbates the strange out-of-body feeling that persists, his legs walking without permission and barely any feedback, and he feels like a ghost floating, or gone back in time, and underlying it all is a constant creeping worry for Regina that he does not even know what he can do with.

He looks over, the walk half done in his haze, and Marian cocks her head at him in a half-frown. It shocks him, more than anything else, his facial muscles recognising that expression although his eyes had forgotten it, because this was her expression all along and he has walked it around a world without her in it thinking it was his. This was something she left him, in her death, a muscle memory born of once-closeness, it makes his heart burn with remembered intimacy even despite the aching thought that without this miracle he would never have remembered, such a precious thing nearly lost forever.

It is all so odd: he knows himself overjoyed but cannot feel it.

"My father," Neal says, "He saved her... and your son."

Robin hesitates.

"Once. He stands at the window, he calls out once," Robin says, because he cannot be ungrateful.

When they reach camp there is uproar, bodies crowding away from the fire, full of staring eyes and disbelieving laughter, and he lets it wash over him, relieved that they are home and that Little John and Friar Tuck can be familiar faces for Marian and that for a moment he can try to find his own feet without trying to anchor hers.

Little John grabs Marian in a hug and he catches a flash of her grateful face happier and less pinched before Much joins in and she is hidden from him.

Friar Tuck grabs him by the shoulder Roland doesn't occupy – Roland already woken by the noise - and says, "Robin, this is... is this?"

"I know," he replies, and tries to smile as brightly as the others do because this is. Marian is alive.

"Not sunk in yet?"

He huffs a laugh at such understatement, "Not just yet."

Then Little John is grabbing him too and Friar Tuck is taking Roland and he finds himself truly swamped in bodies, everyone patting him and grabbing him because Marian has returned, Marian, his long-grieved wife and one of their own, and this, this is a miracle the Merry Men never dream of, and they are all so happy because what an impossible thankful joy, Marian is alive. They can none of them hardly believe it, Robin, can you believe it, I don't understand and how can this be, this is impossible.

It's as cleansing as it is alienating to be amongst the cleaner reactions of his men and he soaks it up that they should so easily emote what seems bundled in knots inside himself. He can hear Roland's high voice loud in excitement telling everyone a confused version of what happened, and when Roland forgets Regina entirely in the retelling Robin feels like something has broken in his heart.

It calms down quickly. The Merry Men are a boisterous lot but Roland is young and it's clear that Robin and Marian are a little shell-shocked. Robin takes Roland again just in time as he starts to flag from this second wind and overtired tears threaten, rubbing his back gently and letting him doze again to the familiar sound of his Daddy's voice and heartbeat.

He introduces Marian quickly to the newer Merry Men, juggling the need to get Roland in bed with the need to get Marian somewhat settled, but he misremembers and thinks she knows more of the Merry Men than she does, asking Alan-a-Dale to find them some more bedding and get what Marian what she needs from their supplies while he sets Roland down for the night. Alan is left awkward and Marian excluded because they've never actually met before, and surely he should remember that Alan joined in the dark winter days after her death and not her last unhappy autumn?

It's an honest mistake and he wouldn't ordinarily dwell on it but it hurts Marian and Robin doesn't even realise until Friar Tuck has already stepped forwards to right it. Intellectually Robin knew he would misremember things but he could have sworn he remembered better than it seems he has. How could he have remembered Marian so poorly?

"That's good, Robin," the street magician says, "more than good enough! Now try it on that woman there."

"I can be better," Robin says, because he believes it.

"We should see about finding you some local clothes," Robin says to Marian when Roland is finally in bed, setting out a second bed in a second lean-to tent nearby.

Marian stands over him, arms at a loss at her sides. "You're so quick to reject everything?"

He pauses and looks up from his crouch. "I'm not- ...you should be comfortable. The cloth here is better - warm, durable, light – we should find you whatever helps you settle in best."

"And that's new clothes, an empty bed and a husband who sleeps with the Evil Queen?"

Regina, he thinks, reminded of Regina's delicacy with naming and framing like this that must underpin it, and then is blind-sided by the casting of their relationship as an affair. His knotted, distant emotions make sense suddenly when he thinks clearly for the first time, stomach dropping with the dread of it, that none of this is over, that he has a wife and a... a Regina, a soulmate, now, and that is a state that cannot hold and it is him that must harm a loved one before any of them can even begin to recover.

"She's not evil anymore," he says, finally.

He has lived so long with Marian's ghost in his head it is a little weird to have her live her own life, and the argument started at the diner catches light thanks to the fatigue and high emotions running through both of them, the Merry Men by the fire politely pretending not to hear.

She is angry and intransigent on the subject of Regina, and the more she lets slip the more he understands what an ordeal she has had so very recently and what shadow the Evil Queen must cast, but it's an unhappy shock to him everytime he argues her pronouncements that Marian sets her jaw and proclaims him misguided, trusts his intentions but not his observance nor his judgement.

"People like that don't just change, Robin!" She says, hushing immediately when the bundle of Roland turns over in his sleep. "You know what she's capable of, the horrors she's done: she dragged me all over the land this morning to beg for my life laughing, she enjoyed it. You don't change that."

It's difficult to hear, as it should be. "You remember that I once changed, too? There was a time I was a different sort of man, it is possible."

"Not like that! She would have cut my head off and put it on a, a s-spike, Robin. You are not everybody."

It's not that he didn't remember that they argued as much as any couple - the ghost Marian in his head had likes and dislikes and certainly would not have always approved of his actions - but the ghost Marian had relied entirely on his perception of the world and her differing conclusions had been softened in memory, always at heart just a familiar echo of his own creation. She had not had this heel-dug resistance, not this failure to listen, and it is frustrating when he is reeling from miracles and each new unhappy revelation.

"Nevertheless, it's been a long time, Marian! A lot has changed. You don't understand -"

"I do understand! I understand better than you! My son is... She is not you, Robin. She's very beautiful and I know you want to see yourself in her, but she was very beautiful when she meant to kill me and a very good actor, too. She's sadistic!"

After such a day it is too much. "You think so little of me? That I'm clouded by a pretty face and a wish?"

She sighs, frustrated too. "I don't know what I think of you, anymore."

Well, ouch.

She is unkind and impatient and immature and sulky, more suited to Roland's age than his own, her logic delightfully straightforward and amusingly self-orientated. It shouldn't bring a smile to his face when she bites at the world so toothlessly but he finds himself hiding smiles all the same. There is persistent life in her that he is truly glad to see after the manner of their meeting and he likes the helpfulness she hides and the efficiency she strives for, likes her snark even when he shouldn't and her humor even when it turns on him. He likes her as she does not, at this moment, seem to like him.

"What are you even still doing here?" the Queen asks, ungrateful to boot.

"What I'm doing here is saving your ass," he says.

He and Marian settle, eventually.

They are both disappointed in each other and that is a bitter thing for such a homecoming and the hurt of it will linger for a good while yet, but they are also tired and even as they argue Marian looks displaced and unsettled and Robin is distracted by his impending choice and they both know they should sleep on it and leave deep discussions for the morning.

If this had happened at any other time in any other way she would sleep in his arms tonight, reassured of his proximity and reassuring of her continued existence, but his tie to Regina and the nature of the argument mean that will not happen. He watches Marian curl up in a cold bed alone and knows her displacement follows her even into her own home, that she leaves space for him as he has long-learned not to do for her, and looks up expectantly at him for only a second before her expression hardens in new remembrance.

He cannot leave her though, not yet. She was dead and now she lives and it seems a dream everytime he looks away, so he sits by her head as she slowly relaxes and tries not to stare too strongly. She is home, in the wet, woody air of this unfamiliar forest, in the hard ground, in the tents, in the fire, in the people, and he hopes they will both soon learn to believe it.

She was his home too, once upon a time.

"Marian?" he says, some defensive anger low in his gut, some disbelief making his call a question.

She twitches into wakefulness, "Hmm, yes?"

He is sorry to disrupt her sleep and his face must twist with the pain of his thoughts but he needs to know, he finds he has to know, now, before any more time passes.

"Why didn't you come back?"

She looks up at him for a second, her serious face alien upside-down, and then she twists and sits up, grasping for his hand, pulling her blankets around her as they fall away with her movement, beautiful features earnest and upset.

"I tried," she says, fiercely, "Robin, I tried so hard, you have to believe me. I tried to escape but the Qu..." her eyes flick away, "but I couldn't, not alone, and I begged so hard but nobody would help, and then Leia – Emma - did and I thought, thank you, oh thank you, I could return to you and my baby, but... she hit me and then I was here and it didn't- "

And she's crying, sobbing, the dam broken, and he wraps her in his arms and holds on tight and realises he's crying too, and there's a deep bitter anger in her he thinks must stem from her loss of Roland's infanthood, and finally he understands the flick of guilt in Emma's voice and he is angry at her too, briefly, though she had saved Marian's life, and he would have saved Marian from all of this if only he could, deep sorrow in his throat for what she suffered and will still suffer.

She clutches at his shoulders and he keeps holding her as though he'll never let her go again, as though it's decided and easy and he has no choice to make, and everything for Marian must be so horrible right now but he can barely believe she is alive and when he reassures himself that she is he is deeply, cathartically angry at her because all the heartbreak and guilt and loss he suffered all this time and she was alive. He hates himself that he should blame Marian at all, buries his face in the thick cloud of her soft-brown hair and feels her shudder and sob, and what sort of man does it make him that he should feel such guilty anger at Marian for an unwilling separation but think of Regina's part in this and know only love?

He knows Regina isn't the Evil Queen, but he knows Marian didn't do anything wrong either.

He does not deserve either of them.

She holds his wrist in her hands as though his arm is some great heavy weight, and she tells him a story that could change his world, but doesn't. She's so open and vulnerable he feels the weight of her worry more than he felt even the responsibility to guard her physical heart, and he looks into those shining eyes and the strange youthful pride of her posture and knows she worries in vain. She can be sure of him, he recognises her hope and feeling for his own, it all changes nothing because he was already willing to be there. It is a gift he will never feel worthy of.

"Maybe," he says, searching for light words that will not cut her, "it's all about timing."

The watery gladness of her smile could devastate him.

He leaves when Marian is finally asleep.

He sits by the fire and would ordinarily prod at the embers but remembers too well another unhappy night (only days ago!) with a much happier ending than lies in his immediate future. He scrapes at the dirt with his feet, instead, stops and studies his hands murky in the firelight, gives up and leaves his hands idle, staring sightlessly at the base of the fire.

Little John sits next to him, lost in his own thoughts, but the other men are turned in for the night and there is silence but for the occasional fiery hiss and crackle and the leaves rustling in the trees. It is too incredible that a little over a day ago he thought both wife and best friend irretrievably lost and now he has regained both. He should be ecstatic and he knows it but the shock seems more devastating than miraculous, for all that that is a terrible thought. His choice weighs on him.

"But that's not fair!" Robin argues, eight years old and appalled.

"The world's not fair," the man says, "Now get on with you, scram!"

He could choose Regina - he could – and no one would stop him. Few would blame him, even, Marian dead for long years now and this promise of Regina so easy and so lovely. He had moved on, it's not fair to make him choose, it makes a lie of every friendly counsel anyone ever made in an effort to help, that Marian was gone, forever, and was never coming back, and that he should look for someone else and feel no guilt about it.

Marian would even understand, maybe, or at least eventually. It makes it no easier to contemplate leaving her but she's a good soul and she knows him very well indeed. That it is Regina, she would (be right?) to struggle with; that he had moved on after her death, a conflict she would (try to) resolve sympathetically. He would be here for her, whatever, she would not be fully cast adrift, she will always have his support and his affection, the question is whether his hand alone should waver or follow his heart.

He could choose Regina, he knows others would.

"Robin, stop being such a coward," his friend says, "It's only us here, no one's gonna know, there's no one to tell!"

"I just don't want to, yeah?" Robin says, because he'll know.

Maybe Marian wouldn't be heartbroken at all? Maybe she doesn't...?

It's a stupid thought, and useless too, because Robin cannot help but think it wouldn't matter if she wasn't.

"Are you mad?" Friar Tuck says, "Have you any idea how long it takes to dig a grave? We'll barely make it to the graveyard before someone'll be on to us, Arthur would never have expected this."

"He wanted to be taken home," Robin says, because he cannot let death acquit him.

But what is love? Marriage is more than just love, surely, a bedrock of familiarity and trust and support. He can no more forsake Marian in marriage for love than he would forsake Little John in battle for fear. Even if a man cannot control what he feels, surely he can control what he does with it?

He loved Marian deeply once and if he acts so again, surely he will remember, with time?

He explores her arm with his fingertips, trailing along her elbow, fingers seeking out bone, bone, muscle, sinew, softened solidity and long smooth dips, uninterrupted skin wherever he might wander. Her movement is graceful and decisive and he cannot not enjoy this skin and these joints given half the opportunity, and lying here with her naked in the aftermath is a perfect one, lazy and warm but not yet sated from touch-hunger, her silky hair on his shoulder and her own hands on his chest, and he thinks on hearts and second chances.

"What are you doing?" she asks, some shyness still, despite everything.

"I'm learning you," he says, and she smiles.

He made a vow, and Marian is his wife.

He loves Regina, and he wants to be with her.

Marian deserves better than someone who does not love her.

Regina deserves better than someone who would break a vow.

If he cannot find even what is right anymore, how can he even know what to do?

"Robin, I get it," Little John says, "it's Marian, but there must be another way to heal her. No one can steal from the Dark One, you're being an idiot, it's impossible."

"You have so little faith in me?" Robin says, because what else can he do but try?

He tries to reason it mathematically, as though that will solve his hopelessly tangled thoughts:

Roland will be fine either way. He was raised by the village of the Merry Men and though his life will be different now he can only gain in mothers – one or two where once he had none – and would be hurt more by indecision than any particular hard and fast choice.

If he abandons Marian for Regina? One loved one hurt, one less hurt.

If he abandons Regina for Marian? One loved one hurt, one less hurt.

It's a cruel arithmetic and the only tie-breaker is himself. If he leaves Marian he will be happy with Regina, but guilty, and if he leaves Regina he might one day feel right with Marian, but will be heartbroken to have lost Regina. It seems as much a tangle as it ever was, but deep down he knows it's made his prevarication clear and his heart breaks for it.

He holds her heart in his hand and it is strange, wondrous, terrifying, like holding Roland when he had been so small, a weakness and a strength all in one. It is black and warm and pulses an even beat, light fracturing through bright red, a beautiful vulnerable prism. He should not see it as more than it is, only a last-ditch play to win an unequal fight, yet she gave it to him, trusts him. She plunged a hand into her own chest – blasé and barely wincing while he reached for her, horrified - and ripped out her own heart and passed it on to him. In the waiting darkness from which she may never return, he stands over the earth that hides it and knows he will not see himself fail her.

"Is there no other way?" he asks Little John, finally.

"Than what?"

"Than choosing between them."

Little John is scarcely more caught up on Storybrooke events as Marian, thanks to his time as a monkey, and Robin's relationship with Regina in the Enchanted Forest was... different, so it should hardly be a surprise to him when Little John laughs in confusion.

"Mate, it's Marian. What -?"

Robin has never felt such a fraud.

She smiles when he kisses her and it drives him to kiss her more, hungry for the happiness on her face and the fierce knowledge that he put it there. Again and again, he presses his lips to hers as she stands in his arms so lithe and steady and he feels addiction bite truly when she meets him and lingers, the perfect teeth of her smile melting to insistent lips, dark eyes alive and intent as they fix on his face. It seems impossible to stop and yet they must, for Roland waits, and yet there is time for one more, always, just... one more.

"You approve of my kissing even with heart back, then?" she says, eyebrows raised in good humour.

"Unquestionably," he says, "though I should probably re-check."

He goes to bed, checking on Roland and Marian on the way, knowing he will think nothing new and productive tonight.

He thinks his head is full of too many thoughts to fall asleep easily but he finds when he finally lies in bed that he begins to drift almost immediately, and lets himself dream, as sleep properly beckons, that it is Regina he will choose. Marian was gone, dead, all being equal it's Regina he wanted to follow, Regina he can't help but be aware of, Regina he wants to touch and comfort and be comforted by in turn. He is under no illusions, he knows it it Regina he loves now, and as he falls asleep it is to the dreams of himself and Regina and Roland that he dared to dream before, that he dares dream now he will not have to lose for a cleaner conscience, heart expanding like a balloon.

He wakes in the morning with a rock in his belly and a sober calm in his head, the tangled emotions of yesterday something cold and undigested, because he knows it is not the choice he can make.

He took her trust and he failed her and that sits on him as heavily as it ought. It is chilly and true night beyond the fire that blinds him, and he blinks up to see her stumble in high-heeled shoes on forested ground, the first time he sees her without anticipation in his heart, a heavy self-pity drowning the voice that is usually so glad to have her attention, that wants badly to be as special to her as she is to him. She looks tired, almost wild, and he feels that on his conscience too.

"I promise you, I will get it back," he says, desperate for some ladder out of guilt.

She kisses him, and he can barely comprehend it.

Roland is as taken with Marian at breakfast as he was the previous night, though somewhat shyer, initially, an intriguing stranger more threatening in the familiarity of the morning routine. Marian tries to help cook and Robin knows her desperate to find her footing, but she is unfamiliar with the gas stoves they now use so by the time Roland has stopped sticking to Robin's side she is already being shooed away and it is easy to gratify both of them and send Roland over with instructions to show his new mother the ropes.

Marian drinks Roland in, talking for a long time as the camp wakes with Roland bouncing up and jumping down again, long past when he usually trails after Friar Tuck with firewood like a duckling, past even when he usually pesters Much to give him important tasks in cooking. Roland must like her a lot, to ignore such things, and in this morning of dread he is grateful for it.

He watches his wife and his son and wonders then whether it even makes any sense. Marian knows him and loves him, and knows him too well to be mistaken in his feelings for her. This right choice, can they ever be happy with it, in the long-run? He owes Marian happiness, is this truly the way to achieve it?

Then Friar Tuck appears bringing firewood without his little helper and there is a threatening tantrum, but Roland is a sunny boy at heart and Much quickly diverts him with letting him carry people their breakfast serving of porridge so it never fully breaks. Marian looks to Robin, abandoned and at a loss, no doubt wondering why he should let her founder so, but he finds he has no answer. The life Robin made for Roland as a single parent is gone now, he knows as little about how things will be as she. He had honestly thought Roland would forget, this once, but he has procrastinated long enough.

"Roland!" he calls, and his boy runs up distractedly, "I've got an errand to run but Much would fall apart without you. Do as he says, yes? I'll be back soon."

Roland is used to it and barely pays attention long enough for Robin to ruffle his hair before he's running off, and Much grins at him beyond the fire as Roland starts to scold the poor Merry Man who thought he could serve himself breakfast without a little boy's 'help'.

Robin turns to Marian. "I need to go to town this morning, to talk to Regina. Will you be alright here, with Roland, until I get back?"

She looks up at him with enough real worry that he knows she knew his struggle and must know it wasn't her he wanted to choose. "What will you say to her?" she says hesitatingly.

He laughs darkly, bites his lip. "I hardly know."

"Robin," she says, sympathy breaking through, reaching out a hand.

He flinches away before he can stop himself. "Sorry," he says, sighs, "I'll be back soon. I'm sorry."

He steps forward and knows her affected, open and intrigued and standing ground in her space that he might enter it, eyes following his every move, anticipatory. He reaches past her and snags a bottle by the neck, pulls it down and finds her close still like she's been hypnotised, as willingly mesmerized as he was himself only moments ago. There's a deep stillness between them that says everything, so close, and he catches glimpses of her soft and human in the dim space they share, shoulders and hips and fingertips on glass, body warmth and the deep-seated thrill of desire.

"What about this - is this magical?" he asks, and why bother to be subtle?

"Not exactly," she says, and smiles.

He cannot help but doubt himself as he walks:

Is he being selfish?

Should he – can he – put his honour above Regina's heart?

It's wouldn't be right to put his own feelings above Regina's in such a way, not when the result would be such hurt and the alternative such happiness, but is it selfish to put that which is right above that which is loved, purely because he's too weak to stomach the alternative?

Guilty pleasure or righteous misery -

Is it weakness? Is it cowardice? Is it penance?

"You're a monster!" the man says, clutching at his cash.

"Maybe," says Robin, "maybe not, but how would that help you?"

Is it even right? Might all this be solved if only he was wrong all along?

But he swore, he chose long ago, and it is right to keep such promises or what is the very point of them? Trust and truth are important and though his mind is confused with so much sophistry they are pillars of his world and he will obey them.

He's made no promises to Regina, aloud, at least. An understanding, implicit hopes and trust and feelings, but nothing stated, nothing out loud other than that of the return of her heart. He would not have them mean less for being silent for all the world, but now he's forced to break something to someone are they not more... fragile? More meaningfully precious and less gut-wrenchingly necessary?

The very fragility of those promises makes him yearn to keep them even more, to let the delicate things grow as they might, but it is a choice too close to his own weak selfishness. Does he hesitate because it would be right to keep faith with Regina, or only because it would be his happier, preferred choice? He cannot but think it a slithering masqueraded excuse: he cannot trust it and he cannot trust himself, so he will not.

(But how can he even think to go through with it?)

"You don't have to!" Robin says, a brash eleven years old and desperate.

"We know," the men laugh, "you think you're gonna change our minds?"

He hesitates at her office door, some uncanny awareness making him good at guessing where she will be, his heart spitefully looking forward to seeing her despite the reason.

He knocks and prays that his treachery that will be felt by only him - let Regina have loved and misunderstood him. Let her have misjudged his character so that he might be a man to see a wrong and never seek to fix it, that he might see pain in a loved one and be unaffected, that he might take a woman to bed with a destiny and a future before them but yet feel no understanding. Above all, let her not realise how he fails her.

He knows as soon as he sees her face that it is a false hope: she had heard his unspoken promises and worse, she had believed them.

("I am a monster."

"So what went on between us..."

"My feelings for you were - are - real.")

His talk with Regina is worse too, in other ways, because while she unhappily doesn't doubt him, she doubts herself and doubts his feelings, and when he cannot bear that unnecessary hurt and tries to reassure her of these things, at least, in the vanguard of breaking her heart, instead he brings her false hope and she believes that strongly too.

("But my vow remains.")

It's as messy as last night, and this time, it really is all his fault.

He leaves as she tries to hide her tears, unable to offer comfort for a pain he caused his... soulmate, trying to make it easier for her as he has manifestly failed thus far. He pleads her understanding though he knows he has no right because despite everything he cannot bear her misunderstanding, that she should think he doesn't love her, strongly, unbearably, or cannot see that this choice is not a happy one, that she is not the only one who will suffer, that it is not easy, not better, not anything he wants, that above all she is not alone though she is left so and she is loved.

("Otherwise, what kind of life am I living?")

And what kind of man is he, indeed, to hurt a loved one so?

She is so beautiful in despair he is half in love with her already, and half-deep in self-hatred that he should find such a thing attractive, though undeniably he does. She smiles love and relief in her tears and his heart breaks for her and the misery she broadcasts, his own grief ragged in sympathy, his hope spilling out as desperate kinship at that sheer capacity of feeling.

She leaves him stuck and he calls her name that she might give him another chance to help her - he cannot think past the desperate prayer that if she will only let him, only talk a little more as they have been talking, that he might reach her yet. She wears loneliness like a cloak and she need not ever again, not if she only dares to live, not if only she returns.

He has only just met her, but he would give her that.

He knows as he walks away that he does not love Marian as he ought and might never love her as he undeniably loves Regina, knows that he will probably never lose that love for Regina, but he made Marian a promise long ago and now owes her every happiness, and if that happiness is with him then he owes her that chance too.

He who held Marian's death on his conscience, he who loved her once so deeply, he who vowed a thousand times to the universe he would do anything to get her back – he of all people cannot break a promise because she was dead but is no longer. Marian is alive, and it is a miracle, and he will honour that.

His feet are heavy as he hits the street but his shoulders light, and every step he takes threatens to twist and take him back to Regina, to kiss her as he had wanted to and assure her it is real, she is good, that they can - they must - be together. Her hope captivates him and her vulnerability burns him and his mind is empty and quiet at last with the heavy knowledge that he has broken her heart and he loves her, and his choice now irrevocably lies between them.

It is a queer sort of guilty relief. It is done, and he need no longer fear that he will weaken and waver. He finds himself welcoming his share of the unhappiness with a fierceness that surprises even himself, only wishing he could take it all, even this lesser guilt unbearable.

He made Regina cry because his gut told him he must. (Because he couldn't bear the guilt.)

To choose her would have been the weak thing, the selfish thing, the happy thing -

(He must be better.)

"She's the one then?" Little John ribs, "Marriage? No other woman but her - forever?"

"It's Marian," Robin says easily, "I made that choice a long time ago."

"I'm sorry," Regina says, all sympathy, a future opening before them.

"I would have walked through hell to be with my Marian again," he says, and he thinks, but now I have you.

When Robin was young he tried to change people who did not want to be changed, tried to right a world that did not want to see that it was wrong. It made him legendary, made him an outlaw, and – he hopes – made a positive difference in the world.

He reaches camp and Marian is there waiting, deep in conversation with Friar Tuck while Roland plays at their feet. It's a lovely picture he has yearned to see many times, his wife and their child and a dear friend safe and well and alive, but Roland sits nearer to Tuck than Marian, and it's Tuck the boy looks to for guidance, not Marian, and Robin wonders whether Marian will ever be more a parent than the other Merry Men, the small wrong thing with the picture (the husband in love with another).

The world is an unfair, unkind place still, he knows, and that unkindness is in himself as much as any, and even when he fails to make anything better for anybody else he will settle for improving only himself, the one thing he can always control. Even when it is impossible, even when he knows it unrealistic, even when it is the last thing in the world he wants to do, he has seen too many wrongs because people think goodness too difficult and it is possible, and so he must try.

It's not better, it's not happier, it's not at all what he wants, but he'll be damned if he does not force himself to be right, most of all.

A/N: Reviews are awesome, please review! Would love to hear thoughts/reactions. Chapter Two should cover 4x07, so, more actual Regina/Robin interaction in that one, thank god. Hope Robin/Marian segments seemed realistic, it's difficult to write two nice people who love each other (albeit lopsidedly) when you don't actually ship them and are actually trying to ship one of them with someone else who's not around! Hope also my annoyance with Emma wasn't too on-the-nose, I'm really struggling to like her again after she knocked Marian unconscious. Aaaaand hope Robin seemed to make sense - with the proviso that it doesn't prove a permanent scupper for Outlaw Queen I actually like him more for his 4x01 choice.