A|N for colourmayfade.

blood (ours)

There is blood on her hands.

Magic that wasn't her own had sealed Robin's wounds—restoring breath, life, to the man who'd sacrificed his so willingly, and for a questionable cause.

There's little left of it on him, the blood, when all is said and done. His skin is cleaned off with a damp washcloth, his stained and tattered tunic are discarded into the nearest wastebasket, and a most chagrined King of Camelot insists on personally furnishing him with a clean change of clothes, should the savior allow it.

Regina's hands alone retain the mark of near-loss; the blood clings, creeping beneath her fingernails, garish and red and making the air taste of copper, and she can't let Robin see how badly it's affecting her.

She's almost relieved when the King requests he borrow her "brave knight" a moment, graciously accepting another apology for their abominable mistreatment of houseguests, and evading any further inquiries as to her own state of wellbeing.

Though none such inquiries, she notices, come from her companions, who seem more preoccupied with the cost of saving a life, and the woman who had paid it with one step closer to darkness.

Perhaps there is the blood of more than one on Regina's hands, then.

She heads straight for her quarters, stopping only to check on her (their) son, left under the watchful care of hawkeyed Granny and the dwarves. She finds Henry bursting with questions and concern for Robin, but to answer them fully would give him cause to worry for other things, and his gaze soon goes dopey from the memory of so many firsts that evening (first ball, first dance, first…girl, and there would be time to discuss that later).

She hastily presses a kiss to his unresisting temple—something he's yet to grow out of, though he certainly makes her work for it, despite the three extra inches afforded by her heels—along with a reassuring smile and a promise of Tomorrow, Henry, hands folded carefully into her gown to hide the way they tremble, the shock of scarlet still smeared across her palms.

The fabric will be ruined for it, but she'd rather burn alive than wear the cursed thing ever again.

"Mom, are you okay?" Henry asks curiously, and she tries to rearrange her features back into something maternal and comforting.

"Of course," she lies with an ease that unsettles her stomach. "I'll see you in the morning?"

"Yeah," he responds eagerly, liberating his iPod from his inner breast pocket and toying with the dangled ends of his headphones.

Recalling enough of herself to feel appropriately bemused, Regina gives him one last kiss, her secret concession to a sudden, overwhelming urge she has to reach up and tidy his hair.

"Night, Mom," beams Henry, altogether appearing none the wiser as he slips the buds into his ears and bounds off, humming something peculiar and decidedly out of tune.

It's the best she can hope for to come of this night—that her son at least will sleep untroubled, while she carries the burden of both his mothers' choices.

For there is blood on her hands.

And try as she might, it will not wash off.

Regina scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, until her skin stings and she doesn't know where Robin's blood ends and hers begins. Rose-stained soapsuds crowd her water basin, that hideous purple necklace winking slyly up from the bottom where its crystal lies cracked in two.

She leans half her weight into her shaky grip on the basin, scalloped in the form of a pearl shell, examining its gilded edges before glancing up at the madwoman in the mirror above it.

And just past her own wild eyes, dark in their depths and rimmed with red from silent tears, Robin's fall into focus. His are calm, blue as the core of a flame, and she had been the one who almost snuffed them out.

He gives her that smile, the one he means for her alone—crooked, yet still somehow shy—and it angers her beyond reason.

"What?" she asks, and the word startles her with its sharpness.

"King Arthur forced nearly half his wardrobe on me," Robin shrugs, with a studied mildness to his tone. "But I rather insisted I ought to come check up on you."

His hands, she notices, are held diligently at his sides instead of reaching out to comfort her, and she is grateful for the distance, the slowed strides of his approach; she hadn't meant to snap at him, and though he looks unbothered by it, she can't think on what other way she might stumble upon to hurt him if he were to touch her right now.

"Well as you can see, I'm fine," she tells him, with wholehearted effort that he still finds pitifully unconvincing, judging from his single raised eyebrow.

He's at arm's length behind her now, ready to pull her close the moment she's ready to be held by him again.

"Henry said you seemed to have…" Robin pauses, jaws working silently for several seconds, and she briefly forgets her rage, peering cautiously up at his reflection. "I believe his exact words were, 'lost your chill'?"

"I—" Regina begins indignantly, whirling around to face him. She's unsure whether to feel proud, or irritated, or both, that Henry had not only seen through her poor attempts at composure, but gone and told on her as soon as he had the chance.

A smile breaks through before she can fight it back (her son, she thinks fondly), and Robin, spotting his in, steps forward until his boots toe her hemline, tugging her firmly against him when she fails to protest.

"Your boy was rightfully worried," he murmurs, brushing kisses to her hairline, hands finding their usual notch at the small of her back. "As am I. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Me?" Regina wonders in disbelief, pulling her forehead away from his wandering mouth to level him with an exasperated look. "You're the one who got stabbed."

"Well I couldn't very well let it be you," he argues with maddening logic, and her lips purse irritably, battling the urge to scold him for his poor choice in priorities. "Besides, I came out in one piece, didn't I?"

Her fingers fly instinctively to his side, searching, meaning to tease out any lingering spots of broken skin or quiet grunts of pain, but he's warm and whole and hers, and the fresh blood prints on his otherwise immaculate tunic belong to her as well.

She fists the fabric, aligning their bodies and angling Robin into her for direct access to his throat. His low approving hum vibrates her mouth, her tongue where it slips out to taste him just below the jaw, and if his grip tightens around her waist, well, she can't help how predictably distracted he is by her.

Whatever happens, she can't let him see her hands.

But then he's pulling back, just enough to make her heart pitch against her ribcage in an attempt to follow suit, and she presses her chest to his, dropping her gaze to something half-lidded and too alluring for him to possibly resist.

A lock of hair falls to obscure her eyes, entirely ruining the effect she'd intended to have on him. Robin thumbs it tenderly away, fingers threading to loosen the messy base of her bun, and his palm encases her cheek in a warmth she can't help but lean into.

"Are you all right?" she asks quietly, finally.

His smile dimples. "Me?" he queries with an aggravating innocence, leaning in for a kiss before she has a chance to scowl at him properly. "Right as rain," he promises, looking mischievous of all things, all of a sudden. She responds with a dubious frown. "If you'll not take me for my word, milady, perhaps you'd like to see for yourself? Just to be sure."

Before she can work out a compelling reason why he shouldn't remove his shirt, he's already untucking it from his trousers, revealing a tanned expanse of skin and muscle. Losing her mind for a moment, she reaches up to tug at his collar, managing to pull it half-over his head when his voice grows heated for other reasons.

"Regina," he says.

She freezes.

"What have you done to your hands?"

Caught.

"It's just blood," she tells him.

"Yes, I can see that," he returns, sounding none too pleased as he drops his tunic back over his abdomen in favor of lifting her hands, palms up, for him to inspect. She hadn't gotten a terribly close look herself earlier, and even she cringes to find them such a violent shade of pink, raw and sloughed open in places that hurt just to rest her eyes on them.

Robin has gone deathly quiet. She shifts uncomfortably, desperate to fill the silence however she can, when he elects to break it for her.

"Why haven't you healed these?"

"I," she starts, stammering to a stop. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to her, and it seems an incredibly selfish thing to do now that he's brought it up, when her magic wouldn't even deign to save him.

"Please," he says.

Her breath comes out in an unsteady rush.

"Regina," and the sound of her name spoken with such a palpable ache to it lifts her chin until their eyes lock, his swimming in the blur of her unshed tears, but blue as she's ever known them.

"For me."

She'd nearly gotten him killed, and all he asks in return is that she not stand to suffer even the most superficial of wounds herself.

Every absurd new side of his love he shows her each day will be what ends her, she's sure of it.

Regina stares down at her hands, gingerly splayed atop his, his fingers encircling her wrists and rubbing circles to soothe intact skin wherever he can find it. The weight of his forehead on hers anchors her in place as she focuses on mending capillaries, stitching whole what had come apart.

"Better?" Robin asks, his own relief evident in the sudden lightness of his tone and shoulders, but she's shaking her head, hands clawing freely at his collar now that she's nowhere left to hide them.

"There's so much blood," she says, would have snarled if she had the strength for anger, and he, wordless, wraps her into his arms, guiding her backwards until her legs encounter the porcelain rim of their bathtub.

"Let me see," he whispers, and she, with a tremor she can't seem to mask in a fist, gives herself over to him as he gently unfolds her fingers to the heat of his mouth, enveloping them in knuckle-deep kisses, tongue soothing, stubble scraping, over spotless skin.

"There," he husks, resting one hand above his heartbeat before proceeding to grasp the other.

He finishes with a soft but thorough press of their lips together, opening to the sound of her sighs, angling closer in a languid tangle of tongue, and his dimples deepen beneath her touch when they part.

"Better now?" he persists without urgency, and she half-smiles, for him.

Robin murmurs for her to take off her gown while he draws them a hot bath, shedding his own twice-ruined garments before sliding in. She steps out of her heels amidst a pool of pink and lace and silver baubles, shivering from the cold hitting her skin, and then his gaze as it warms her in places the air can't touch.

"I thought you said a hot bath?" she questions delicately once she's dipped her toes and joined him in the tub. His chuckle rumbles against her backside as she settles into him, dragging his arms around her middle. The water—decently toasty, though certainly several degrees short of what he'd promised—laps past her collarbone, sloshing over either side of the bathtub when she knocks a knee playfully into his.

"I would not be averse to you doing something about it," he leans casually into her ear, "with, you know, magic," and God if he doesn't make the word sound so…dirty.

"Oh, so now you're warming up to the idea?" Regina teases, twisting in his embrace to study his face.

"Well if I'd had it at my disposal," he remarks, almost offhandedly, "I would have blasted Percival's arse to the ceiling, instead of getting mine handed to me the way that I did."

She feels her expression sour.

"Too soon?" he wants to know, and she catches the lopsided edge of his smile as she pivots back around, shoulders rigid, surliness crossing her arms over chest.

Sighing, Robin peppers open-mouthed apologies along her neck, notching his chin where it hollows and urging her to relax into him again.

"Too soon," he agrees.

She tightens his arms around her in reply.

"I almost lost you too," Robin reminds her lowly.

Turning, she trails her nose along his jawline before nudging it upward, tucking her head underneath his chin instead. "I know."

In the silence that follows, heavy with what ifs that they can't bear to answer, Regina withdraws a hand from the water. Her palm hovers above its rippling surface until it's just shy of scorching, and Robin's groan of pleasure curls her toes and arches her spine.

"Shall we get the rest of you cleaned off?" he hums, and her long-suffering sigh will not persuade him otherwise (she will not stand to have it any other way).

She mutters some choice things about graduating from rivers to bathtubs and suddenly someone thinks himself such an expert on the matter of cleanliness. But Regina's long forgotten how to sneer effectively at him, and there's a noticeable hitch to her mocking when she questions just how clean a thief can claim his own hands to be, anyway.

"Perhaps that's because you know exactly what my hands are capable of," he says, voice rough, and he proceeds to demonstrate just how dishonorable they can be, sneaking gasps and cataloguing in great detail what other sounds he might successfully steal from her.

Half their bath winds up puddled at their feet when they emerge from the tub some time later, its heat more or less dissipated, though the mirror above the basin is still clouded over in steam. Regina's skin is smooth if not pruny at the fingertips, and the water drips clear as Robin—committed to the very last—towels her dry and finally offers himself up for her careful inspection.

There's a scar missing, and apart from the memory of her crouched and absolutely senseless over his body (her own scar to bear), there's nothing—certainly not by way of blood—to indicate he'd ever sustained a single injury, let alone one to fatal effect.

Unease inexplicably clenches her stomach, and yet, Robin smiles and shrugs as though dying in her arms is but a retelling of someone else's tale, so distant it may as well have happened in another world entirely. He gathers her back to him, worrying the knot he'd tied in her towel and letting it fall away as he scoops her into his arms and carries her off to bed. Something else uncoils in her belly then, and he is well, and whole, and hers, always, and she can't allow anything to matter more than that.