A/N: Written for my darling friend starscythe and the beautiful art she made for Dark OQ Week, Day 1: Getting to Know You. Title taken from Hafiz.

Now Is the Time to Know (That All That You Do Is Sacred)

They got acquainted with each other's bodies first.

One drink had turned into two (he insisted on buying that one as well), and their coy little glances had grown bolder, heating and opening up to one another in clear looks of want.

And oh what a glorious mess they had made of the tavern that night.

It was strange, in the beginning, to know him and yet not – in a purely physical sense, they were nearly identical, these two Robins who had both breezed into her life at a time when second chances felt like something impossible to her.

The same blue eyes. Those same strong arms (the way they learned to hold her, too). Even that scar up his bicep, the long lines of muscle that swooped down his waistline and tensed whenever she traced them with her tongue.

But the similarities ended there.

The way that he moved, the sound of his groan as he pressed into her – trying to remember a different Robin in him was like opening a book to find the chapters had all been rewritten, and it took a few moments of fumbling with this new kind of intimacy for her to realize how little it mattered in the end.

She was not the same Regina, nor the same Evil Queen, and her different with his different came together so naturally that she eventually decided it was useless to question or dwell on it too long.

She'd made a vow not to waste any more time with this man.

—

When they weren't making love, she felt almost shy around him.

She blamed Regina, in a way. Before, when all she had was her rage, it had been so very easy to take without looking back, to care for nothing but the pure carnal pleasure of killing, or fucking (of laying claim to something, one way or another).

But now, with all of this…lightness in her, every damn emotion had returned to the surface demanding to be felt, and feeling shy with this man was apparently the first means of torture her heart had devised.

Robin touched her freely, kissing the sweat from her neck after a long stroll in the gardens, caressing a hand up and down her thigh at dinner and feigning innocence when she reminded him that they had guests present.

It became habit for her to lean into these moments whenever she felt that traitorous uncertainty again, because it was an effortless thing to let him worship her body when that, at least, had never betrayed itself as weak to her.

She made sure that he wanted for nothing – food and drink and clothing and assurances against boredom that she knew, objectively speaking, he couldn't care less about – because that, at least, she knew how to control.

Robin had come here with few possessions of his own, save for his rucksack, and a book he kept tucked away in the single drawer that he'd allowed her to empty on his behalf. She never saw him read it, apart from the days when she would schedule trips into the nearby villages, smiling upon her return and dismissing her inquiries with a "Nothing important, my love" before stowing it away again.

And then he would pull her into bed with him, telling her things with his body that would make her forget what else had not been said, until another morning shed its light on their half-tangled limbs and it occurred to her that she might be in bed with a stranger.

There was so much she didn't know about his past, so much he still didn't know about hers, and it might have been enough, before, but her heart had begun to want things – things she had not yet learned how to ask for.

Things she was still half-convinced that she didn't deserve.

—

Robin surprised her, one day, by bringing up Henry.

They'd been fighting about…something. Frankly, it was hard to keep track when they disagreed about more or less everything, but this time was different. More. There had been sharper edges than usual involved, more unrestrained fury over some stupid incident at the stables after her horse had misbehaved.

"What the bloody hell were you thinking, getting back up there? You were very nearly thrown from the damn thing a week ago, what made you think this time would be any different?"

"Well as you can see, I'm fine," she sniffed in reply, brushing him off when he attempted to help her off the ground.

But he seemed determined not to let it go. "You could have been killed!"

Rolling her eyes at him was, in retrospect, probably not the kindest way to respond, and he'd let her have it then, shouting things about her stubbornness, how soft her heart must have gotten to think she could tame a beast into caring for her.

"He just needs time," she argued, ignoring the way her back protested when she stood up too quickly, and what did he know about any of this anyway? Since when did sleeping in barns make him some kind of expert on horses? "And I'm learning how to be patient – though certainly not from the likes of you."

"You know just as well as I that this one can't be helped."

She instinctively placed herself between them, everything in her going rigid to keep from betraying her flinch when the horse gave a snort and kicked a hoof into the dirt just behind her.

"You're wrong," she told Robin, steely. "He'll come around. Maybe it's common, where you come from, to turn your back whenever you feel like it, but I'm not giving up on him!"

His eyes narrowed, a storm obscuring the blue in them. "Yes, and why not endanger yourself in the process?"

"You're being dramatic."

"This is not the first time you've been reckless with your life," he thundered, "and for what? Because you fancy you'll be able to make a difference? By loving something hard enough?"

"Like you would know about loving anything other than yourself."

"Well that's rich," he remarked, "considering all those times I saved your arse instead of my own. Or have you forgotten why we had to leave the other realm?"

"I don't see what any of that has to do with—"

"He does not love you, Regina! You have to let Henry go!"

He did not seem to realize what he'd said until it was too late, and she felt herself turn to stone as she stared up at this man and recognized nothing that she knew in him. He took an entreating step forward, something like remorse clouding his expression as he reached for her hand.

She jerked away.

"Don't. Touch me."

"Regina—"

"I think you should go."

He had the audacity to move toward her again. "Regina, I know that—"

"Let's make one thing clear, thief." She couldn't bear to look at him now, for fear that the words would sting only her before losing their sharpness. "You know nothing about me. You are nothing to me."

"I know you don't believe that." A hint of his anger returned, and how dare he when he had no right? "What we are is so much more than I can hope to understand, but I want this." His frustration gave way to something imploring. "Let me make this right."

"What we are is a mistake," she corrected, her tone growing cold, clipped. Indifferent. She turned away. "Surely there's a bed of hay somewhere that can stand to keep you company."

It was not the first time she had run from this man, and as the sound of him calling her name grew dimmer and dimmer, she wondered if she hadn't had the right idea that first time after all.

—

He was nowhere to be found when she eventually returned to the castle, spent and half-desperate for a quick, hateful romp to make them forget every horrible thing that they'd said to each other.

She took a detour through the banquet hall, where dinner sat untouched at their usual table, the candle flickering and casting strange shadows across the dishware and cutlery that had been set out for one.

"Did…Robin eat already?" she asked, feeling oddly off-centered when a guard hurried forward and attempted to pour her some wine.

"No, mum. He informed us that you would be dining alone this evening. White or red?"

She held out a hand to stop him.

"Where is he?"

"Err," said the guard, "I'm…not quite sure. He said he had some things to attend to upstairs, but I didn't – I don't—"

She left him to his stammering apologies as she swept out of the banquet hall.

Something twisted and dark had taken up residence inside of her, growing teeth and claws until the blackness began to creep around the corners of her vision. The floor threatened to wobble at every step she took up the staircase, and then she was blindly turning down another set of corridors, to the doors that led into her quarters.

Her bedchambers were empty.

But then, what had she been expecting? Robin, bare beneath her covers and waiting to pull her back under with him?

Everything was in perfect order, exactly as she'd left it that morning, but something pressed her forward, and she found herself standing in front of the wardrobe they shared before she realized what she was even looking for.

She nudged his drawer open.

Her chest tightened, crowding out all the air as a painful thudding reached the very edges of her ribcage, her heart suddenly too big, too loud, too much.

What little that Robin had brought with him – his rucksack, that book – was gone.

He was gone.

She heard nothing for a moment, nothing but the sound of her own shallow breathing, a dull ringing noise that drowned out everything else trying to wedge itself inside her head.

A bird trilled out a distant little song, somewhere, outside, and she longed to be gone with a savage intensity, to be surrounded by the scent of pine and every possible shade of green in the sunlight, to drown in something blue that darkened each time she set herself on fire.

She was out of her bedchambers and down in the courtyards below with no recollection of moving her feet, panic fluttering like so many feathers in her chest to think of what she'd just lost, every reason she should have given him to stay.

The moon was peeking its way out of the mountains to stare her down, starkly illuminating as the jagged rock faces began to glow wherever they'd been touched by the light.

She stumbled a step forward, wanting to fling everything she had out into all that openness, to let it pull her apart until the weight in her chest simply ceased to be.

"You're back."

She turned toward his voice with her heart in her throat, and for a moment she thought she had imagined him there.

Robin was sitting on a bench, gazing up at her apple tree with a solemn sort of stillness that she hadn't known him capable of, and there were many things about him that she hungered to learn, this man who already knew so much more of her than he'd ever let on.

"I thought…" Her words splintered a bit at the edges, and she tried again, "I thought you—" before clearing her throat and finishing lamely, "You skipped dinner."

The smile he gave her was tentative, rueful. "I had thought you might want to be alone a while longer."

He was turning his book over in his hands, fingertips trailing lightly down its spine with a tenderness that she felt as though it were her own skin.

"Well," she informed him stiffly, "as usual, you thought wrong."

The sound of his chuckle cracked open that heaviness in her, spilling out light, and they smiled at each other like everything had suddenly been made new between them, achingly delicate for how vital it felt.

He shifted over on the bench, the look he gave her warm and inviting, and she moved to sit beside him, primly crossing one leg over the other as she rearranged her skirts.

It was the first time, since she'd known him, that he seemed hesitant to reach for her.

She held her body carefully away from his, suddenly unsure again what to do with herself when they weren't touching each other in some small way. Silence stretched on, settling in until she felt only something monumental would be able to break it. Her heart crept back up into her throat to beat out a half-petrified rhythm, stirring up nerves in her belly, and she took a shaky breath when their gazes finally met.

He looked at her like he'd seen one world end and another begin in her eyes, so much wonder held in all that blue for her, bright with the promise of things she could no longer bear not to have.

She glanced away again, feeling him do the same and wondering if he had a smile to hide just as she did.

"This book belonged to my mother."

He held it out to her, and when the weight of what he was offering sunk in she reached to accept it, gingerly outlining the silhouette of a frond that had been etched into its leather cover. It was a journal, she realized, each page crammed to the margins with pen-and-ink drawings of different leaves and fruits and shrubs, agricultural charts and diagrams of life cycles that were signed at the corner with a whorling flourish of Lady Locksley.

"My father was, ah…" Robin stared down at his hands, his expression plainly troubled, and she felt she had to look away for different reasons now. "He was very particular, about the plans he had for his son. And brutally unforgiving when those plans were not realized."

Her fingers stilled in their tracing of an heirloom tomato, itching to be the one who reached out for him this time.

"I told him, once, that my great aspiration was to repurpose his land and actually make it useful. Become a farmer."

She couldn't keep the playful skepticism out of her tone. "That was what you threatened your father with? Growing some banana plants?"

"I liked to get my hands dirty," he shrugged, the roguish ghost of a smile passing across his features when he glanced over at her again, and she was flustered to feel her cheeks heat in response.

"Not much has changed, clearly."

He smirked at her before looking serious again, adding, "Besides, my mother – as you can see – was an avid horticulturalist. It felt a noble enough pursuit at the time, in place of all the political madness that had consumed my father's life."

"And how did she feel about you defying him like that?" Proud, she imagined, feeling wistful at the thought of it as she turned another page. A single feather had been pressed there to bookmark an illustrated section on birds, yellow-throated warblers and robins with full coats of red every shade of the sunset, their wingtips dipped in black.

"I wouldn't know," he told her simply. "She left us, when I was very young."

Regina leaned into him on instinct, but he had opened as much of himself as he was willing to for the time being, and her hand fell back into her lap when he turned his head away for a moment. He was a proud man, hard and impenetrable at times, and she did not think he would take kindly toward her pity. But his impulse had always been to love, she knew, because she'd carried that same weakness in her own heart.

There was a creeping loneliness that came with never having known love well, but there must have been comfort in that too, when that was all he'd ever known.

Perhaps he was just as frightened as she had been to find out what it truly meant to let himself go.

"It was unfair of me to pass judgment on your love for your son." He sounded strained, throat scraped raw with emotion that prevented him from meeting her eye. "It's an admirable thing that you do not have it in your heart to give up on him, no matter how cruel or unmoving or—"

"Murderous?" she supplied, tone wry. In the darkmost corners of her memory, there was a glint of hateful green eyes coming toward her, the flash of steel and then the blur of an arrow that just missed its mark when she screamed for Robin to stop.

"Yes, that as well," he said darkly. "He's still your son, and you're still his mother, and I shouldn't have…" He shook his head, gathering himself for a second before turning back to her, and it was like staring into a moonlit sea, brilliant and blue and powerfully endless. "Please forgive me, for what I said."

Unable to hold herself back any longer, she moved to touch her hand to the side of his face, letting her nails catch against his stubble as she skimmed down his jawline. It tensed beneath her touch as he swallowed, a heavy drop of his Adam's apple before rising again, and she felt more than heard him loosen with a sigh as she scooted closer, knee brushing his thigh.

"What are those?" she gestured toward the wall beside him, an assortment of knickknacks and other small objects lined along the flat stone surface, his rucksack crumpled on the grass below.

"Ah," said Robin, putting on a smile for her as he reached to grab for whatever lay nearest. "This is the very first dagger I owned."

"A letter opener?" she questioned archly.

"Which I stole – naturally – from my father's study when I was about six years old." An artful twist of his fingers and something metal fell into his palm. "This is my mum's hairpin, which I used to break into said study." He paused before picking up the next item in line. "And this is a candle that I nicked from your washroom, while you were busy being in one of your tempers."

"Thief," she accused him, smiling.

"A fact you were well aware of when you met me," he countered, eyes crinkling as she bent forward and blew on the wick, a flicker of light igniting and then flaming to life. He set the candle gently back on the stone before turning to grasp both of her hands in his, a boyish grin transforming the lines of his face in a way that made her heart jump. "Now I believe it's your turn, Your Majesty."

She would not let herself look away from this, close enough now to leap from the edge with him, two broken things that could only fall apart before they fit together at last. "What do you want to know?"

He raised his hand to sweep a lock of her hair aside, eyes steady on hers as she gazed up at him, and he dug his teeth into the start of another smile before giving his answer. "You."