#bwib

[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

9 - The She - Doctor 

When Regina gets her first phone call, she’s in the new shower that’s been installed a week ago.

For the kids, it has been a wonderful day, the day of the shower. They have opened their mouths in astonishment, entranced by this new technological feature. It has hit her, how these children can be in awe when put in front of something new, undiscovered, whereas Regina was feeling… relieved. She has waited to be alone to try it, and has welcomed the familiar spray of water with a content sigh. She has missed it, the feeling of almost-hot water like a cascade, and knowing she won’t have to endure baths in the tub anymore.

So today she has indulged in another shower, and it’s too good, she’s actually dreading the moment she’ll have to leave. And she hears little Anya’s voice from outside, picking up the telephone in Robin’s study and answering, just like they’ve all been instructed to do, “Hello, this is Sherwood, with whom do you want to speak?”

She has just relaxed back against the cold tiles of the shower when she hears, Miss Reginaaa, it’s for you!

Anya says, Wait a moment, I’ll go and find her! and she rushes down the corridor towards the bathroom. Regina has soap all over her hair, and tells her, “Darling, what is it?”

“Telephone for you! It’s a lady from the hospital,” she answers from behind the door.

Her heart skips a beat, and she shuts the water faucet to hear better. “The hospital?”

But Anya has already gone to retrieve the phone. She sighs, worry coursing through her veins, because Robin is somewhere with a friend today, and what if something happened? But it’s weird, they wouldn’t have asked for her…

“Hello?” she answers a moment later. Her skin is dripping drops of water all over the floor, and she tries to adjust the towel around her body.

“Regina? This is Belle French from the Angels Hospital – I was the nurse who took care of – ”

“ – my arm, yes, I know,” she says. “Is something wrong? What’s happened?”

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Dawn

Back Where I Belong sneak peek, set somewhere in the future. Robin’s POV. 

When he comes home the shadows of dawn are long and there still are ashes dancing mid-air. He often finds himself praying, during the night, as if his thoughts could somehow veer the bombs away.

Regina is sleeping on the couch downstairs, when he enters. His mouth already opens to reprimand her about not going to the bunker, but she looks so adorable in her sleep, he takes a moment to look at her. Her hand is on her stomach, lips slightly parted, a corner of the blanket dangling from her leg. His fingers brush on her cheek.

She hums, opens slowly her eyes as she takes him in.

“Hey there.”

“Mm-morning,” she answers, presses her cheek against his hand. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, lovely,” he says, leaning down towards her.

It’s like he’s in a dream – the dull light of sunrise and the soft glow of Regina’s smile. It’s in painful contrast with his uniform, to the wind outside, still blowing the ashes around. He gently touches her forehead with his, whispers, How are you?, and she answers that he worries too much. 

If only he could forget about the world, for just an instant, this would be it.

[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

8 - Rainy Days 

June comes with a thunderstorm.

King George VI and his wife – the queen consort Elizabeth – are in the United States, dining with president Roosevelt.

But in London, it rains  –  the weather has been unusually warm, lately, but even this unexpected heat can’t stop an occasional storm. Regina never liked them. She knows, many people love to curl up under blankets and listen to the rain, but honestly, when you’re alone for the most of the year, you don’t find that perspective fascinating. It’s only a reminder of what you’re missing.

It’s a time when she thinks of her husband more than usual. What he’s doing, if he has stopped looking for her, if he has left on a mission. Maybe he’s just there, in Asia, or Africa, moaning between some exotic beauty’s arms. Maybe he’s dead.

Maybe she is a widow.

She hasn’t returned to Tottenham Court Road. Months have passed now, all six of them, and she is more and more resigned: she has to stay, and she will most likely die here once the war starts. But honestly, now Daniel and her past life feel like a dream. Her job, Kathryn, Mother and all the 21st century comforts, TV series, terroristic attacks and the like. She will never Skype call someone again, she won’t even use a TV for a long time, or a dishwasher, she won’t watch Orphan Black, or even a Hunger Games movie.

Honestly, that will be the future, but it’s her past now, a past she has almost said goodbye to. It’s like she’s in Wonderland, and the real world is just too fake and painful to think about. This world, here, has been kind and quiet so far – a part from a few bumps on the road, and she knows it won’t last much now.

It’s three in the morning and she’s watching out the window, hearing the storm without seeing it, and she thinks of silly things like these, when someone knocks at her door.

When she opens, she meets quite the unexpected sight.

“Roland?”  

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

7 - Adagio 

I used to fight with Daniel. Many times. Often. I’m stubborn, I admit it, and he was always calm and poised. So there were times when he came back from a mission, exhausted and dirty, feeling like his soul was rotten to the core. There were times when I couldn’t save a life, and I ended up throwing up my lunch and seeing eyes, so many eyes – eyes of the people who’d lost their beloved, I had to tell them, and it was nightmares and insomnia. And I loved my job, I really did. But people feel entitled to living, these days. Those days.

It was not my reality anymore. Mine, was Mrs. Lucas talking of her three brothers, dead in the first world war, and saying it could have been worse.

Daniel was taking lives for a living. I was saving them.

And yet I felt like we were both in the wrong place.

..::..

“Granny?”

They’re in the kitchen, just her, Mrs. Lucas and Ruby, and the two women are sewing as Regina peels apples to make a pie. The children have just gone to bed, but curfew doesn’t apply yet, so she’s grateful for all the chances she has to normalcy.

“Yes?” Mrs. Lucas says absentmindedly, holding a yarn between her teeth.

“How did Robin’s wife die?”

Mrs. Lucas stops and glances at Ruby, her eyes softening, and she lowers her hands to her lap. “I…” she gulps down, Regina has never seen her so distressed in the three months she’s been here. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell you.”

Ruby rolls her eyes, with a sparkle of that teenager rebellion she sometimes has. “I can’t just waltz down there and ask him, right?”

“I suppose you can’t,” Mrs. Lucas sighs. “Well then… you have to know – both of you, Regina, if you’re staying here you might as well know – that Robin was once very different.”

Regina wants, and desperately so, to ask what she means, but Ruby beats her to it. “In what sense?” 

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

6 - Castle of Glass

Regina stirs in her bed, her arms stretching up in a lazy move. She basks in the realization that this will be the day when she finally gets rid of the cast of her arm, and she can start plotting her escape from the Orphanage.

One month.

One month has passed since she’s here. The beaming smile of her first moments of wake falters into something resembling a grimace.

Daniel.

She thinks of him every day. If time has passed there, he must have already spent a month searching for her. She can almost picture him – walking into Scotland Yard, with that damned cigarette between his lips. He would press the butt of the cigarette into the ashtray, reaching automatically for another one as he waits for the Detective to receive him. Nervous. Worried. Heartbroken.

Regina bites her lower lip and turns on her pillow. She’s here since one month, and Daniel must think she’s hurt, or she’s been kidnapped, or – that she has run away, with someone else.

How many times she’s thought that of him. How many nights she has spent, alone in her bed in America, while he was away. Imagining his body lying next to a woman’s – warm, inviting, new, exotic, everything she was not.

He would get offended, when she expressed her worries. Instead of soothing them, he’d get angry – as if I could betray you, Regina, how silly. But then they’d always make peace, satisfied smiles between bed sheets. And she has willed herself to ignore her fears.

Now, he – he has stayed a month without her, unless times has moved differently there, and he wonders why she’s not coming back. Because a kidnapper would have requested for money, by now. She has to have left him.

That New Year’s Eve… when he has entered the restaurant and hasn’t found her. She blinks, letting a lonely  tear fall, and pushes away the covers. No more whining.  

It’s time to go home.

Maybe.

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

5 - Mimosa

I’ve always thought of myself as a smart person. No nonsense, no flurry dreams and inconsistent stupid promises – it was always me, Daniel, and my career. All my life looked like an already drawn path, of which I could already foresee the shape – the beginning, the middle, the ending – as I marched down the street of the years to come, without turning back, without hesitation or fear – or regrets – on and on, straight ahead…

Now, it was a spiral, uncontrollable, making me swirl and twist and turn.

One would think that going back in time would guarantee you some kind of security – after all, you already know what’s going to happen, more or less – but, truthfully, the future had never seemed so scary.

.::.

She’s in her room since two days, and she’s bored.

She didn’t expect to be bored – she expected to be angry, or depressed, or furious – and she’s been furious, but rage consumed her. Rage makes you tired. So she was furious, but it has lasted for some hours after the door locked.

She’s bored, because adrenaline burned all the fear she was feeling. It has been a rough start, in her room. She has felt fearful, immensely angry and tired all together. In the end, she has collapsed on the bed, wetting the pillow with fat tears, and she has cried herself to sleep.

There always is food, waiting for her. She has discovered a useful little trick she has only seen in movies once or twice – a dumbwaiter, that weird small lift nestled in the wall.

And she has books, but she is not in the mood. Too busy reflecting upon her miseries – whining, her mother would say – her mind will not let her be, or forget her troubles for a little while. So she lies in her bed all day, getting up to use the toilet or to eat, and she thinks.

What will be the first thing she’ll do after getting out of here, for example.

Find a way to go home.

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

4 - Journey to the Past 

“Are you alright?”

Robin has apparently decided to break the silent treatment he’s reserving her – god knows why – and it’s the worst moment possible. Why does he always have to be there while her world crumbles around her?

“Yes,” she cuts short. She’s shocked, and now she believes, now she fully believes she’s away from home, separated from her husband by a gap of… 78 years – 78 years, Jesus Christ, not even Mother is born yet – and it’s February and the United Kingdom is going to declare war in September…

“Your hand is trembling,” he observes, and she looks down. Her hand has tightened around the newspaper as if it’s the only thing anchoring her to life.

“I’m fine,” she mutters through her teeth. Shit, shit, shit. She needs to get a grip, or he’ll definitely understand something is wrong.

“If you say so,” he says, but she still feels his puzzled gaze upon her. He gets up, eventually, and talks quickly with Mrs. Lucas – something about him going to MadameDe Beaufort’s house to talk about the children, and find her new clothes, for god’s sake, you shouldn’t have.

When he leaves, Regina is still looking at the page, those numbers in black ink are staring at her, mocking her, and Mrs. Lucas shakes her from her fantasies with a light touch of her forearm. “Come on, girl, we’ve got work to do.” 

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[dee-thequeenbee]

Back Where I Belong (OQ AU)

3 - Down The Rabbit Hole

I’ve never loved history too much, at school. I mean, I enjoyed studying it – it was a welcomed break from literature and that kind of romantic-and-nebulous stuff, but my heart belonged to the sciences. Thankfully, I thought, I’ve always had a pretty good memory when it comes to the dates. (You have to have a good memory, with all the equations you learn in math and physics, and I think dates are the one and only rational grasp you have, while studying history.)

But I was far, far away from the vast and admirable knowledge my professor had, the kind of knowledge born out of curiosity.

And I really wished to have studied history a bit more.

Because in that moment, it was a matter of life. Of survival.

.::.

“W-what?”

The words come out of her mouth like a choked sob.

The man – Robin – stares at her, and she a million thoughts rush through her mind. This is not the right time to betray herself – even in the foggy aftermath of her head injury, one thing is particularly clear: she has to act.

She clears her throat, the coughing scratches painfully her insides. “I, ahem, I mean, what do you mean?”

He stays silent. She knows he’s trying to read her, and it’s dangerous. The number 1939 is flashing in her brain, and her breath falls short, she doesn’t feel able to concentrate on anything else. Especially not on an interrogatory.

Oh my god. This can’t be.

She has to be dreaming.

But the pain – the pain is so very real, and so is the man.

“I mean,” he finally speaks, “I mean you’ve slept three days, as I told you at least twice – and that’s quite common, considering the fair share of traumas you endured.”

Oh you can bet, she thinks.

Then, she tries to shift the subject. Deflects it to a safer ground, a ground where they can play even. “How come you’re not injured? You were there with me.”

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