Ooh how about writing that OQ flashback we were speculating about? The EQ goes out in a moment of uncertainty about her life/vendetta and meets a thief in the town.
This one got crazy out of hand. And the funny thing is that if I cleaned this up for a one-shot fic, I’d need to flush and flesh some things out. But well, here.
This is definitely AU. When The EQ (post the one we met in 2x20) meets Robin (pre-Marian and pre Robin Hood). It’s its own crazy little world. Enjoy!
"Your Majesty," Claude calls out, his boots clicking against the polished marble leading to her throne. "Shall we start? The hallway is quite full."
Regina scowls. “Can’t I just say no to everyone?”
"If Her Majesty would like to do so, I can relay that message," Claude answers and perhaps if he wasn’t grinning like he’d actually enjoy doing that, she might have truly considered it, but it’s bad enough that the entire kingdom despises her; it probably wouldn’t do to openly neglect them.
"No, send them in. One at a time," she sighs.
Claude inclines his head and steps away.
*** ***
She nearly lights her bed on fire when she gets back to her room, anger and frustration rolling off of her. The peasants had been spoiled under Leopold’s rule, provided everything that they could ever desire without care given to the damage that such bought devotion might do to the royal treasure. After his death, she’d discovered the books to be in disarray, the kingdom mere months away from being forced to ask for financial help.
Things are better now.
And she is hated.
Not just for that, if Regina is fair, but the fact that she’s curbed back on many of the “social programs” that had allowed healthy adults to attend to their pleasures instead of their families has angered many. Today had been nothing but these peasants bitching and griping (“respectfully”, of course, being that most quite fear her) and demanding the luxuries of the past.
It’s time they realize that those luxuries aren’t coming back.
Leopold is dead and eventually, Snow White will be as well.
These fools are all going to have to understand that the past is the past.
She is the Queen now.
She is their…enemy.
They despise her, loathe her and there’s just no way around that truth.
Regina sighs and turns towards her mirror, staring into it and seeing the beautiful face of a young woman who should be living a perfect life.
But Daniel is dead and she can feel black magic slithering through her.
Snow is alive and every morning she thinks of a quiet live she’ll never have.
"You look pensive, My Queen," the Genie says, his voice bubbling with something that sounds like spiteful glee. "Did the peasants upset you."
She glares at him. “Don’t you have something more useful to offer me?”
"Such as Snow White’s head? I’m afraid I haven’t located it tonight."
"Then go away."
"As always, Your Majesty’s wishes are my command."
He’s a mocking son of a bitch and he’s doing it now.
But she’s tired and worn down and so she simply says, “If only.”
He’s inside of the mirror but somehow still manages to tilt his head in curiosity. “And if I was able to still grant wishes, what would you ask for?”
She looks up at him and thinks that she could lie to him, but this is a man who has killed for and he has seen her at her violent worse. He knows the darkness that is inside of her and she thinks he is obsessed with her because of this wickedness, drawn to her because he thinks he sees a kindred spirit in her; it’s a lie and they’re nothing alike, but the Genie just might be the one creature alive who is even less stable than she is.
"I would want to be someone different," she says plainly, quietly.
"Would it matter? You can disguise yourself as you have before, but you will always be who you are." He’s smiling when he says this and it’s a combination of taunting her and his rather sick fixation on the worst of her.
"So I’ve been told." She waves her hand. "You’re dismissed."
Another smile, this one far more fake and she thinks that he might be a terrible danger to her should he ever escape this mirror. But then the smoke is swirling and he’s gone and she’s standing all alone in her dark bedroom.
Thinking and still staring at the beautiful monster in the mirror.
"Always be who you are," Regina murmurs.
It’s the truth, she thinks.
But she never was really good at accepting the truth.
She thinks about the trick Rumple had shown her, the one she’d worked so hard to learn after the events that had nearly gotten her executed by her own guards and left her at the mercy of Snow White. She’s learned how to change herself.
At least on the outside.
Perhaps, Regina thinks, if she can get someone else to see her as more than the Evil Queen, maybe she can help herself to see more as well.
*** ***
She changes herself to look like a pretty young girl with dark hair and plain brown eyes. A simple enough looking girl. She dresses like the villagers in a hooded cloak and thick boots and then makes her way into the town.
She just wants one night where she’s not the Queen, evil or not.
Just one night when she can be someone else besides who she is.
Someone normal.
Perhaps even forgotten.
Certainly not feared or hated.
That’s all she wants.
*** ***
Her father loves his ales. His father before him had as well.
Which is probably how the family had ended up nobles instead of royalty.
She thinks of her father now as she reaches the little pub at the end of the alley. He’s likely sitting in his room back at the castle, reading a book and pretending like the world around him hasn’t gone completely mad. He’s likely pretending like his daughter isn’t the one helping along the madness.
She loves her father dearly, but she sees the way he looks at her at times.
Like she’s already been lost.
Like she can’t be saved.
He’s probably right.
But she thinks that maybe fathers shouldn’t ever think that.
She lets out a small groan of disgust at herself and tells herself that she needs to push such thoughts away. For tonight, she is not the Queen.
For tonight, she is just a simple and plain girl.
*** ***
The bartender looks at her curiously and asks her where her husband is.
Like she needs permission to drink.
She tells him that she has no husband and she’s fresh back from the war.
And he sighs, looks at her again and then says, “Don’t break anything.”
Because apparently the women who’d gone to war - the ogre infestation across the east had become so extreme that anyone capable of fighting had been allowed to sign up and then forced to join when that hadn’t provided enough children to die - had come back worse than the men.
Rough, damaged and unable to be easily married off.
But this identification gives her protection right now, it gives her cover.
Until the man at her left says in an accented tone, “You were in the war?”
She turns to face him, taking in his handsome face. He’s unshaven and just barely groomed, his hair messy and his blue eyes a bit soft and unsteady.
"I was," she answers.
"South or North shore?" he asks.
It’s a test, of course, and though her lands hadn’t been involved in the war - not directly anyway - she’d been kept apprised on the battlefronts and knows which ones had been the bloodiest. “Well the south got wiped out in three days,” she responds. “And we gave most of the north to them.”
He tilts his head in acknowledgement of this.
"I was station on Rosewood."
"Ah. Sebastian Creek."
"I heard the losses there were many," Regina notes, gazing at his face once again. He’s unscarred on the face, but a look down at his hands and she sees dozens of small scars on his fingers. It’s the telltale sign of someone who had been forced to fight with the worst constructed weapons that an army could ever create for its men to fight with. "You were an archer?"
"Indeed," he says. He holds up his hands and shows off the scars - most of them fading - a bit more clearly to her. "But these came from the first weeks. I’m quite a bit better now." Then, with a pleasant smile. "Robin."
She notices that he doesn’t provide his surname or his land name.
It’s probably the alcohol on his breath and the disarray in his appearance.
“Wilma.” Sure, she’d used that name the last time that she’d been in disguise but only Snow (and Rumple, bastard that he is) had known about it and she looks quite different now and really, names just aren’t her thing.
Clearly, though, he’s unimpressed by the name. But then he shrugs.
"It’s a pleasure to meet you," he says as the bartender places a glass of rather light looking ale on the counter. "A toast to our war days, perhaps?"
"Very well," Regina agrees. Then, because she’s curious about this man, "But they were hardly what I would call days worth…toasting over."
"Quite right," Robin concurs. "Unless you’re a fan of blood and despair."
"No," she says quietly, thinking about a village full of dead bodies and the way that Snow had looked at her after they’d stumbled across it.
Robin lifts his mug. “To those who managed to benefit from the wars and the deaths of thousands of children. May they all rot in a special hell.”
His anger is fairly rolling off of him. Rage and impotent helpless fury.
She knows the feeling well.
She taps his glass with her own and then takes a sip.
His eyebrow lifts. “Not much of a drinker?”
"This ale is…pathetic," she offers.
"Then perhaps we should find something stronger." He lifts his hand to the bartender and she thinks to stop him, but knows that doing so might expose her and blow her cover. She’d come to him as a fellow soldier - someone who understands the pain that he’s clearly in - and right now what he wants is someone to share his hurt with. She envies Robin the ability to do this without fear of looking weak or becoming vulnerable.
The bartender brings over two more mugs, the ale within them darker. He eyes them both suspiciously, but after Robin drops several coins down, he walks again after once more sternly warning them not to break anything.
"Isn’t that the best part of this all?" Robin asks. "We go to far to protect everyone…well, some of us did. I was sent to war to become a hero so that my father could trade on my name. Most people, though, they went to save their families and we come back to find that everyone is afraid of us now."
"Because we learned to kill," she says.
"Yes." He looks at her. Then down at her hands and then back at his which still show the fading scars of his archery training. "What did you do?"
Her mind whirls and she thinks fast. While there had been many women on the front, most of those who had actually been where the fighting was had come back maimed. This image she’s wearing now is unblemished.
"I was a healer," Regina says, thinking of the herbs and potions that Rumple has shown her. He hasn’t provided her much training on the healing arts - only what she must know to understand the differences between white and black magic. "Or at least, I was in theory. I’m not sure I made much difference." He nods his head at that and she feels a surge of disgust with herself because he’s opening his true self up to her and she’s a lie.
Still just a lie.
"None of us did," Robin answers and then finishes the ale. "So, Wilma, now that you’re home, what is your life now? Did you get everything you were promised by the rich spoiled kings and queen who sent us to war, watching from their polished stone fortresses as the peasants bled out for them?"
"You just might hate royalty more than I do," she murmurs and thinks that he doesn’t know just how self-referential a statement that truly is for her.
"My father wanted me to marry into a chance for a throne," he says.
"And now?"
"Now we don’t speak," he says simply and starts on another ale.
She nods. She thinks to argue with him - to defend her own leadership - but then realizes that this is a man who is so lost in his guilt and his grief and his need to make someone - anyone - pay for what’s been done.
The reality is, he’s more right than wrong.
Leopold hadn’t sent his people off to war, but he had sent them to other battles and children had been lost all so that the kingdom could survive another day. He’d spoiled his peasants to buy their love and then killed their children to pay for that love. At least the other kings had been more honest.
She finds herself lifting up her own mug.
And trying not to think about the children that she’s sent to battle.
"But enough of this," he says. "They’re about to stop serving us here, and I have a friends at a bar a bit down the road. Perhaps you would join me?"
"I would," she agrees and thinks that she shouldn’t.
Because this man is going nowhere fast.
He’s angry and dying inside a little bit more with every step.
He’ll end up a petty criminal swinging at the end of a noose within months.
And still she rises up with him.
Because she’s nothing but a lie, but he’s honest.
He’s real even in his rage.
She leaves with him.
*** ***
He’s kissing her.
She has no idea how it starts but it does and they’re against a stone wall.
This absolutely should not be happening.
She’s no longer married, but she’s still the Queen.
The Evil Queen.
Who doesn’t make out with drunken disgraced soldiers in a dirty alley.
But she is.
His kisses are sloppy and desperate.
And so passionate and needy.
They’re like oxygen.
She inhales him, clutches at him.
His hand slides beneath her cloak and she almost laughs because were she dressed as she normally is, he’d find such a thing far more difficult.
Impossible.
But this is possible and real and he’s nipping her jaw and then her lips and when he kisses her again, it’s like she’s the only thing that matters.
Like she’s oxygen for him as well.
It’s enough to make her head swim.
His hand grazes her breast and she has a stray thought about how bold and audacious he is to be touching a queen like this but then he’s flicking this thumb over her nipple and she gasping and dropping her head back.
He says her name.
Wilma.
It startles her.
And then she hears his name.
But not from her.
"Oi, Robin!"
She pushes him away from her and he at least has the decency to look a bit horrified at what’s happened, ashamed and embarrassed. He apologizes under his breath to her and then they both turn to face a brawny big man as he approaches, flanked by several other dirty men, all of them drunk.
"John," Robin greets. Then nods to Regina. "Wilma. Uh, Rosewood."
John lifts an eyebrow. “Wasn’t aware there were any women over there.”
"She was a healer."
"Ah."
"If you’re done with her," one of the other men says after looking her over a bit lecherously. "Then we got something far more fun to do than her."
"Minds your manners," Robin states, anger matching the slur in his voice.
"He means no disrespect to her, Robin, but we got the word we were looking for," John says. And then looks suspiciously at Regina once again.
It’s quite clear that these men are up to no good.
Robin sighs. “Then I suppose we’d best be getting on with it.” He looks over at Regina. “It was an honor to meet you, m’lady.”
"I can help," she says suddenly. And it’s utter madness.
Because she has no powers like this.
And these men are trying to get themselves killed.
"No, Robin," John says.
"She’s one of us," Robin replies.
"She’s the bitch you were about to -"
The man doesn’t finish his sentence, Robin’s hand around his throat.
He’s coughing out an apology a second later and then Regina is in.
Or at least Wilma is.
She thinks that if she’s going to tell a lie, at least it’s a hell of a whopper.
*** ***
What they’re up to is robbing one of George’s coaches.
Which as the Queen of the neighboring land, she’s outraged at.
But George is a prick and if this gives him heartburn, well then good.
Still, when the men with Robin start on about how this is putting the screws to the power all on behalf of the little man, she finds herself laughing.
And tells them haughtily, “At least be honest; this is all about you.”
"And what if it is?" the one who’d called her a bitch says. She thinks that one day she might enjoy watching him dangle from the end of the rope.
She shrugs. “At least be honest about it.”
A moment later, George’s coach comes into view and the conversation is over, but when she looks back at Robin, she thinks she seems him watching her, a strangely haunted unsettled look in his beautiful blue eyes.
The hijacking goes without a glitch and that’s mostly because George is an arrogant bastard and no one else has ever dared to rob from him before.
These fools would have all been killed had they tried to take from her.
But they’re alive to rob another day and they’ll die another die as well.
*** ***
She knows that she should be getting back to the castle; this adventure is over and she’ll be missed soon enough (she has no friends back there, but all eyes are constantly on her), but still she can’t stop herself from letting Robin kiss her when he does. She can’t stop herself from letting him pull her down to the sheets atop him. This is wrong and such a terrible lie.
He thinks that they’re alike.
The only thing they have in common is self-loathing and despair.
But he kisses her like he knows her, like he understands her.
So she kisses him back like maybe he’s just a little bit of truth.
Until she sees the tattoo on his forearm.
And knows that the only truth she’ll ever know is that everything is a lie.
He calls after her as she rushes from the room, asks her to stop.
She’s gone when he steps outside, wearing only his pants.
*** ***
She’s brooding when the Genie greets her in the morning.
"How as your night, Your Majesty?"
She doesn’t reply.
"I understand you met our newest hero."
She rolls her eyes and looks up at him. “What are you talking about?”
"Robin Hood."
"What?"
He smirks and then the green vanishes and suddenly she’s seeing an image of a town just outside of the walls of George’s castle. What she sees is from the angle of a mirror inside the only high-end shop that there is.
But it’s not the shop that catches her eyes.
It’s the hooded man standing on the roof of the shop across from that one, three men at his side, one of them quite large and burly .
All of them dumping bags and bags of gold coins out onto the streets.
The hooded man, she notes, has a bow in his hands.
And he’s shouting, “Until the rich provide for the poor, we will take upon on ourselves to protect our people by taking from the rich and give to the poor!” He then points towards the castle walls and even though he’s hooded and the majority of his face is his hidden away, he’s clearly smiling when he says in that familiar accent, “Courtesy of King George.”
A cheer goes up from the crowd.
"Congratulations, Your Majesty," the Genie says with a wide smile as he reappears. "You have created your own enemy once again."
Regina groans and waves him away.
And then thinks that the next time the peasants come to demand some of what they’d once had, maybe she’ll see what she can do to satisfy them.
They’ll never love her.
She’ll never be Leopold or Snow White.
But she doesn’t need Robin Hood becoming her enemy.
She realizes with more than a bit of annoyance - her mind for a moment dwelling on the desperate way that he’d kissed her, like she’d been his lifeline to sanity and to the belief that there might be something better - that she doesn’t want the man with the tattoo (the man who that idiot fairy had laughably prophesied to be her soulmate) as an enemy, either.
And well, at least that’s a speck of truth in the lie that is her life.
-Fin
