#& i almost tacked on 'the woman in white' because of it but that's too nondescript for our purposes

[emdotcom]

I'd like to clarify that this specific story is common in many cultures, & is less about a specific urban legend, & more of "have you heard any variants/anything similar?"

Remember! If you share, more answers will be there!

[quillerqueen]

Something “Borrowed”

Prompt 117 of @oqpromptparty: Canon divergent oneshot where Robin crashes Regina’s wedding hoping to steal some jewels and fancy plates but ends up stealing her instead.

(Here it is on ff.net for those who prefer it.)

Robin's fairly new to the trade. Granted, he's always had an affinity for stealth as well as the gift of deft fingers and light feet, performing sleights of hand from an early age--but earning a living and a reputation as a thief? That’s a different matter altogether. The more of a name he makes, the more the royal guard will be after him.

Doesn't it make sense, then, to risk one great heist at the very start of his career?

What he lacks in experience he'll make up for in daring, and cunning, and a bit of good fortune. Should Lady Luck favour him, he'll have enough riches by the end of the night to secure an entire future for himself.

And the royals, with their blasted pride under the guise of grand gestures, only have themselves to blame.

Robin pushes through crowds of peasants lining the streets all the way to the cobblestoned square. He slips past children awestruck by the spectacle soon to come; passes merchants basking in this faint reflection of royal riches and courtly ceremony; ducks surly serfs, the poor and the lowly, who've come for an escape into the world of fancy but mostly just to fill an empty belly at the lavish feast ahead. He presses forth, all the way to the podium in front of the church the newlyweds will ascend to graciously greet the commonfolk. He elbows his way to the very front, then shimmies unnoticed along the edge all the way to the back, where a palace opens onto the square.

This is where the highest nobility make the last preparations for the wedding, and where they will share meat and mead afterwards (they're not eating outdoors with the rabble after all, that would be beneath them!).

It's well guarded, with most restricted access, and it takes time and effort to get past the guards but Robin manages to do so unnoticed despite several close calls.

His garb is nondescript enough to blend in with the servants, though obviously not the liveried ones. No matter--he’s going to grab some fancy plates from the vast selections still being carried out of the kitchens, along with some fine cutlery polished to the point of blinding, and he’s going to nick a handful of jewels from the boudoirs scattered along the way. That should have him sorted for a life in the lap of luxury without the confines of senseless regulations and shameless impositions (it’s an empty pursuit, but a purpose nonetheless).

Robin’s satchel is half-stuffed with bounty when a commotion on the upper floor catches his ear.

He really shouldn't stick his nose where it could easily be snipped off--and his head with it. His curiosity tends to land him in all sorts of trouble, and under the circumstances humouring it is outright foolish. Succumbing to it would be utter nonsense.

Steps hurry down the staircase Robin is hunkered under, and whatever it is that sends him on his way up he'll never know, except perhaps the woman's disappearing back, straight and rigid and bejeweled, somehow exudes a cold and calculating air.

The source of the earlier noise is easily discovered when he reaches the top landing--a frustrated growl, an almost howl of a caged animal betrays it.

Except when Robin picks the lock (she's caged indeed, although he's soon to find out she's far from an animal) and slips into the chamber, nothing moves but a heap of delicate, shimmery white fabric piled haphazardly on the chaise by the window. It rises and falls rapidly, in time with the heaving breathing Robin makes out in the silence of the upper floor.

A tiara lies among broken shards of glass, flung and forgotten beneath the gaping golden frame that was once a mirror.

Bloody hell.

It's her. The queen-to-be. The bride-to-be.

And shit--she’s a sobbing mess for about the three eyeblinks it takes her to somehow sense the intruder. She freezes when she does, sits up straight-backed and tense, voice slightly hoarse with tears.

“What do you want, Mother?” she says with a mixture of resignation and defiance. “What more could you possibly want with me? Come to teach me another lesson? Well, I haven't managed to cover up the last one yet.”

Her words are dripping accusation and betrayal, but not a hint of surprise--this sort of treatment at the hands of a parent isn’t new to her. The realisation strums Robin’s heartstrings--a painful chord, for he knows the feeling, has picked the life of a runaway for a reason after all.

The woman’s half-bare shoulders tense further at the lack of response, and she turns slowly around. Robin should have been in cover a long time ago, but he’s not, and nor does he move now. He doesn’t evade her startled look, but spreads his hands palms up to indicate he’s unarmed and poses no danger to her.

She gasps at the sight of a stranger in her chambers, but recovers fast, like one used to having her privacy invaded. In fact, her whole frame seems to relax a notch at the intruder’s identity being revealed as someone other than suspected. As she tilts her head to study him with narrowed eyes, biding her time, the light hits her left cheek.

A purple bruise blooms across it, painful even to the eye.

Robin frowns.

“Your mother did that?”

She laughs humourlessly.

“And left me the tools to clean up the mess.” She gestures towards the vanity with heaps upon heaps of powders, rouge, kohl, and whatnot. “Like a good little girl.”

Robin stares from her to the vanity, then back to her again.

She’s beautiful, even with the nasty swelling under her eye. Would be beyond stunning if not for the sadness residing in her eyes.

“So she’d, what, hit you again?” he marvels, mostly for the benefit of making conversation rather than staring at her dumbly. “Even though there’s already a bruise you're failing to hide?”

“Because there is a bruise I'm failing to hide.” She shrugs, pulling her lips into a miserable shadow of a smile, and crosses her arms on her stomach. “It doesn’t really matter. She’s going to heal it before the wedding night anyway, lest the king notice. Although he might not be in a state to notice much of anything by then if he keeps drinking the way he has been since morning. Celebrating early, mother says; but the servants whisper he’s drowning his sorrows over his dead wife. It’s almost as if the king wanted this marriage as little as I. Except he actually had a choice in the matter.”

Bloody hell, that’s just fucked up. Revolting, and absolutely heart-breaking. Yet such is the world they live in--riddled with a bunch of societal norms Robin detests. For her, he knows, it’s a dead end. You don’t reject a king’s proposal and live--not much longer anyway, and not well.

But King Leopold is beloved of his people, has always enjoyed the reputation of a kind, goodly, just ruler.

Codswallop.

Here the king is, forcing himself upon a young woman (she looks so bloody young, the more so the closer Robin looks, even though clearly her appearance has been styled in a way that makes her look less alarmingly so in comparison to the greybeard thrice her age she’s to take to the altar with) without the power to exercise her will without repercussions. Granted, her mother’s cruel hand might be in it, and this might be more of the norm rather than an isolated incident by Enchanted Forest custom, but that doesn’t make it right. Nor does it absolve the king of responsibility. If Leopold wants to be remembered and revered as a force for good, he should ruddy well roll up his gold-trimmed sleeves and change the outdated, inhumane system, not perpetuate and benefit from it. No, the man is a coward, and a wretch, and possibly a drunkard.

Unfortunately, despicably, his drinking problem will most likely not stop him from bedding his new bride at the wedding night her heartless mother is pimping her for.

Robin must have given voice to that last thought, because her face falls at that, and she seems to shrink and collapse in on herself, sinking back onto the chaise she’d only recently vacated.

“Yes, she’s--she’s warned me not to have high hopes in that area.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” He didn’t mean to be so blunt and vulgar, or to add to her troubles with his ill-advised statements.

“Yes, you did,” she returns simply, looking up from her hands, her gaze clear and direct again. Her face is hard, and her voice. Her heart may fare the same if forced too often to steel itself, the way it has to now. “I’m not stupid, you know, or some--or some naive princess daydreaming about knights in shiny armour or courtly romances. I know what’s expected of me--and every other girl sold by her parents to the highest bidder. And your language doesn’t bother me. Sugarcoating things doesn’t change the facts.”

Robin blinks, then nods. Despite everything, or because of it, she won’t be coddled. He respects that.

“That it doesn’t. Actions do indeed speak louder.”

“Spoken like someone who knows about that.”

Robin gives her a crooked grin that’s bitter at the edges.

“I may have been a noble once, unhappy with my lot and the world at large.”

Her eyes widen as his words sink in.

“So you ran,” she says, bewildered and perhaps a touch envious. It makes him wonder how many times she’s considered doing the same, or if she’s attempted the feat and failed. “You--you actually got away?”

He nods, tacking on a self-deprecating and now I’m a thief in an attempt to chase away the wistfulness clearly creeping upon her.

She only shakes her head, a flicker of a soft, dreamy smile on her lips as she corrects him: “You are free.”

Robin doesn’t stop to think on it really, doesn’t plan his response or even consciously pick the words; it quite simply feels like the logical, natural thing to do as he uncoils the rope across his chest and tells her without ceremony:

“This will hold us both.”

She blinks, smoothing the glittery, cumbersome skirt of her gown.

Truth be told, Robin’s no clue what to expect. He’s a stranger, making an offer clearly attractive to her in a situation that is clearly complicated, probably more so than he even suspects. She’s been dealt a cruel hand before, and kindness, even genuine, brews suspicion in her. This could go either way.

He does, however, realise one thing--he very much wants her to accept.

“I don’t need your charity,” she says at long last, worrying her lip. “What do you want in exchange for smuggling me out of here?”

“Other than a sense of accomplishment from stealing the king’s bride from right under the whole court’s nose?” he ventures to joke, but she only raises an expectant eyebrow at him, so he amends: “My satchel’s half full. Fill the other half, and we’re even. That monster of a necklace alone is worth more than a wagonful of these trinkets.”

Slowly, she turns to her vanity, and holds out the sparkling necklace picked out to complement her wedding gown. She shoves it into the enamelled jewellery box, snaps the lid shut and grabs it along with two more trinkets from her nightstand, then slips it into the waiting satchel.

“The earrings,” she winks, “can feed several villages. A good thief wouldn’t leave them behind.”

Feeding villages isn’t really something he’d considered before...but he has just condemned a broken system as well as a person in power for not re-enacting change, hasn’t he?

She’s grinning at him now, a teasing glint in her eye, and suddenly he’s suckerpunched by this--this feeling.

The echo of steps has them springing apart.

“Quick, hide!” she hisses, absolutely frenetic, and shoves Robin into the wardrobe, slamming the door behind him just as that of the chamber flies open, and the woman Robin knows must be her mother barges in.

“Regina, why aren’t you presentable yet?”

Robin’s fists clench in the stuffy wardrobe, the lavender smell doing precious little to quell his rising anger. How dare she treat her child like that? How dare any parent?

Regina’s response is quiet enough that he has trouble making it out, muffled as all sound is by capes and dresses, but it is firm nevertheless.

“I’m not marrying the king, Mother.”

“Oh, Regina, we’ve been through this. Now stop being ridiculous and get on with it. Can’t you see? The king is an old, frail man. He’s not going to be around forever--and then you’re going to wield all the power. You’re going to be queen. You’re finally going to achieve what you were born to do.”

“I was born to be a tool in your hands?” Regina claps back, voice hitching before it gains volume and conviction. “I don’t think so. I want a life of my own--and I’m taking it.”

Robin isn’t sure what Regina tries to do; he only hears her gasp in defeat. Her mother goads and lectures, and thinks she’s won, and why isn’t Regina saying anything? How does he know if she’s all right?

There’s more speech still, none of the words Regina’s, and Robin’s mind is reeling, adrenaline rising, and he only makes out an ever so smug you’re stuck with me forever, darling, a thinly veiled threat, before someone screams--a frustrated, enraged aaaargh that makes his blood freeze.

He bursts out of the wardrobe, and there’s Regina now, her face contorted in anger and shock as tendrils of energy sizzle at her fingertips and fizzle out just as her mother loses her grip on the frame of a floor-length looking glass and disappears in its unfathomable depths.

Robin knows magic when he sees it; it’s Regina who can’t seem to believe her own eyes as she stares at her hands, then looks wildly around before glancing his way and then down at her feet.

“Still want to rescue the damsel?” she asks in a way that leaves no doubt in his mind as to what answer she expects.

Well, she’s in for a surprise. He doesn’t hate magic. Doesn’t feel any particular way about it, really. But this woman, Regina? He has a whole lot of feelings about her already--more than he’s ever thought himself capable of.

Wherever her path may lead, she deserves the chance to set her own course.

“The only woman I see,” he says, “is no damsel, and she’s just rescued herself from one evil.” A tentative smile pulls at her lips, and Robin chances a sweeping look down her body and a playful:

“Lose the gown--wouldn’t want to attract unwanted attention.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him, her cheeks tinged a light pink.

“Turn around,” she commands, giving him an appraising look of her own before throwing him a teasing, “thief.”

“Robin,” he grins and offers his hand even though protocol dictates he wait for hers. “Robin of Locksley, at your service.”

Regina grabs the rope instead with a smirk, and races to the window.

###

She climbs with surprising skill, runs with more stamina than most would expect from a woman of her station, and keeps throwing him challenging looks full of amusement when she notices his admiration.

Oh, he likes her.

He’ll be sorry to see her go when it’s time to part ways.

That time comes soon enough--too soon--when they’re deep enough in the woods after a swift and heavy rainfall that they won’t be easily tracked by hound or man.

She turns to him then, shifting a bit as she speaks and closing her eyes briefly when she catches herself fidgeting.

“I know every noble in the land,” she says, then rolls her eyes. “Especially eligible bachelors. Useful if you’re looking for places to rob.”

Robin’s stomach somersaults.

“And what would you ask for in return?” He sounds eager even to himself and hopes she won’t notice, or at least be put off by his very obvious interest.

She shrugs, sheepish all of a sudden.

“Teach me how to not get caught.”

Robin chuckles before he can think twice, pausing when she frowns--and no, he’s not mocking her for her lack of survival skills when until recently he’d had precious little of mastery of those himself.

“Very well, milady,” he easily agrees, raising his hands in defense when she tilts her head to question his choice of address. “Well, Your Majesty hardly applies now.”

Her laughter rings out loud, and clear, and unfettered.

It’s music to his ears.

“Good riddance,” she grins. “I prefer Regina anyway.”

“Well, Regina,” Robin smirks back at her, “it seems we’ve each got ourselves a partner.”