Chapter Text
Something’s missing.
Alright, so the world’s going to shit, and it’s one of these overcast days in early summer that feel like late autumn because it’s cold and grey and windy, so he may not be in the best mood to draw this kind of conclusion. But, standing on the pavement just outside Regent’s Park, folding his pocket umbrella and staring at a spot on the pavement that may once have been a piece of chewing gum, Robin has the sharply distinct feeling that something is missing.
He doesn’t know what it is, though. Bit of a hassle if he wants to find it. Keys, wallet, inhaler, phone, earpieces, they’re all there. And it’s not something personal, it’s something larger, something affecting everything around him, and he hasn’t hat that feeling since he was a teenager and realised that his father made a living winning court cases for the worst capitalists in the city – and even then, it wasn’t so clear.
Can everyone feel it?, he wonders, looking around. The people walking past him look busy and harried, not stopping to look left and right, but that’s nothing new, this is London, after all.
To Robin, there’s a pull.
He shoves the umbrella into his bag and tugs at the brim of his hat to hide his face. Somehow, he feels like he must be imperceptible now. That’s okay. He can do that.
He makes a sudden turn to the right. It’s only three minutes on the Tube from Baker Street to Paddington Station.
It’s still daylight when he steps off the regional train a few hours later, but twilight tints the shadows at the small platform in the middle of nowhere already. His feet find the little house at the end of the hedge-lined lane on their own, and he slips between the taller shrubs surrounding the garden with the practiced ease of his younger self.
(Were his mother here, she would ask questions, and even though she now lives further near the coast, he doesn’t want to have that feeling of having to answer, so he doesn’t take the route through the house. He doesn’t have the keys on him, anyway.)
The grass grows tall here, nearly reaching his hip. He wonders if one of the neighbours might lend him a lawn mower, should he ever plan to spend a few days here, taking time off uni. The trees bear the promise of fruit already, and roses and ivy and honeysuckle have taken over many of the older branches, as the salmon pink geraniums have done with the window boxes. His mother’s sage and rosemary plants have evolved into entire shrubs, and along the shady edge of the hedges, mint creeps across the ground with the inevitability of a spring tide.
Robin blinks.
The gate is there.
It’s there. He can see it with his own two eyes, old and weathered and covered in lichen. As a child, Robin was confused why their garden had no gate to the street, but one towards the forest on the other side, and then he was more confused when his mother very firmly insisted the garden had no gate at all.
But Robin had seen it!
Except, the next time he looked, there was no gate.
Sometimes, when he spent a lot of time in the garden unsupervised, he thought he could see it from the corner of his eye. But when he turned his head, it wasn’t there.
Now, though. Now it is there. No doubt about it.
Like a boat in a maelstrom, Robin is drawn to the gate by that pull. The old metal knob feels warm under his hands, though that may be due to the sun shining on it all day.
The gate creaks softly when it swings open and reveals the grassy path into the wild.
“Thank you”, Robin mutters as he steps through. He doesn’t know why, but it feels appropriate, and the mild evening wind rustles his hair as if to say, You’re welcome.