Squirrel soup for the soul [fic]
Title: Squirrel soup for the soul
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating: G
Word Count: 2246
Summary: Will comes to a realisation.
Warnings: Spoilers for The Angel of Death. Contains angst and shirtless Will.
Three days later it hits him. They’ve said goodbye to Luke, back off to Scarborough (quite determined to go on his own, despite Will’s many insistences that he wouldn’t mind visiting their aunt and explaining to her exactly what happened) and he’s gone down to the pool to bathe.
He’s just about to splash his face with the water cupped in his hands and, quite by accident, he looks down at his reflection in the pool. And he sees himself, standing upside down in water up to his knees peering back up at himself. Sees his face, in lifeless greys on the rippling deep green water, with his father’s nose and his mother’s eyes, and the weight of what he almost - of what he did, and what nearly happened because of it hits him. Hits him, knocks him off balance and leaves some distant part of him feeling grateful it didn’t crush him, though there’s a sudden and distressing absence of air in his lungs.
His fingers shake apart and the water spills out in tiny violent splashes into the pool. He turns them over and stares at them. He was nearly a murderer. And it wouldn’t have just been the Sherriff and the poisoner, out of his mind with obsessive hatred. It would have been… God, it would have been all of Nottingham. His hands rise to cradle his head, full of a vicious buzzing, as he thinks of all those people, all those people who smile at him when they see him on the street, tell him hello and ask him how he is when he comes to them for information, how some break off a chunk of bread - these people are starving - and give it to him because they think he looks a bit thin.
He drags his hands over his eyes, suddenly hot and prickly as terrible realisation descends upon him and he can’t stop himself thinking of Locksley. The whole Shire, Robin had said. Locksley, Nottingham, Clun… it all spirals away from him for a moment, letting its enormity be revealed, and Will almost laughs at how ridiculous it all is, how he in his overwhelming insignificance could have come so close. Those moments he’d been in there, walking out in carefully measured steps, back ramrod straight, furiously trying not to give anything away, not one hint, he’d been so wholly overcome he almost hadn’t been able to see where he was stepping. Somewhere, tangled up in the disgusted grief at hearing the Sherriff say his Dad’s name and the relief that he hadn’t been caught, there had been a panicked regret. Over just those two people. Those two people he hated. All those people…
It’s only with the shock of cool water splashing against his chest that he realises he’s crouching. His trousers are soaked through but after a moment or two he doesn’t care. He sat like this a lot when he was a boy, hiding around the back of the house, curled up with his hands over his head, like no one would be able to see him. His Dad had always laughed, looking back on it. Until his Mum died. Then he got too good at hiding it. Had to, really. Dad had his arms full with Luke and there was no one else. He remembers how the three of them helped to make her coffin, how he’d kicked up a fuss, sure that Luke would ruin it somehow.
His Dad wouldn’t get one. They didn’t even know what had happened to his body. An “insignificant”.
Just like Tom.
Maybe even less than Tom. Tom had had things they collected for Allan. Will and Luke didn’t even have that.
The buzzing in his head is getting louder and his nose is starting to run.
“Will?”
Djaq. Shit.
He ducks his head under quickly, and resurfaces only to snatch a few more fistfuls to splash his face with. Enough water and she won’t notice. Hopefully.
He climbs out quickly, wincing a little at the way his trousers are clinging to his skin, and busies himself with trying to get his shirt back on.
Djaq appears out of the trees a moment later. “There you are. Robin wants to go over the plans for the raid.”
Will nods and turns away from her. Djaq sees too much.
He can hear the pause. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he says roughly, clambering out of the pool, keeping turned away from her. The tears still on his face feel hot and ugly and obvious, like Djaq’s somehow going to be able to look at him and tell them apart from the droplets of water. He swipes a hand across his face and starts walking away when he feels her coming closer.
“Will, hold on.” There’s a hand reaching for his arm and he shakes it off each time she tries. If he stops she’ll see him, she can’t see him like this -
Despite his best efforts to shake her away and walk faster so she can’t keep up she manages to grab hold of him.
“Will, what’s wrong?”
He risks looking at her. And the honest concern and even understanding in her face undoes something in him. He start to shakes again and this time it’s all the harder to stop when he realises how ridiculous he must look, his shirt hanging half on half off, his trousers soaked through and his hair plastered to his head. Like some stupid kid curled round the back of the house thinking he was being so damned clever, managing to hide from everyone else.
He suddenly grabs her and pulls her into a tight, bone-crushing hug, contempt of his own childish behaviour not enough to keep him from burying his face in her shoulder.
She’s still for a moment, no doubt from shock, but then wraps an arm around him and rubs his back and God, he doesn’t deserve this.
He tries to speak but all that comes out are a few wet, weak miserable sounds. He pulls away, though Djaq is apparently reluctant to let him go, and manages to speak.
“I am so sorry.”
The words are small and quiet, straining over the sobs that follow after. Worse still, Djaq doesn’t seem to understand. “What? Why are you apologising? Your father has died, you mustn’t be ashamed of feeling sad -”
She doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t have the words or voice to explain to her and so just hugs her again, tears and snot soaking into the shoulder of her shirt. And some small and distant part of him, unmoved by the terrible epiphanies raining down on him, suggests he should be a lot more bothered about the fact that the front of Djaq’s shirt is now rather wet.
“Hello there, what’s goin’ on here, then?”
And a second later Will’s hugging Allan, telling him with even more conviction how sorry he is.
Allan will understand. Allan has to. They’re not as close as they used to be, back before they tried to leave for Scarborough (and Will wonders now if Allan blames him for making him stay, if he’s wishing he’d gone and left them and let Will go back on his own); nowadays he just wanders away on his own, not waiting for Will like he used to. But he knows Will. He’ll understand.
Allan doesn’t get it either. He just stands there when Will pulls back, looking confused and strangely guilty. He pats him awkwardly on the arm and allows Djaq, who’s taken hold of Will’s other arm again, to lead him away, and follows them as they make their way back to camp.
He’s sat by the fire and someone lays a blanket on his shoulders and then someone else wraps it around him. There’s a lot of mumbling and muttering behind him, but he can’t hear it over his own sobs, too strong to choke back no matter how hard he tries.
By the time they’ve finally died down his eyes sting and he’s alone in the camp with Much, who’s made a start on dinner.
“Where’s everyone gone?” asks Will, rubbing his nose and working to straighten his shirt.
“Scouting. Well, Robin and Little John are. Djaq’s off getting some of those leaves she was on about and I’ve no idea where Allan is.”
Will nods, watching Much slice up the already thin strips of meat. “Do you want any help, or -”
“I’m fine,” says Much without looking up. “What about you?”
“Sorry?”
“Djaq was concerned. Said you just started crying.”
Will ducks his head. “’m sorry.”
“There’s no need for you to be sorry. You saw your father and brother for the first time in nearly a year and then the next day he’s killed. Huh, I’d be crying if I were -”
“I don’t mean,” Will cries, stopping because it’s too loud, echoing off the roof and the trees outside. Much has put the knife down, watching him carefully. “I don’t mean about that.” He continues more quietly. “I’m not sorry because of this.”
“What are you sorry about then?”
Will swallows, trying to find the right way to say it. “Allan… Allan lost Tom. Djaq lost her whole family. And John, too - I know they’re not dead but still. And you and Robin. In the Crusades.”
When Will looks up again Much is staring off into the distance, old and terrible memories in his eyes. He shakes his head sharply and returns his attention to Will, nodding for him to go on.
“You’ve all… I lost my Mum, but you all, you’ve all lost people too. Some of you have lost more than I have. I mean, I still have Luke. My aunt and uncle. You lot. I j-” He swallows again. “It was a stupid thing to do. And selfish. You all - none of you ever did that. None of you ever…”
There’s a long almost-silence after that, disturbed only by the wind as Much considers this.
Finally he says, “I don’t think that you can say all of us have been… sensible in times of grief. When Robin thought Marian was dead… well, I’ve not seen him fight like that since the Holy Land. And John, the whole reason he ended up getting captured was because he tried to take on six guards so he could rescue Little John. And knocked Robin out cold, which I must admit I’ve wanted to do from time to time. You’re no worse than the rest of us, Will.”
“I would have wiped out the whole Shire,” Will murmurs. “Everyone. I didn’t care.”
“But you care now, don’t you?” Much points out, moving strips of meat to the pot. “Of all of us you’re the only one who’s actually had to live under the Sherriff. You’ve not just seen what he’s done, you’ve experienced it. It’s more personal for you in some ways, sometimes more personal than it is for Robin, and it’s far too personal for him most of the time.” Much sighs. “Look, what I’m trying to get is, grief… it does things to you. You are selfish because it feels… it feels like no one else can possibly know it, like no one else has ever been through it.”
“I’ve always thought I knew,” says Will, staring away into the woods. “Whenever I said sorry to someone because they’d lost someone, because of the Sherriff or the war, I thought, when Mum - I thought I knew. But I didn’t. God, I was so stupid -”
“No you weren’t. Don’t think like that. You were grieving and upset. You made a mistake, you put it right. No more, alright?”
Will licks his lips. “You forgive me?”
Much rolls his eyes and turn back to the pot. “I forgave you three days ago. As I think you’ll find everyone did. Now shut up and give me a hand with this.”
“I thought you said you didn’t -”
Much, knife in hand, glares. “Do you want to eat tonight or not?”
Will raises his hands in a placating gesture and then joins him. It’s hardly a two-man job, but Will’s grateful for the distraction.
“What is this?” he asks, sampling the stew. “Did you manage to get hold of a chicken?”
Much purses his lips. “Squirrel. And if you tell any of the others you’re dead, you hear me, Will Scarlett?”
“I’m saying nothing.” Then after a moment. “How do you catch them? I mean, if you’re shooting these things down your aim’s got to be better than Robin’s.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. But don’t stop trying.”
The others managed to return en masse, Robin and John very satisfied with the information they’d gathered, Djaq satisfied with the leaves she’d gathered and Allan looking like the cat who’d had the cream.
“No squirrel for me, thanks, Much. I’ve already eaten.”
“It’s chicken!”
“In any case there’ll be more of it go around.”
Djaq offers Will a few leaves which he shoves in his mouth and pretends to like, “mmm”ing and nodding when he realises she’s watching him.
“You’re alright now?”
“Fine. Thanks,” Will adds to Djaq and Much, who’s just refilled his dish.
“Hey, how come Will gets seconds?” asks Robin, sounding affronted.
“Because unlike some around here,” says Much. “Will appreciates me.” He then cuffs Robin lightly around the back of the head.
The look on his face is priceless.
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating: G
Word Count: 2246
Summary: Will comes to a realisation.
Warnings: Spoilers for The Angel of Death. Contains angst and shirtless Will.
Three days later it hits him. They’ve said goodbye to Luke, back off to Scarborough (quite determined to go on his own, despite Will’s many insistences that he wouldn’t mind visiting their aunt and explaining to her exactly what happened) and he’s gone down to the pool to bathe.
He’s just about to splash his face with the water cupped in his hands and, quite by accident, he looks down at his reflection in the pool. And he sees himself, standing upside down in water up to his knees peering back up at himself. Sees his face, in lifeless greys on the rippling deep green water, with his father’s nose and his mother’s eyes, and the weight of what he almost - of what he did, and what nearly happened because of it hits him. Hits him, knocks him off balance and leaves some distant part of him feeling grateful it didn’t crush him, though there’s a sudden and distressing absence of air in his lungs.
His fingers shake apart and the water spills out in tiny violent splashes into the pool. He turns them over and stares at them. He was nearly a murderer. And it wouldn’t have just been the Sherriff and the poisoner, out of his mind with obsessive hatred. It would have been… God, it would have been all of Nottingham. His hands rise to cradle his head, full of a vicious buzzing, as he thinks of all those people, all those people who smile at him when they see him on the street, tell him hello and ask him how he is when he comes to them for information, how some break off a chunk of bread - these people are starving - and give it to him because they think he looks a bit thin.
He drags his hands over his eyes, suddenly hot and prickly as terrible realisation descends upon him and he can’t stop himself thinking of Locksley. The whole Shire, Robin had said. Locksley, Nottingham, Clun… it all spirals away from him for a moment, letting its enormity be revealed, and Will almost laughs at how ridiculous it all is, how he in his overwhelming insignificance could have come so close. Those moments he’d been in there, walking out in carefully measured steps, back ramrod straight, furiously trying not to give anything away, not one hint, he’d been so wholly overcome he almost hadn’t been able to see where he was stepping. Somewhere, tangled up in the disgusted grief at hearing the Sherriff say his Dad’s name and the relief that he hadn’t been caught, there had been a panicked regret. Over just those two people. Those two people he hated. All those people…
It’s only with the shock of cool water splashing against his chest that he realises he’s crouching. His trousers are soaked through but after a moment or two he doesn’t care. He sat like this a lot when he was a boy, hiding around the back of the house, curled up with his hands over his head, like no one would be able to see him. His Dad had always laughed, looking back on it. Until his Mum died. Then he got too good at hiding it. Had to, really. Dad had his arms full with Luke and there was no one else. He remembers how the three of them helped to make her coffin, how he’d kicked up a fuss, sure that Luke would ruin it somehow.
His Dad wouldn’t get one. They didn’t even know what had happened to his body. An “insignificant”.
Just like Tom.
Maybe even less than Tom. Tom had had things they collected for Allan. Will and Luke didn’t even have that.
The buzzing in his head is getting louder and his nose is starting to run.
“Will?”
Djaq. Shit.
He ducks his head under quickly, and resurfaces only to snatch a few more fistfuls to splash his face with. Enough water and she won’t notice. Hopefully.
He climbs out quickly, wincing a little at the way his trousers are clinging to his skin, and busies himself with trying to get his shirt back on.
Djaq appears out of the trees a moment later. “There you are. Robin wants to go over the plans for the raid.”
Will nods and turns away from her. Djaq sees too much.
He can hear the pause. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he says roughly, clambering out of the pool, keeping turned away from her. The tears still on his face feel hot and ugly and obvious, like Djaq’s somehow going to be able to look at him and tell them apart from the droplets of water. He swipes a hand across his face and starts walking away when he feels her coming closer.
“Will, hold on.” There’s a hand reaching for his arm and he shakes it off each time she tries. If he stops she’ll see him, she can’t see him like this -
Despite his best efforts to shake her away and walk faster so she can’t keep up she manages to grab hold of him.
“Will, what’s wrong?”
He risks looking at her. And the honest concern and even understanding in her face undoes something in him. He start to shakes again and this time it’s all the harder to stop when he realises how ridiculous he must look, his shirt hanging half on half off, his trousers soaked through and his hair plastered to his head. Like some stupid kid curled round the back of the house thinking he was being so damned clever, managing to hide from everyone else.
He suddenly grabs her and pulls her into a tight, bone-crushing hug, contempt of his own childish behaviour not enough to keep him from burying his face in her shoulder.
She’s still for a moment, no doubt from shock, but then wraps an arm around him and rubs his back and God, he doesn’t deserve this.
He tries to speak but all that comes out are a few wet, weak miserable sounds. He pulls away, though Djaq is apparently reluctant to let him go, and manages to speak.
“I am so sorry.”
The words are small and quiet, straining over the sobs that follow after. Worse still, Djaq doesn’t seem to understand. “What? Why are you apologising? Your father has died, you mustn’t be ashamed of feeling sad -”
She doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t have the words or voice to explain to her and so just hugs her again, tears and snot soaking into the shoulder of her shirt. And some small and distant part of him, unmoved by the terrible epiphanies raining down on him, suggests he should be a lot more bothered about the fact that the front of Djaq’s shirt is now rather wet.
“Hello there, what’s goin’ on here, then?”
And a second later Will’s hugging Allan, telling him with even more conviction how sorry he is.
Allan will understand. Allan has to. They’re not as close as they used to be, back before they tried to leave for Scarborough (and Will wonders now if Allan blames him for making him stay, if he’s wishing he’d gone and left them and let Will go back on his own); nowadays he just wanders away on his own, not waiting for Will like he used to. But he knows Will. He’ll understand.
Allan doesn’t get it either. He just stands there when Will pulls back, looking confused and strangely guilty. He pats him awkwardly on the arm and allows Djaq, who’s taken hold of Will’s other arm again, to lead him away, and follows them as they make their way back to camp.
He’s sat by the fire and someone lays a blanket on his shoulders and then someone else wraps it around him. There’s a lot of mumbling and muttering behind him, but he can’t hear it over his own sobs, too strong to choke back no matter how hard he tries.
By the time they’ve finally died down his eyes sting and he’s alone in the camp with Much, who’s made a start on dinner.
“Where’s everyone gone?” asks Will, rubbing his nose and working to straighten his shirt.
“Scouting. Well, Robin and Little John are. Djaq’s off getting some of those leaves she was on about and I’ve no idea where Allan is.”
Will nods, watching Much slice up the already thin strips of meat. “Do you want any help, or -”
“I’m fine,” says Much without looking up. “What about you?”
“Sorry?”
“Djaq was concerned. Said you just started crying.”
Will ducks his head. “’m sorry.”
“There’s no need for you to be sorry. You saw your father and brother for the first time in nearly a year and then the next day he’s killed. Huh, I’d be crying if I were -”
“I don’t mean,” Will cries, stopping because it’s too loud, echoing off the roof and the trees outside. Much has put the knife down, watching him carefully. “I don’t mean about that.” He continues more quietly. “I’m not sorry because of this.”
“What are you sorry about then?”
Will swallows, trying to find the right way to say it. “Allan… Allan lost Tom. Djaq lost her whole family. And John, too - I know they’re not dead but still. And you and Robin. In the Crusades.”
When Will looks up again Much is staring off into the distance, old and terrible memories in his eyes. He shakes his head sharply and returns his attention to Will, nodding for him to go on.
“You’ve all… I lost my Mum, but you all, you’ve all lost people too. Some of you have lost more than I have. I mean, I still have Luke. My aunt and uncle. You lot. I j-” He swallows again. “It was a stupid thing to do. And selfish. You all - none of you ever did that. None of you ever…”
There’s a long almost-silence after that, disturbed only by the wind as Much considers this.
Finally he says, “I don’t think that you can say all of us have been… sensible in times of grief. When Robin thought Marian was dead… well, I’ve not seen him fight like that since the Holy Land. And John, the whole reason he ended up getting captured was because he tried to take on six guards so he could rescue Little John. And knocked Robin out cold, which I must admit I’ve wanted to do from time to time. You’re no worse than the rest of us, Will.”
“I would have wiped out the whole Shire,” Will murmurs. “Everyone. I didn’t care.”
“But you care now, don’t you?” Much points out, moving strips of meat to the pot. “Of all of us you’re the only one who’s actually had to live under the Sherriff. You’ve not just seen what he’s done, you’ve experienced it. It’s more personal for you in some ways, sometimes more personal than it is for Robin, and it’s far too personal for him most of the time.” Much sighs. “Look, what I’m trying to get is, grief… it does things to you. You are selfish because it feels… it feels like no one else can possibly know it, like no one else has ever been through it.”
“I’ve always thought I knew,” says Will, staring away into the woods. “Whenever I said sorry to someone because they’d lost someone, because of the Sherriff or the war, I thought, when Mum - I thought I knew. But I didn’t. God, I was so stupid -”
“No you weren’t. Don’t think like that. You were grieving and upset. You made a mistake, you put it right. No more, alright?”
Will licks his lips. “You forgive me?”
Much rolls his eyes and turn back to the pot. “I forgave you three days ago. As I think you’ll find everyone did. Now shut up and give me a hand with this.”
“I thought you said you didn’t -”
Much, knife in hand, glares. “Do you want to eat tonight or not?”
Will raises his hands in a placating gesture and then joins him. It’s hardly a two-man job, but Will’s grateful for the distraction.
“What is this?” he asks, sampling the stew. “Did you manage to get hold of a chicken?”
Much purses his lips. “Squirrel. And if you tell any of the others you’re dead, you hear me, Will Scarlett?”
“I’m saying nothing.” Then after a moment. “How do you catch them? I mean, if you’re shooting these things down your aim’s got to be better than Robin’s.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. But don’t stop trying.”
The others managed to return en masse, Robin and John very satisfied with the information they’d gathered, Djaq satisfied with the leaves she’d gathered and Allan looking like the cat who’d had the cream.
“No squirrel for me, thanks, Much. I’ve already eaten.”
“It’s chicken!”
“In any case there’ll be more of it go around.”
Djaq offers Will a few leaves which he shoves in his mouth and pretends to like, “mmm”ing and nodding when he realises she’s watching him.
“You’re alright now?”
“Fine. Thanks,” Will adds to Djaq and Much, who’s just refilled his dish.
“Hey, how come Will gets seconds?” asks Robin, sounding affronted.
“Because unlike some around here,” says Much. “Will appreciates me.” He then cuffs Robin lightly around the back of the head.
The look on his face is priceless.