Robin Hood Fic!
Title: He touched me, so I live to know.
Pairing: Robin/Marian also Guy, Much and Edward.
Rating: 12A/PG-13
Spoilers: Through most of 1.13, but AU.
Summary: The ways in which Marian Fitzwalter is loved.
A/N: This is dedicated to Emily Dickinson, the poetry and title are all hers.
I.
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
He is silent. And she is silent. She’s never known them to be like this, not once in their 16 years of acquaintance.
He looks down at her, willing her to say something, do something, anything to break this awful, heavy silence. And she wants to, she wants to say something beautiful and unforgettable but Marian’s mind is blank and she cannot do anything but stare at his ring around her finger.
“Master…” Much impatiently says and in that moment she could kill Much, kill him for trying to take Robin away from her.
“Marian, I-” Robin hesitates, shifting his pack, fidgeting like an eager schoolboy. Marian finally looks up at him, and it’s not that Much is taking him away or that he is required in the Holy Land, Robin is leaving.
“Go,” she bids him, quietly, kindly. She sighs when he takes her face into his hands and kisses her hair softly.
“You know that I love you,” he whispers, and she would believe him if she couldn’t feel his leg tapping impatiently. He waits for an obligatory smile before he turns away, and the only sound is Much’s humming and Marian’s breathing.
Marian stands out by the fence until it’s too dark to see her own hand and her father has to drag his sobbing daughter into the house.
“What if he turns around? Father, please what if he turns around and I’m not there?” Marian screams and pleads, twisting in her father grip. In the end, when she realizes that he won’t turn around because it’s Robin, Robin who never looks back, she allows two servants to carry her wearied body to bed, and she clutches his ring until she’s gasping for breath.
It takes her weeks to stop thinking about the fact that Robin is gone, her Robin, but then the new Sheriff storms into their lives and Marian has no choice but to invest her energy into protecting her father and their lands. It’s sudden, but she wakes up one morning and realizes that she simply doesn’t have the strength to miss Robin anymore, she puts the ring away without ceremony, there are servants that need attending to and her father’s affairs to see through.
She allows herself fleeting dreams of stolen kisses and longing gazes.
II.
Father I bring thee not myself,-
That were the little load;
I bring thee the imperial heart
I had not strength to hold.
He is silent. And she is silent. They are alone in the small church room, where he stands in the place her mother should.
“Are you ready, Marian?” he asks, and even as he says it she knows it is a ridiculous question.
“Of course,” she whispers. When he doesn’t reply she says, louder this time, “Father, I am ready.” Edward Fitzwalter looks at his daughter, “My bonny Marian, so pretty and strong,” he used to say. He doesn’t say it anymore.
“Marian, child, you don’t have to do this,” he says, taking his daughter’s hands into his, but he doesn’t meet her eyes.
“Yes, I do, I want to, I care for Guy, he is a powerful man, he will be able to provide for us,” she insists.
“You look beautiful, Marian,” her father says to her. Marian wonders when their conversations became half-truths, they both know she doesn’t look beautiful, she looks miserable and hollow.
“I love you, my dear,” he says and she nods but she doesn’t reply. Marian looks away through the painted window, and she sees shards of a childhood memory. Marian remembers staring a trinket on a stall, the glossy silver attracting the five-year-old’s attention, she had turned around and screamed, suddenly and startlingly . She couldn’t find her fathers long legs or fine boots within the crowd. It was the Lord Locksley who saw her, swinging the crying toddler into his arms, immediately buying her a piece of sweetmeat to appease her. She remembers Robin’s sour look at his father’s adoration of a whiny girl, she had struggled against the lord until her set her down when she tore the sweetmeat in half, handing the piece to him, a picture of generosity. She thinks that was her downfall, he gave her such a smile then, a smile he always saved for her.
But there isn’t any Lord of Locksley coming today, she thinks as the priest steps into the room, indicating that her time has come. She takes her fathers arm, and steps away from the sunny window, into the dark interior of the church.
She imagines that she can feel him smile.
III.
I never hear the word “escape”
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude.
He is silent. And she is silent. He is lying next to her, his hand barely touching hers. She doubts that this is what Guy of Gisbourne had in mind for his wedding night.
She chides herself gently for her disappointed feelings when an unexpected rescue does not save her. She imagines distant scenarios, Robin swinging in on a branch, announcing something pompous and ridiculous, “You’ll never have her, Gisbourne, she belongs to me!” But her imagination fails her as soon as she Guy shifts, alerting her to his presence. But no, there was no thrilling rescue, instead there was a wedding and new titles. Marian of Gisbourne, she says, tasting the name, rolling the bitterness about her tongue and it makes her ill.
She wonder why, after all Robin has done to her, she still feels like an adulteress laying in bed with another man. Perhaps it is because she is laying in Locksley, exactly where she should have been, albeit with the entirely wrong gentleman. No, she tells herself, this is Gisbourne, there is no Locksley without its Robin.
“I love you,” he whispers to her, gently stroking her hand, “I care for you more than I have cared for anything in this world,” he says, she believes him, and it scares her, to know how much he loves her. She hears a rustling in the trees and wonders where her Robin is tonight. Lying in a dark cave, perhaps? Or sitting in a tree, his long legs dangling under him, no different than the teenage boy who would sit outside Marian‘s window, rustling leaves as he climbed to see her. Or perhaps he is in a brothel somewhere, with some woman- She retches, violently, falling out of the bed. Guy reaches for her immediately, and Marian loses herself in the shuffle of servants with cool cloths and soft hands.
She hears rustling trees when she sleeps.
IV.
Alter? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
He is silent. And she is silent. They sit in a glen, while she sobs and he sings for her soft, soothing ballads. They lull her into a peace, if only for a fleeting moment. They do this often now, more often than Much would like. If Robin knew….
“Much, if you could take me anywhere, where would we go?” she asks, and the two could be eleven again. When their greatest fears were a strange, shadow apparition that lived in the lake behind the castle and their greatest joy a secret path through the hills that the three had found the previous fortnight.
“To Robin,” he tells her, because years of a bloody war have made him practical and bitter. Because they are no longer eleven, and their greatest joy is being able to survive for yet another day. If people saw Marian of Gisbourne leave her homestead at sunrise or in the middle of the night, silently slipping off to a secret glen, they would only assume that she was going to meet her lover, or they would have her committed. Much knows when she will be here, and he makes a point to leave a sleeping Robin and slip off to see her. She is here on her birthdays, and his birthdays, and his birthdays. She is here on nights the moon is bright and she cannot sleep and Much must soothe her into a fitful sleep. But she is here today because her father is dead. Her father is dead and nobody is left to pray for Marian anymore.
“I love you,” Much says, emphatically. She knows he does, Much is her friend who loves her completely and fully, because it is the only way Much can love. If he could, he would whisk her off to Robin, who would save Marian and make her smile, something Much hasn’t seen in months. But Robin would want for so many answers, one for bruises in the shape of fingers around her neck, one for her sore thighs and another for her broken rib, remnants of her last fight with her husband.
“You’re a good friend,” she tells him, and it is the truest thing she has ever felt. They lie silently once again, and she dreams of a laughing boy in green that they both love so very much.
V.
The moon is distant from the sea,
And yet with amber hands
She leads him, docile as a boy,
Along appointed sands.
He is silent. And she is silent. They dig slowly, never meeting each other’s eyes. He does not apologize to her and she does not thank him. She lays wildflowers upon her husband’s body, and strokes his face, he could have been beautiful, if he wasn’t so broken. Guy would’ve found it ironic that the two people present at his funeral are his murderer and his abused wife. The man he despised and the woman he loved.
Robin is still, and he hasn’t said a word to her since she found him in her stables, crouching next to her husband’s body, splatters of blood on his sweet face. He is shaking still, and holding the sword. A sword covered in her husband’s blood and still she cannot believe that Robin, her Robin could kill. They bury the sword as well, because Robin doubts he could ever touch it again. He does not regret this, for he is Robin, but he is sorry.
She takes his shivering, bloodied hand in her warm one, their fingers entwined. She takes him to a quiet stream, and watches alongside him as the red water washes Guy of Gisbourne away.
“I love you,” he says into the wind, and she barely hears him. She wonders if this is how Guy felt, so enamored, so absolutely, madly in love that it hurt.
“Marion of Locksley,” she says aloud, and he laughs, wrapping his arms around her.
She dreams of making love in a meadow and of laughing children.
A/N: Please, please review. And please point out any mistakes since this was not beta'd.