FIC: The Sky Above, The Field Below
Title: The Sky Above, The Field Below
Rating: 12-15
Summary: Future!fic, speculative end of series. Robin lifted the sword belt and fastened it around his hips, letting it sit higher on the right to keep his balance. If it went well, his latest and last half-baked plan, he'd never have to use it. Robin/Marian.
Absolutely huge spoilers for 2x12 and 2x13!
Warning: Character death(s).
Much called him back, but Much would do that. Much had been trying to call him back before even-
Robin shrugged on his quiver, tightening the left strap around until it constricted his injured arm.
Much would know. He already knew, Robin suspected, knew how far back the seeds of what he was about to do went.
Robin lifted the sword belt and fastened it around his hips, letting it sit higher on the right to keep his balance. If it went well, his latest and last half-baked plan, he'd never have to use it.
Much had been injured, had been dragged away by Djaq and Allan to a place of safety where he could heal. Once upon a time in the forest, Robin had told them to scatter. He ordered them to scatter but knew where he was going, and this time was no different.
Robin reconsidered the sword. If he had cause to draw it, he had failed utterly already. He took it off and hesitated, sitting it by Will's discarded axe.
Will and Luke had made it out of the castle, barely, Will's thin frame filled with tension and anger he had longed to turn into blows. But when it came to it, he acted the married and grown man he'd become somewhere on a ship to Acre and then when he'd taken vows in a language not his own. They would meet with Djaq, Much and Allan against his orders. Djaq, Will and Luke had a place and a home across the seas. Much had seen too many blood-coloured leaves and forest floors, enough even to make the shifting sands and sun-blasted rooftops seem like a haven. He hoped his friend went with them.
The sword and the axe sat in his line of view as he fingered the ring on the chain around his throat. He counted the seconds evenly, his heart beating steadily in his chest. He heard the hoof-beats in the distance.
He hoped they all went. Will had lifted Luke, not the axe. Robin was a married man, and he'd never forgotten. The spy in the gang, the one they'd harboured and used, had been the barmaid from the Trip turned outlaw. She'd goaded him with the promise of a warmer bed, and in her unveiling he'd slammed her against a wall and met her eyes. Robin had asked her if she had ever thought to be a shadow on his love in a white dress. Then he'd denied her the mercy given to Allan and sunk a blade in her gut; she had harmed them time and again, willingly.
Robin took a breath and sunk three arrows into the shoddy thatch of the town roof. He hoped to only need one - fast as he was, he knew he might only get that. His eyes met the still form of Little John on the ground below and jerked away. A good day to die: John had said it again, before putting himself at the front of the charge. He couldn't protect his son, but he could protect the next generation and the possibilities they held in their blood. He'd bought them their escape.
Robin knelt low on the side of the roof in shadow, bow strung and arrows ready. He pulled a fourth and set it to the string, then turned his eyes to the horizon.
Much had seen it in Acre, the first time. And the second, although he did not die there. Last time we were dying. Robin was a grown and married man. He'd seen it all the times in between, and Robin knew something about Much that he did not. Much was stronger. The sacrifice that came on horses on the horizon was coming for one of them, their lives entwined since boyhood. Much was stronger - not just strong enough to survive the Holy Land not once but twice, and not just survive but remain only broken because of it. Much was strong enough to be broken where Robin dodged the blow and was split. There was before, there was after, and they were not the same. When he'd announced his plan he'd heard a voice in his mind, and it had sounded like hers. I fight for the king. She'd been defending her right to learn weapons alongside him. God gives the right to rule, and it is not our place to change it. We don't touch Heaven the way the kings do. Robin came back from the Holy Lands split and she had found the Nightwatchman. She would not challenge a monarch, but she would not allow children to starve.
Robin's heart began to race, and their faces - chiselled and grown sharper since he'd met them, all of them - flashed in front of him. He'd expected resistance, he'd expected it most of all from Much. He'd raised his chin and looked at Little John, spoken his wife's name. Then his son's. And Little John had spoken hers. Djaq, hand tight on Will's, had paled then nodded. They'd all grown old before their time, which made it an irony that already the ballads were sung and already they would never die.
He'd told Much once, standing with them in that barn the last time they'd been hopelessly under siege, that he struggled to fire a bow to kill. Burying his wife had built a slow fire in his veins, and burying his wife had taught him how to use the lightning in his arrows. He lifted the bow, tilted his head and sighted on the riding party.
Richard had told him as he lay on a pallet with a wound at his side in Acre that he thanked God for Robin, but most of all that he stood next to Robin and not one thousand yards in the distance. Robin had clung to humanity with every breath, shot bread into villages and taken no life he could spare. She had told him to fight, to cling, to grab humanity and shake it until honour and goodness found a way in, and he willingly betrayed her to serve her. He saved humanity by forsaking it for himself - he became the killer, the cold one and the unseen force of nature one thousand yards away - and he did it for her.
They would say there had been one hundred men at his back. They would say he met with the king in the forest, the king who lay dead in France. They'd say whatever they liked, but only because his arrow was about to save them.
It wasn't Vaysey on the horse. Vaysey's head stood rotting on a pole outside Nottingham castle, put there by the man on the horse.
For the things they had done, the sins they'd committed in protecting the ones they loved since returning from the Holy Land, he'd never stop hunting them. One arrow. One on the string, three in the thatch, and Robin knew it in his bones that it would take one. He wanted his last shot to save humanity, to make her watching eyes proud, but it wasn't. He'd never stop hunting them, not if he had to kill Eve to find Much, not if he had to torture Alice or twist John to be sure Little John was dead, and not if he had to kill every pigeon-handler of the Saracens to find Will, Djaq and Luke. His last shot was to save Allan another trip to the dungeons, to save his family.
He closed his eyes and listened to the approaching horses. Robin had thought it was his body, his mind, slowing to savour the last of the Earthly air, even though it'd long lost its flavour. He realised, poised on the roof, that it was because the horses had slowed to a walk at the tree line. It really was the end for them, their lives tangled together since before Acre and a blade to the side or a tattoo on the wrist. Their lives tangled together by potential: to be good, to be redeemed, to kill, to fail, and always for her. Always surrounded, caused, effected and intoxicated by her. They'd fought from and to Acre for her.
It really was the end because they had nowhere else to go, nothing else to learn of each other. They each knew the opponent and the strategy so well, had become such forces, that they could not bear to meet for more than the one blow that would finish it. Guy of Gisborne walked his horse at the slowest of paces towards the cottage, looking for the same blow. Robin watched him across the long field and waited on him to be within his arrow's range.
Robin longed to meet him with a sword, to drag him to a room in darkness and cause him pain until even God turned his face from them both. He ached for it for the memory of a mirage on the horizon.
Marian.
If he could have asked his friends one thing as they left it would have been to come back for him, to lay him by her side in distant lands, but he hadn't.
For the things he had done, not in her name but for his memory of her, he would not go to her Heaven for a long time. He would suffer Purgatory and make his penance. He would do it gladly for the one arrow he was about to shoot.
Robin had buried her, and as he closed his eyes with a final prayer, he prepared to make his last sacrifice - the first since the funeral that would not be for her. He let the tension drain from his arms and the bow slid down, the arrow brushing the thatch. He'd fought and lived for the dead. It seemed fitting to die for the living they'd both loved.
He thought of what he was about to give, and what he'd given to be kneeling within an arrow's reach of Gisborne. He would give his life, the smallest and easiest of sacrifices when it was the only way left to fight. He would give up a grave in the Holy Land by her side, but that would be insignificant when the last breath left him. He would give a chance for Heaven, but it was a temporary loss. God would forgive and they had waited before. He'd given his revenge and the last epic clash that the actor in his soul called for. Will had chosen to take his family to safety rather than a battle, Much had chosen a ship to the Holy Land and Robin chose one arrow instead of a clash of swords.
Were it his own life alone he risked, he would have leapt down with a shout and met him, but her voice rang in his ears. They love you already. You do this for those who need give you no adoration. He could not fail them. In his last moments, he had wanted to be as she had been: a hero, a legend in the making, a fighter saving England. Instead, he was an assassin coldly eliminating a threat to those handful of souls he loved.
Nor could he wait. Prince John's bowmen on the perimeter line of the siege would see him the moment he revealed himself against the skyline, so at eight-hundred yards he stood in one fluid motion, swung his bow into position and loosed the arrow. The target was in his mind, and Gisborne fell from his horse before his form had really reached Robin's eyes.
He stood, he shot, and before his arrow reached Gisborne four had reached him.
He'd made one request of them before they left and it was the last, whimsical fragment he had left to give. To tell the story again. They would tell their story, they said, it would be known through the ages. He'd asked for songs and dances, for music and for laughter. He didn't know whose voice he spoke with when he told them, I want to tell the story again. Tales about traps in the forest and robberies, not graves in the sand. For Little John, Carter, Roy, Thomas (both of them), Lambert, Roger, Legrand, Richard and so many others to live again by campfires and in the games of children. Tales to warn against the wickedness of bad men, to give the eternal value of bravery and to turn them from people who wept, laughed and bled into banners for the just to raise.
Then, in his last words in English on God's Earth, he'd asked them for years. Robin Hood's voice caught in his throat, his eyes watered and his fist shook as he asked for years with the Lady Marian in health and sickness, in poverty and in wealth, cherished and adored. He asked for a happier ending than they'd been given: his body lying pinned to a thatched roof as he felled their enemy at last, hers a world away in a warrior's grave, neither young but never to be old.
THE END.
Thanks for reading.
Kay x
Rating: 12-15
Summary: Future!fic, speculative end of series. Robin lifted the sword belt and fastened it around his hips, letting it sit higher on the right to keep his balance. If it went well, his latest and last half-baked plan, he'd never have to use it. Robin/Marian.
Absolutely huge spoilers for 2x12 and 2x13!
Warning: Character death(s).
Much called him back, but Much would do that. Much had been trying to call him back before even-
Robin shrugged on his quiver, tightening the left strap around until it constricted his injured arm.
Much would know. He already knew, Robin suspected, knew how far back the seeds of what he was about to do went.
Robin lifted the sword belt and fastened it around his hips, letting it sit higher on the right to keep his balance. If it went well, his latest and last half-baked plan, he'd never have to use it.
Much had been injured, had been dragged away by Djaq and Allan to a place of safety where he could heal. Once upon a time in the forest, Robin had told them to scatter. He ordered them to scatter but knew where he was going, and this time was no different.
Robin reconsidered the sword. If he had cause to draw it, he had failed utterly already. He took it off and hesitated, sitting it by Will's discarded axe.
Will and Luke had made it out of the castle, barely, Will's thin frame filled with tension and anger he had longed to turn into blows. But when it came to it, he acted the married and grown man he'd become somewhere on a ship to Acre and then when he'd taken vows in a language not his own. They would meet with Djaq, Much and Allan against his orders. Djaq, Will and Luke had a place and a home across the seas. Much had seen too many blood-coloured leaves and forest floors, enough even to make the shifting sands and sun-blasted rooftops seem like a haven. He hoped his friend went with them.
The sword and the axe sat in his line of view as he fingered the ring on the chain around his throat. He counted the seconds evenly, his heart beating steadily in his chest. He heard the hoof-beats in the distance.
He hoped they all went. Will had lifted Luke, not the axe. Robin was a married man, and he'd never forgotten. The spy in the gang, the one they'd harboured and used, had been the barmaid from the Trip turned outlaw. She'd goaded him with the promise of a warmer bed, and in her unveiling he'd slammed her against a wall and met her eyes. Robin had asked her if she had ever thought to be a shadow on his love in a white dress. Then he'd denied her the mercy given to Allan and sunk a blade in her gut; she had harmed them time and again, willingly.
Robin took a breath and sunk three arrows into the shoddy thatch of the town roof. He hoped to only need one - fast as he was, he knew he might only get that. His eyes met the still form of Little John on the ground below and jerked away. A good day to die: John had said it again, before putting himself at the front of the charge. He couldn't protect his son, but he could protect the next generation and the possibilities they held in their blood. He'd bought them their escape.
Robin knelt low on the side of the roof in shadow, bow strung and arrows ready. He pulled a fourth and set it to the string, then turned his eyes to the horizon.
Much had seen it in Acre, the first time. And the second, although he did not die there. Last time we were dying. Robin was a grown and married man. He'd seen it all the times in between, and Robin knew something about Much that he did not. Much was stronger. The sacrifice that came on horses on the horizon was coming for one of them, their lives entwined since boyhood. Much was stronger - not just strong enough to survive the Holy Land not once but twice, and not just survive but remain only broken because of it. Much was strong enough to be broken where Robin dodged the blow and was split. There was before, there was after, and they were not the same. When he'd announced his plan he'd heard a voice in his mind, and it had sounded like hers. I fight for the king. She'd been defending her right to learn weapons alongside him. God gives the right to rule, and it is not our place to change it. We don't touch Heaven the way the kings do. Robin came back from the Holy Lands split and she had found the Nightwatchman. She would not challenge a monarch, but she would not allow children to starve.
Robin's heart began to race, and their faces - chiselled and grown sharper since he'd met them, all of them - flashed in front of him. He'd expected resistance, he'd expected it most of all from Much. He'd raised his chin and looked at Little John, spoken his wife's name. Then his son's. And Little John had spoken hers. Djaq, hand tight on Will's, had paled then nodded. They'd all grown old before their time, which made it an irony that already the ballads were sung and already they would never die.
He'd told Much once, standing with them in that barn the last time they'd been hopelessly under siege, that he struggled to fire a bow to kill. Burying his wife had built a slow fire in his veins, and burying his wife had taught him how to use the lightning in his arrows. He lifted the bow, tilted his head and sighted on the riding party.
Richard had told him as he lay on a pallet with a wound at his side in Acre that he thanked God for Robin, but most of all that he stood next to Robin and not one thousand yards in the distance. Robin had clung to humanity with every breath, shot bread into villages and taken no life he could spare. She had told him to fight, to cling, to grab humanity and shake it until honour and goodness found a way in, and he willingly betrayed her to serve her. He saved humanity by forsaking it for himself - he became the killer, the cold one and the unseen force of nature one thousand yards away - and he did it for her.
They would say there had been one hundred men at his back. They would say he met with the king in the forest, the king who lay dead in France. They'd say whatever they liked, but only because his arrow was about to save them.
It wasn't Vaysey on the horse. Vaysey's head stood rotting on a pole outside Nottingham castle, put there by the man on the horse.
For the things they had done, the sins they'd committed in protecting the ones they loved since returning from the Holy Land, he'd never stop hunting them. One arrow. One on the string, three in the thatch, and Robin knew it in his bones that it would take one. He wanted his last shot to save humanity, to make her watching eyes proud, but it wasn't. He'd never stop hunting them, not if he had to kill Eve to find Much, not if he had to torture Alice or twist John to be sure Little John was dead, and not if he had to kill every pigeon-handler of the Saracens to find Will, Djaq and Luke. His last shot was to save Allan another trip to the dungeons, to save his family.
He closed his eyes and listened to the approaching horses. Robin had thought it was his body, his mind, slowing to savour the last of the Earthly air, even though it'd long lost its flavour. He realised, poised on the roof, that it was because the horses had slowed to a walk at the tree line. It really was the end for them, their lives tangled together since before Acre and a blade to the side or a tattoo on the wrist. Their lives tangled together by potential: to be good, to be redeemed, to kill, to fail, and always for her. Always surrounded, caused, effected and intoxicated by her. They'd fought from and to Acre for her.
It really was the end because they had nowhere else to go, nothing else to learn of each other. They each knew the opponent and the strategy so well, had become such forces, that they could not bear to meet for more than the one blow that would finish it. Guy of Gisborne walked his horse at the slowest of paces towards the cottage, looking for the same blow. Robin watched him across the long field and waited on him to be within his arrow's range.
Robin longed to meet him with a sword, to drag him to a room in darkness and cause him pain until even God turned his face from them both. He ached for it for the memory of a mirage on the horizon.
Marian.
If he could have asked his friends one thing as they left it would have been to come back for him, to lay him by her side in distant lands, but he hadn't.
For the things he had done, not in her name but for his memory of her, he would not go to her Heaven for a long time. He would suffer Purgatory and make his penance. He would do it gladly for the one arrow he was about to shoot.
Robin had buried her, and as he closed his eyes with a final prayer, he prepared to make his last sacrifice - the first since the funeral that would not be for her. He let the tension drain from his arms and the bow slid down, the arrow brushing the thatch. He'd fought and lived for the dead. It seemed fitting to die for the living they'd both loved.
He thought of what he was about to give, and what he'd given to be kneeling within an arrow's reach of Gisborne. He would give his life, the smallest and easiest of sacrifices when it was the only way left to fight. He would give up a grave in the Holy Land by her side, but that would be insignificant when the last breath left him. He would give a chance for Heaven, but it was a temporary loss. God would forgive and they had waited before. He'd given his revenge and the last epic clash that the actor in his soul called for. Will had chosen to take his family to safety rather than a battle, Much had chosen a ship to the Holy Land and Robin chose one arrow instead of a clash of swords.
Were it his own life alone he risked, he would have leapt down with a shout and met him, but her voice rang in his ears. They love you already. You do this for those who need give you no adoration. He could not fail them. In his last moments, he had wanted to be as she had been: a hero, a legend in the making, a fighter saving England. Instead, he was an assassin coldly eliminating a threat to those handful of souls he loved.
Nor could he wait. Prince John's bowmen on the perimeter line of the siege would see him the moment he revealed himself against the skyline, so at eight-hundred yards he stood in one fluid motion, swung his bow into position and loosed the arrow. The target was in his mind, and Gisborne fell from his horse before his form had really reached Robin's eyes.
He stood, he shot, and before his arrow reached Gisborne four had reached him.
He'd made one request of them before they left and it was the last, whimsical fragment he had left to give. To tell the story again. They would tell their story, they said, it would be known through the ages. He'd asked for songs and dances, for music and for laughter. He didn't know whose voice he spoke with when he told them, I want to tell the story again. Tales about traps in the forest and robberies, not graves in the sand. For Little John, Carter, Roy, Thomas (both of them), Lambert, Roger, Legrand, Richard and so many others to live again by campfires and in the games of children. Tales to warn against the wickedness of bad men, to give the eternal value of bravery and to turn them from people who wept, laughed and bled into banners for the just to raise.
Then, in his last words in English on God's Earth, he'd asked them for years. Robin Hood's voice caught in his throat, his eyes watered and his fist shook as he asked for years with the Lady Marian in health and sickness, in poverty and in wealth, cherished and adored. He asked for a happier ending than they'd been given: his body lying pinned to a thatched roof as he felled their enemy at last, hers a world away in a warrior's grave, neither young but never to be old.
THE END.
Thanks for reading.
Kay x