Fic: Ships in the Night (Robin Hood)
Title: Ships in the Night
Fandom: Robin Hood
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Robin, OC
Setting: Pre-series
Words: 2,388
Summary: They were but ships, passing in the night.
A/N: Written for the rh_ficchallenge. Prompt: Original Character.
She let the veil fall from her face as the soldier appraised her, and ignored the hungry look in his eye. She is far too used to that expression to let it bother her. His eyes raked over her body and even though she was modestly dressed, he grinned. She knew these Englishmen by now, understood that they desire her more if she is covered, with only a tantalising glimpse of flesh showing. They liked to be teased.
“I think the Captain would like you,” he said. “Over there.” He gave her a nudge in the direction of a nearby tent.
Another Englishman, with fair hair and soft eyes, was seated outside. “No, he would not,” he cried indignantly and stood to block the entrance to the tent. “My master does not have the loose morals of you, you...” He stumbled around for the words but seemed unable to find them.
“He doesn’t need you as his conscience,” the first man barked back. “He needs a diversion after what happened today. Besides,” he gave her another look, “she’s his type.”
She placed a reassuring hand on the fair one’s shoulder. “Your master will be pleased with me.” She drifted close enough so that her perfume wafted over him, and gave him a coquettish smile. Her charms did not seem to move him, if anything he looked even more sour. But he said nothing as she slipped past him and into the tent.
At first she was surprised. It did not seem like the tent of a lord of war. It was small and sparsely furnished, no expensive silks or jewels that she had seen in many others. There were cushions surrounding a small floor-table of Saracen design and atop it were various trinkets and oddities, some Saracen, some Jewish, even some Greek. It appeared that someone was studying them, for there were sketches of some of the objects on parchment, and notes scrawled in tiny, spindly writing.
“I thought I said I wanted to be left alone.”
She turned her attention to the man who had spoken. He was sprawled on a sleeping mat, which, like the rest of the tent, was Spartan-like in its simplicity. Though he was seated she could see that he was tall, and while he was very lean, he was not emaciated like some of the soldiers she had seen. She supposed being in the King’s company meant he ate well, even if he did not eat much. His face was handsome, and still held that boyish look, although she could see that was slowly being chipped away, as if around the edges he was becoming a man. His hair was not so fair as his servant’s, although she imagined it had once been a few shades darker, before the desert sun had stripped it of its hue.
He looked up at her then, probably because she had not answered him, and she was struck by the blue of his eyes. They were intense, and seemed older than his face warranted. They held a look of anger, which quickly melted into neutral disinterest. “I’m sorry,” he said softly and looked away. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Your servant tried to stop me,” she explained and stepped forward, closer to the candlelight and ensuring the bangles and chains on her wrist and ankles chimed invitingly.
“He was right to do so,” he answered shortly.
“Would you not like some company?” she asked.
“No.”
She sighed. This was going to be a hard sell. She briefly considered cutting her losses and finding another patron for the night who was not so surly. The first man she had spoken to, perhaps. But the Captain intrigued her, and it was rare to have such a stimulating challenge. Besides, he was clearly of noble birth, and therefore more likely to be generous.
“I promise you will not regret asking me to stay,” she told him brazenly. “There is much that I can do to keep your mind off this war.”
He looked at her again, although with a different kind of intensity. His gaze drifted over her body and strangely, she felt uncomfortable. For it seemed that he was not trying to look through her clothes, rather through her, into her heart and soul. That made her uneasy. She had learnt how to detach, allow men to have her body - that didn’t mean anything. But never had a patron tried to see past that - no one had ever wanted more. And this man was a fool if he thought she was going to give it to him.
He broke off his gaze and sighed deeply, considering. Then he drew a small purse from his belongings and placed it on the ground next to his pallet, the coins tinkling loudly as he set it down.
“I will not ask you to stay. If you do it is of your own free will,” he told her, watching her face keenly. “That is yours in any case.” He indicated the purse.
She tried to register his words as she knelt in the sand. She opened the purse and found gold, more that she usually made in an entire weeks work. “I don’t understand.”
“Take that, and go,” he answered. “Feed your family. Do you have a husband, children?”
“Yes,” she answered truthfully, and gripped the purse tightly. Her husband was far away, if he was still alive at all, and unaware of what she did to look after her aging mother and young son. “Why would you give me this and ask nothing in return?” Her voice betrayed her suspicion.
“I do not need it,” he answered. “You clearly do.”
She didn’t quite believe him. Perhaps it was some trick, to assuage his own guilt by making her feel indebted to him. That way he could still have her and yet be without personal shame at the act. “I know men like you,” she told him with a twisted smile. “You don’t like to pay what you can easily get for free.”
He shrugged. “That is true,” a ghost of a smirk crossed his face, and for a moment she imagined what he must have been like before he came to this place - a cheeky, pleasure-seeking boy. “But I have moral objections to your trade as well...not that I blame you,” he hastened to add. “It is a misguided world when a woman is forced to debase herself to survive.”
“I was not forced into anything.” She raised her chin, proudly. “I made a choice, one I do not regret. I know my sins, but at least I am honest in them,” she gave him a fierce look.
“There is a difference,” he said seriously, “between two people helping each other escape from the real world, and one person paying the other to do so.”
“There is no difference,” she replied. “Except perhaps in second instance one person is using the other and in the first they both are.”
“Then go” he urged, raising his eyebrow at her. “You are free to leave, with that,” he nodded to the purse still in her hand. “I will not stop you.”
She rose and backed towards the exit of the tent, and saw no change in his expression. His eyes glazed over again, and he appeared to be back into a deep thought. She didn’t know why she hesitated at the mouth of the tent, perhaps waiting for him to call her back, to ask her to stay. But he didn’t. He wasn’t even looking at her. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like to lay with someone who was not asking a service from her, who was kind and not solely concerned with his own pleasure. And she missed her husband deeply, his laughing eyes, his beard soft against her cheek, his low, rumbling laugh as he held her through the night.
“The man outside,” she said, and began to move back towards him. “He said you would like me - that I was your type. What did he mean by that?”
The man on the pallet looked up at her with surprise, but she didn’t know if it was because of her question or because she had not left. “I have not been...unknown to women on the progression,” he replied with honestly. “But in an honourable way...as honourable as this can be,” he clarified. “It is...comforting - to them, as much as it is to me. And I suppose they have all been somewhat similar.”
“In what way?” she pressed, and sat down on the pallet, facing him.
He studied her for a few moments and his gaze softened. “Dark hair,” he replied, “eyes full of life, a quick tongue.” He smiled indulgently. “Beautiful.”
She smiled in return. She wondered if he saw the lines around her mouth when she did that, the lines etched into in her face not so much from age, but from hardship, if he saw the love in her eyes that was not for him, the thoughts that drew her away. She believed that he did, and still thought her beautiful. He was a strange man, indeed.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
She smiled mysteriously and gave him the usual response. “Whatever you want it to be.”
“Please, tell me.”
But she shook her head. Her name was only for her husband, she could not share it with another. “What’s yours?” she asked instead.
“Robin.” He did not give his title, as most men did, trying to impress or intimidate her. She liked that.
“Did you lose many men today, Robin?” she asked him, remembering the words spoken by the man outside.
“Every day it seems we lose more,” he replied, his voice harsh. “And every day new recruits arrive to replace them. This war has become a numbers game. So long as we kill more than we lose, and enough reinforcements come, than we are winning.” He shook his head bitterly.
“Why do you not return to your homeland?” she challenged him. She may claim that she had chosen her path, but he had travelled thousands of miles to pursue his, something she did not entirely understand.
“I swore an oath to my king,” Robin replied. “I must remain here until he orders me to return. And he will not do that.”
“Why?”
“Because I am good at it.” He looked vaguely sick at the words. “Killing,” he clarified. “I have a gift with the bow, with a sword, with command.”
“But it gives you no pleasure,” she deduced.
Robin took her hand, then, his calloused fingers running over the dark henna patterns dotted across her skin. “Very few things do, now.”
She looked at her hand in his, noting the gentleness with which he touched her, and then at his pale face, tinged with an acute sadness.
“What’s her name?”
“I’m sorry?” He looked at her, surprised.
“You have the look of someone who has left a lover behind,” she explained. “A wife?”
A shadow passed over his face and Robin ducked his head. “No,” he replied darkly. “No wife. I did have...someone I loved,” he told her. “We were betrothed, but then I came here. She’s probably married to someone else, now.”
The longing in his face made her heart ache for her own, distant lover. “But you think of her still.”
“I try not to. I thought I wouldn’t.” His face was troubled. “Before I left, this was all I could dream about .” He gestured around his small tent. “Serving my king, bringing glory and honour on my family. But now...” Robin trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
“You will find no replacement for her,” she told him, not unkindly, but rather a gentle advice.
“I know.” He looked away, and she knew that he was never going to be the one to make the first move. It had to be her. She shifted forward, and cupped his face in her hands. He sat there passively, but there was a glint of need in his eye and something else - something that almost asked take pity on me, comfort me, love me.
She reached forward and gently pressed her lips to his. They were rough, cracked by the desert heat, but warm and yielding as he allowed her to kiss him and after a few moments, responded with tenderness.
“Marian,” he whispered against her mouth, and she broke away, a bit perturbed. “Her name was Marian,” he continued, and gazed at her with hollow, dead eyes.
She had seen that look before - of a man that had long ceased to hope, but clung to the notion because he did not know what else to do. It may pass in the morning, when he once again became a solider, a leader of men, a cocky youth fighting his way to glory. But that night, in her arms, he would be reaching out for something she could not give, a comfort he may never find.
He was a lost cause - like her. Like all of them, perhaps.
***************
She left Robin’s tent just before dawn, passing his servant, still on guard even while asleep, on the way. Stealing through the camp, she drew her clothes more tightly around her to guard against the crisp morning air, careful not to wake any of the sleeping men slumped around fires or inside tents. She did not regret staying, and she could not deny that it had been a bit more than loneliness and pity that had caused her to do so.
But he had not changed her - and she knew she had definitely not changed him. They were still the same people they had been the day before - their encounter too brief, too tinged with other emotions to leave a lasting impression on either of their hearts. And so she had left while he was still asleep - or had at least pretended to still be asleep - knowing that it was better that way. She had a home to go to, a life to lead. And he had his war to fight. Each doing their duty as best they could.
They were but ships, passing in the night. A brief respite before moving on to their true destination - whatever that would prove to be.