(Untitled)

[landlesslord]

After waking up dead in his room, a man who has been absent for a long time slides into a booth and orders some cider.

He's still debating whether the dead drink.

[Hai guys! It's been a while. Suffice it to say, this is Guy after the big season 3 finale which I shall summarise for you as "rocks fall, everyone dies". Yes, really.]

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[landlesslord]

Guy rises from his seat and moves closer to her. Even confused she's lovely.

"..." His mouth opens. And then shuts again.

How exactly do you say to someone that you're sorry for killing them? That you wish you could take it back, even if that meant that maybe you would never have become a better person. Never become free.

Perhaps you can't. Or maybe you can, but perhaps not right now.

Perhaps.

"I...died."

If Guy looks a little confused, it's only because he's said something he hadn't intended to say so soon. How does a man go from complimenting a woman's appearance to telling her that he no longer lives?

[queenofmay]

Closer makes her go very still, but not rigid, something perfected a very long time ago. She doesn't allow herself to pull her arms in, shift her stance or even to frown. Because close is usually far more dangerous. Within reach, with is almost never, since she punched him. But also where the darkest of sneers are ground out

[landlesslord]

"Perhaps you did," he remembers a dream of seeing her alive, soon after he had killed her. Maybe it had not been so much of a dream. "But I have not guarded the Sheriff's chamber for some time."

So many things happened since he had last done that with any frequency - with the time in the Holy land, the time he was too drunk and too uncaring to stand still for any length of time...it might have been over a year.

"Things change." Guy shrugs. There's not much more he can say about it.

[queenofmay]

It's not softness, or passivity. It's everything else. As though someone took all the hard lines and bitter anger that should be there and removed them with the wave of a wand. It should be impossible. Even in Milliways, it should be impossible. Even all her best memories of him from here, from the time when she couldn't remember herself. He was always himself. That awkward shade of darkness and flickers of light. Not like this. This strange almost ease in acceptance.

"You look," she started. Her hand shifted, raising of it's own accord. Only she stopped it, not reaching out, closing it and pulling back toward herself. It is the tiniest of gives, that she expects to have shut down, slammed down. "...very different."

[landlesslord]

Marian is....

Marian is how she was, before he knew she was the Nightwatchman, before he'd rescued her from Winchester...

She is and she isn't the Marian he knew. Almost reaching out, always withdrawing.

"It has been some time since I last saw you." What to say, what not to say. "I suspect the Sheriff tired somewhat of my old leathers and... well. He disposed of them. The rest...time changed."

Possibly staring at Guy passed out from drink day and night might have pushed the Sheriff to throw his jacket overboard. That or the stench.

[queenofmay]

It careful picked set of words she chooses to say, herself. She understands what he's saying, the words, at least. But they don't make as much sense. The last time she tried to take anything of his on faith it almost cost her Father, and then it did cost her the house, the whole of their lives.

Flames and ashes she dreams of for a house, life, she still hasn't seen again.
"How long do you want me to believe it's been since you've seen me?"

[landlesslord]

"I last saw you...just over a year ago." Time passed so quickly at the beginning, days and nights merged into one.

He wants to touch her to prove that she's real. He can feel the itch in his fingers to take her hand.

He doesn't.

[queenofmay]

A year, or just over a year. Everything else that has happened has happened in that much time pretty much hasn't. A year and half, maybe stretching. But a year beyond seeing her. Here, or there. She knows time can be odd.

"And you're dead." Which doesn't sound like she believes it. Simply that she's repeating it. He hasn't seen her in a year, and supposedly, he's dead. Far away maybe? And faux Nottingham might have some small bit of peace.

It's barely humoring to ask. "How did that happen?"
Her demons never died, when they could torment her more.

[landlesslord]

"That I am." He knows it, in his bones. That, and the sword that had run him through and the poison he knew to have mixed with his blood.

"The Sheriff and my sister."

He eyes Marian speculatively.

"I'm not sure you'll believe the rest."

[queenofmay]

Vasey killing anyone wasn't a surprise. People died around them all the time. More than she could stand to remember sometimes, and she made herself remember each of them. Each life he took. Vasey was a maniac, but he was far more fond of keeping Guy on a leash to use at his leisure. Like a mad dog.

Her brow furrowed. "Because this is the part that is believable?"

Guy had a sister. She did know that. The faintest of memories, that never quite felt like hers. About her, and listening to him speak about his mother. But he'd never talked of his sister at home. And the idea that his sister could be involved in his death?

[landlesslord]

"Yes."

Guy realises that perhaps Marian has no knowledge of how dysfunctional his family became towards the end of it really being a family.

"We were trying to delay the Sheriff's troops, to allow the villagers to escape the castle."

And that's not even the most unbelievable part... unless Marian has not yet stood beside him to defend the castle.

[queenofmay]

He's right. It is rather unbelievable. She's trying to imagine Guy helping anyone that was not himself. Especially, the people of Nottingham Castle, or Nottingham himself. The number of people who've been hurt or starved on his word alone.

Marian grasped the only faintly logical thing to grasp. "We?"

Since it wasn't his would be killers, or herself, some year long gone, that he would referencing. Someone else? There was supposedly someone else in this long tale of phantasm who would have been willing to work at his side? Trust him?

[landlesslord]

"Hood." Guy's not quite sure which is more unlikely. The former or... "And our brother, Archer."

"There were a lot of unexpected changes." He could never have expected that he would have been the one to kill Marian.

[queenofmay]

They were done with logical all together at those four words. Hop, skip and jump straight beyond it into ludicrous. So very much it seems Marian's mouth forget how to get to talk for ten seconds. Barely opening, or pressing, blinking and shifting her head. Which settled finally into a line. A rather unpleased, and unpleasing, one.

For being toyed with, for the fact she even feels surprised or angry that she is being toyed with. It is so much easier to be angry though. To roll it into the constant indignation on the other side of the door. "Robin of Locksley had no siblings."

Of that she is beyond certain. Her life would bear the stamp of that truth and it did not. There were not so many noble born children in Nottingham that you could over look them. Or claim to be related to them unjustly. She had been under Robin's feet all his life. She would know if there was anyone else (beside's Much).

[landlesslord]

"And I had no little brother." Guy hardens, almost imperceptibly shifting closer to the old him. "There are things that you do not know about his family and mine."

He remembers the hurt, the betrayal, the abandonment. He remembers thinking it was his fault. He remembers being made to look after himself and his sister for there was no one else until they could make their way to France.

[queenofmay]

That is more familiar. It's wrong to take comfort in that. That flash of rigidity. To only let her gaze narrow at being rebuked. "I was born into the world with his family in it."

For how very little they were. For how very quickly Robin grew up. For how much of her life was tangled up in his, from the very beginning. "I would know."