Marian's 5th Milliversary

[queenofmay]

Marian entered through the painting of The Dogs Playing Poker, carrying a medium sized lacquer box, and giving very little attention to her, once again, missing Door. Especially once The Bar presented her request for a tea and biscuits service, with that of May Lily tea and the gift of a medium sized cake, iced with the number five in dark emerald

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[landlesslord]

When Guy enters the Bar, from a couple hours spent walking in the cold, his thoughts are filled with Marian.

This is where the conflict arises when he spots her at her table. He doubts she would welcome his presence and yet... he still wishes dearly to spend time with her.

Now that he has so much of it and is acutely aware of her mortal lifespan.

It doesn't make it easier to decide whether to go over and talk to her or not though.

[landlesslord]

"He was probably worried that you were planning some secret plot," He knows he started worrying about it after he knew what she had been doing in secret all those years. "If you had spent the day climbing trees, then at least he knew you were climbing trees."

"Do you miss..."

No, he can't ask if she misses her father. Not now. It hasn't happened. Not yet.

"Uh. Do you miss life being like that? Being a child?" It's a poor question, but the best Guy could come up with.

[queenofmay]

The awkward, halting questions leaves her wondering if he meant to ask something else -- whether else would have been worse, or simply too personal, or about their almost -- or whether it was simply his, not too irregularity with comfort in conversations of any sort of common or personal nature.

But when he does get to it. The response is nearly instantaneous and impossible to stop.

"Do I miss it? The life were I was oblivious to all of the politics of my city, and the country, and the interrelation of it to other countries? Before everything changed --" Her eyebrows and chin had risen nye instantly, eyes dark with something far too edged toward quiet bitterness to be mistaken entirely in sarcasm.

Before Robin left, and her father was deposed. Before Guy and Vasey.

Before several dreams had been shattered and truths lain bare.

'Poor question' did not even begin to touch it.

[landlesslord]

Guy shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. Perhaps in the past he might have glared at Marian for her tone, but now, knowing what he didn't ask...knowing what he had done to her over and over...

"Everything seemed simpler then." He's quiet. Words like ignorance is bliss and still having a dream and trusting that your parents could fix everything tumble around in his thoughts unsaid.

What can he say to her after everything that has passed between them?

He cannot say sorry, as much as he wants to. It is too soon still and he doubts Marian would want to hear his apologies (again).

He moves on.

"I wish I had appreciated my parents more as a boy and that we had a home."

Till it had all ended in flames and regret.

[queenofmay]

Marian's face wrinkle at the words that sharpness earned, even as she was stuck at whether it was supposed to be hint that he'd like a seat. The awkward shifting before he spoke. The fact it would have been polite by now to have offered him one of the chairs at her table.

At home, required politeness or simply taken. But here, all off balance, and how she'd walked away from his last time. She was not required to pay him any courtesy or mind. But she was not given to being a cruel person either. Anywhere.

"You were very young then," she offered, a little awkwardly. "Children rarely are given to the necessity of understanding the value of the things they take for granted."

She hadn't until Robin left. She hadn't any thought the world could change so drastically. That anything could be taken from her. And now, now, even to say those words, she knows there are so many children across Nottingham who've never had the luxury of that ignorance.

[landlesslord]

"I was old enough," Old enough to hang, old enough to see things and not understand, old enough to feel the burn of righteous anger at betrayal.

Old enough to feel the weight of responsibility for so many things.

He supposes that he cannot feel any older than he does now. Absently he traces the rim of the clay cup, before becoming aware of his actions and tilting it to see the design.

"Hm. Sherwood?"

[queenofmay]

That he reaches out and touches her things, without asking, doesn't surprise her. But when he finally is touching one, it is her turn to shift awkwardly. Because it is the mug she made with Mia, while she had amnesia.

During the same week that Guy had taken such care of her, enough so that it had shifted her opinion of him. The words he had said, the words she refused to let cross her mind. That she'd thought of so much, had convinced herself must be true.

Until the day she punched him at the altar. For her father. For herself.

"Yes," she said, with a small bit of reluctance, staring at his fingers against the bright greens and browns. The home of her heart, that she had known even when she had known nothing. "I made it, during my first year here."

[landlesslord]

"You're fond of the forest." It's a statement, rather than a question. "It is a fair likeness."

Sherwood Forest has never been as warm to him as it seems in Marian's image of it. It was a poor shelter for a boy and his sister, it was the place where Meg finally died, the place where he learned the truth of his parents' deaths and not much of a home when he became an outlaw.

[queenofmay]

"Thank you, yes." She took a breath and decided it to press through it, still watching him holding her cup. The smallest echo of her forest here in this place. "I painted it when I could not remember either it or its name."

[landlesslord]

Guy remembers that time, distantly - it was before the abortive wedding. "Or yourself."

He had worried about her then for the simple loss of memory, when time and time again she had been risking her life without his knowledge.

[queenofmay]

"Yes." She said, carefully. Looking back up at him. "Or myself."
Or who he was, what he'd done. To her. Her people. Her life.

[landlesslord]

"And I tried to remind you of some of it." Guy thought for a moment. "Or at least, the more favourable parts."

Yes, he had avoided the part where her hand had been forced into betrothal, how he was violent and brutal and hurt people.

He sighed. "That feels like it was a long, long time ago."

[queenofmay]

All of it did. Marian looked across everything on the table. It seemed so long and drawn out. Unbelievable tied up. Nowhere near over for her. And he --

"You would have me believe for you, that it is."

[landlesslord]

"Would you have me recount the upcoming details of your life?" The resignation is tinged with some frustration. "Tell you of the trials you face?"

"You don't even believe that I no longer live, Marian." Guy cannot keep to the formalities of lady or sir with someone so dear to him. "You would not believe what I could tell you of your future."

[queenofmay]

Marian has very little pity for Guy. Perhaps, not as far as 'ever,' but since her house, especially. She was unimpressed, and making no attempt to even conceal her disbelief, in this subject at least. She might have known people who were dead, but Guy had been several times alive.

"Then, prove it."

[landlesslord]

"That I'm dead?"

That he feels wrong in ways he can't explain? That being in this place feels like something has broken in the universe? That he feels like he doesn't belong in a place more strongly than he ever had before?

"I...my..." He flounders, for a moment. "My heart doesn't beat."