Title: Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair
Author: LiveJournal ID Nettlestone Nell
Word Count: 2793
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Guy, Marian, (Guy/Marian?)
Spoilers/Warnings: Season One, Season Two, and my other INTERCOMM 2011 submissions, "A Bit Too Much" at 'Treat Much Right', "Deposed" at 'Society for People Who Are Afraid of Maid Marian', and "The Long Dark Knight of the Soul" at 'Sir Guy Treats YOU Right'.
You should read those first. They are deranged, but (thankfully?) brief. Four of 6.2 in the "We Are 2011" fic series.
Dolly Parton was not injured in the writing of this INTERCOMM 2011 submission.
Summary: Current events caught on tape in modern-day London further dredge up an unresolved past.
Disclaimer: No one can truly own the legend of Robin Hood, but BBC/Tiger Aspect seem to hold rights to this particular iteration.
Genre; Category: Comedy/Drama/Angst; Short Fic
LiveJournal Community: Sir Guy Treats YOU Right
Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair
The stylist lowering the chairback (and therefore his head) into the washtub was clearly Saracen. Not that anyone took much notice of such things anymore. Well, perhaps some did. But still, generally, not like the old days.
He wondered if his acquired-over-time familiarity with the native tongues of her people might outstrip her own. After all, her accent was London posh, as was this salon. There was very little about her, other than her eyes and skin, to connect her with Palestine as he had known it. The women of Palestine as he had known them.
"Jumi! Jumi!" a shampoo girl called to her, "did you see? On telly? Out in front of BBC Tower - doesn't your cousin Sadir work there?"
The shampoo girl re-wound the DVR to play what she had seen on the news channel: security camera footage from two days ago. A long, black limousine pulling carelessly close to the curb and the doorman's desk, its rear door opening and a man being thrust out onto the pavement, where he was shortly joined by a woman on her knees, offering him assistance, while a second man of negligible height dashed toward the chauffeured car and made his getaway.
"Says they can't find any of the parties involved," the salon receptionist joined in. "Everyone's disappeared." She seemed to hit on a moment of inspiration. "You should ask Sadir."
"Flash mob," offered one of the stylists, until a manicurist shot her down, proclaiming that, 'so 2007'.
"Funny-or-Die prank," suggested another in the middle of doing a foil.
Over his head he heard this Jumi announce, "more like 'conspiracy to cover something up'."
The others scoffed at her notion, quickly returning to their individual jobs.
Jumi began her lather of his head in earnest, and his line of vision disappeared in the wake of her upper body occluding it.
Her hands worked in the shampoo, not roughly, but efficiently, purposefully. "There are more things in heaven and earth," she portentously told off the others' disbelief, "than are thought about in your philosophy, Horatio."
"You like Hamlet?" he said, by way of trying out a conversation.
"I'm sorry, it's too hot?" she replied, having misunderstood him over the sound of the sprayer rinsing the shampoo, and her concentrating on the scalp massage to follow.
Well, that was the thing, wasn't it? Not the play, but being understood. Always, and still. Still the thing. He wished he had the DVR remote, wished he felt confident enough to ask the receptionist to re-run the scene again. It was the first time he had seen it - seen her, really her, not a spectre like as came to Faustus, not a mental image culled from memory, but: Marian. The first time in what seemed like an aeon.
The security cam footage was grainy, and the focal point was ten feet to the back of her, her hair for the bulk of the only seconds-long clip obscuring her face.
In truth, he had recognized Hood first (though Locksley had curled up when landing to soften the impact, then rolled up on his knees and elbows), had recognized the Sheriff's unmistakable scamper when he was having a good time, second...which meant the woman had to be (of course had to be) Marian.
He resisted the urge to immediately walk out of the salon to get back to his flat and his laptop and see if the clip had been posted yet on YouTube. To fullscreen it, loop it, study it, dissect it for hours on end.
The stylist's nimble fingers continued at their task, trying to release eight centuries of tension.
As he found himself doing in times of stress or indecision, his left thumb and first finger gripped his right hand at the meat between that thumb and fingers, rubbing at the unnatural marking there that would never fade, never disappear.
The stylist wrung out his hair, throwing a towel (Egyptian cotton) over his head as she directed him toward her chair.
Once seated, she asked him, "What'll you have today, then?"
"All of it," he said, at the last moment finding the words trying to stick in his throat. "Take it all."
The look on her face was one of surprise, followed by curiosity. "How long has it been since you've had it cut?"
He forced the words to come out, making his reply unintentionally gruff, "a very long time."
She smiled and tied it off into a queue, efficiently making the first cut up around his ears. She placed the cut hair (still held together by an elastic) on the counter in front of him, now working to section what was left on his head into clips before proceeding.
He could not help himself. He reached for the hair, and he heard her immediate reaction.
"Sorry," he said, squinting his eyes closed with his gaffe. He had not thought his reaching would have altered his position enough to disrupt her work.
He looked down at the queue of hair, his hair. It was done.
Marian's touch he had long ago, of necessity, had to wash away, small kisses or pressure from gentle hands on his skin had proven ephemeral. But his hair, this he had kept with him. This he had purposed to do. Hair was dead as he (in his way) had been dead. But still, it was the hair that Marian had touched. His last, and final, physical connection to her.
"I love Robin Hood," she had told him, "I'm going to marry Robin Hood."
He had looked over to Richard Plantagenet, the King, lying there in the sand, unseated from his mount. He saw Carter rushing into the square. His chance to get it right - to kill the King - was evaporating. Glory (among Prince John's compatriots), Wealth and Power were vanishing before his very eyes. But without Marian, what would they be?
Her announcement was like the pillars pushed down by Samson in the Philistine house. As it came to his brain and he began to process it, everything became unstable and threatened to topple. Each time he had thought he understood her, understood what they meant to each other...the day she assaulted him at the altar, the discovery of her as the Nightwatchman - a person he considered to be his nemesis, his enemy - each of these revelations was like a balancing stone of those pillars removed, setting them closer to collapse.
But then, days like the impending-razing of Nottingham; always something to prop it up again, something to again set it plumb.
But the finality here, that it had been Hood all along. Or at least, if not all along, then in the end (where it truly counted). Carter was closer, the King would soon be protected, doubtless re-armed.
He thrust his sword away from himself, onto the ground clumsily in the interest of speed. It lay impotent, flat, shining. Winking like Excalibur in a lady-less lake of sand.
His hand went for his curved blade dagger (it was not lost on him that it was the same dagger as had bit into the Nightwatchman), and he palmed it like an old friend, and brought it to his chest.
Her eyes had been too closely trained on him. She had seen his intent, seen his focus shift away from killing the King and finding a future for himself, to killing himself and leaving the King to her, for her, for the world from which he would remove Sir Guy of Gisborne. As 'Gisborne' no longer existed as a place, so, shortly, would its lord, its ever-singular, sole resident.
She threw herself at him before he could slip the dagger (oh, how smoothly the sharp blade would slip!) underneath his rib and into his heart's pump, like cutting through a pudding.
There was a struggle. She tried to get him to surrender the knife. Carter arrived to aid the King.
"Let me do this!" he had shouted to her, begged her, not eloquent enough to explain that he was doing it for her, leaving her as she clearly wished to be rid of him.
But the knife had been hard to keep from her, its curved design making it awkward to handle. It had gotten away from his control, but not fully into hers. Down she went. In horror, he sank with her.
Hood's gang had had time to assemble before the bleeding was under control, the King holding him in abeyance with Carter's sword a short distance away, while the battlefield-savvy Templar tied off Marian's accidental wound.
"And now, for you," Richard had sneered at him, while the outlaws looked on. Hood, particularly, with murder in his eye.
"No, I beg You, Your Highness, no!" Marian had protested from her place reclining against Hood's lap. Her face, from loss of blood, was preternaturally pale, but her expression was predictably passionate.
"Lady?" the King had said, bewilderment in his voice.
"Do not kill him," she had cried, trying to pull herself across the sandy divide between the outlaws and where he kneeled in capitulation to Richard's sword, clearly condemned. "Grant me this, Sire, and I shall ask nothing of You, ever again."
"How so, Lady Marian?" the King asked for explanation.
"Marian, NO," Hood had said, ferocious in his dissent, falling silent again only at a warning look from Richard.
"We cannot let him live," Richard had announced. "He has plotted against Our person, against Our Huntingdon. He has even this day (a second time, We are told) nearly killed you."
"If you believe that to be true, Majesty, that he wished my life today, then permit me - the most recently transgressed against - to speak. To advocate on his behalf."
She looked to him, purposefully caught his eye. But she seemed so different, so foreign to him already. Did he know this woman? This woman of Hood's? Or had he only fooled himself into thinking so?
"I ask for your leniency. Give him to me to sentence, but do not take his life." Her voice was strong, but her breath support threatened to fail her.
Certainly she sounded of the Marian he knew, bargaining for the preservation of life, the possibility of redemption.
"As punishment is required...banish him. But let him live."
Is this what she would choose for him? Life, but without her? Without, even, England? He closed his eyes to her last words, as though the executioner's ax were even now falling.
"Let him live to redeem himself on earth, and earn a place of peace in his eventual death."
But he could not keep them closed for long, knowing the seconds passed, his time in her presence already flying by, a forever without her in it (near it, even) looming like the eternal, unstoppable, oncoming night.
The King had considered her words for a long moment. "Very well. We shall strip him of his knighthood, and banishment it shall be."
The outlaws had gasped and rumbled with discontent at the pronounced sentence.
"With this caveat: none but Ourself or the Lady Marian may ever take action to kill this man, Guy of Gisborne." The King had sought out eye contact with Locksley. "None, Robin. And to ensure that he is known," Richard had tossed his signet into the white hot coals on the edge of a nearby fire, retrieving it with tongs, "We shall mark him as belonging to the Crown." The King locked onto his gaze. "As long as Our line sits on the English throne, you are forbid entering any part of Our kingdom."
With that, Carter had thrown him to the sand, putting a knee into his forearm, and the King had used the signet like a branding iron, singeing it into his skin above the webbing where his thumb met the first finger on his right hand. The spot where in any transaction, any exchange of money, or sealing of anything with a clasp of hands it would be seen, and known; the three lions rampant. The King's Mark.
Richard could not have known how he would soon leave the world without any line to sit upon England's or Aquitaine's throne. Could not have known how far and wide news of the Mark had spread, how it had hampered his life, as even when it was not visible to others (such as covered by a glove), or those he interacted with were not familiar with it, he knew it was there, a constant reminder of what treachery and hunger for power bought one: life, but hollow to the core, and solitary exile with only his own soul to wrestle, to re-examine his choices to infinity.
He had returned to England long ago, initially surprised to learn how the word of his deeds in the Holy Land had spread, altering in the telling until lies became accepted fact. This all but irrefutable twisted fiction slapped him in the face, stating that he had killed Marian, those interested putting a life taken where in point of fact a life given belonged.
"Like me to donate it, Love?" the stylist Jumi brought him out of his reverie. She referenced the queue of his hair he had buried his fingers in, still in his grip.
"Yes, certainly," he agreed, handing it back to her. "It does no one any good as is."
A song began to play on the muzak he had not heard before. She turned him back about from where she had earlier faced him away from the chair's mirror. His hair was quite trim to his head, now, perhaps a fleck or two of grey coming on, but still for the most part dark.
He examined the man in the reflection as he might size up another at a first meeting. The strength (or lack thereof) of the jaw, the set of shoulders - determined, or malleable? The eyes; steady, at peace? Or chaotic with indecision?
"Ooo, tag! Let me get that for you," she offered, her scissors at the ready, snipping the sales tag off the cuff of the new blazer he wore, bought only hours ago, his leathers now folded up in a Harrod's bag stowed in the lower cabinet of her station.
He followed her to the cash stand, where she rang in the sale. Her eye twinkled at him, slightly, taking in the haircut, the blazer, the Harrod's bag of old gear. "Whole new look for you, I'm guessing."
"Yeah," he agreed, something like the barest beginning of a smile tickling at the corners of his mouth. "Whole new look for me." He extended the flyer that had brought him here to begin with, its coupon needing factored into his bill.
She saw his right hand, her eyes tripping across the Mark there. Something in him tensed, as it always did in that moment before another's recognition usually dawned.
"Cool brand," she told him, her eyes creasing as she turned his hand with hers to look at it more closely. "Those are making a comeback, you know."
"Are they?" he asked, lightly surprised (by both her lack of understanding of it, and her reference-less fascination with it). "Coming back into style, you say? I had no idea."
She smiled.
His ears caught a snippet of the song again. "Who sings this, do you know?" he asked.
She inclined her head for a moment to listen, 'It's been a long dark night/And I've been a-waitin' for the morning/It's been a long hard fight/But I see a brand new day a-dawning.'
"Oh," she answered him. "Yeah, that's something Tamika's boyfriend - he's a DJ - remixed. An old Dolly Parton song." She continued to smile at him as the music sped up and crescendoed with an interesting mix of techno and a Gospel choir.
"Cheers," she called as he stepped out the door, into the downtown swell of busy Londoners beyond, the pavement teeming with them.
The track played him out the salon door. 'Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning/I can see the light of a brand new day/And everything's gonna be all right/It's gonna be okay...'
It had been a long time since he had felt a part of something. Of anything other than himself, his own inner space. Not like when he went in, his leathers, his demeanor instinctively causing people to distance themselves from him. In the blink of an eye he was jostled about among the crowd like anyone else, like everyone else.
Coming back, he thought. Indeed, though Jumi could not have guessed from where, or from how far.
His height let him see over the bulk of the city's denizens busily swarming about him, let him see beyond the immediate, off into the distance. It was not a bad view, really.
.+.+.
A/N: For thymelady, ladykate63, and whatcatydidnext, who in their kind LiveJournal comments wanted to know what happened in the Holy Land, and so I had to call an old friend and find out for them.
"We Are 2011" part 5 of 6.2 will be posted shortly, "Much Gets By with a Little Help From His Friends."
LadyKate1 actually has located what might be just the very picture of Guy's new haircut at the Robin Hood yuku board under the Richard Armitage Appreciation thread.