Disclaimer- Robin Hood isn't mine as I have now gone two years in a row without receiving any of the outlaws in my Christmas stocking. How disappointing.
Authors Note- Ok, so this is a tag to the finale, because it annoyed me. So if you haven't seen the finale, save yourself having to abuse me for telling you what happens, and just stop reading now. That's all the warning I'm giving.
Hope you like this little oneshot, which I'm using as a way to inspire my muse with the next chapter of Subterfuge.
Oh, and please forgive my horrific spelling of Djaq's other name, I tried so many ways, none of them seemed right… Saphia? Safia? Who knows. Also, for the purposes of this fic Carter has been resurrected (though only for a less-than-tiny part, don't get excited) simply because his death annoyed me.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
He had thought that the birds would make it easier, they could make the journey in a matter of days, so surely that meant that there would be almost constant contact, a continuous stream of pigeons making their way to and fro across the land.
What he hasn't considered, and he is kicking himself every minute of every day for this now, is that the pigeons are made for carrying desperate warnings and signals, economically worded scraps that turn the tide of battles. There is room for little more than
'Hope you got home safe, weather is hot and dry, W & D'.
A month ago the birds were exciting to him, and he could walk for hours among their many cages, wanting to try and learn how each one was different from its peers, to understand the personality that Djaq saw in each and every bird as she chatted to them excitedly. Now he can hardly bring himself near them, for they, like everything else in the oppressively hot prison that he has volunteered for, are a reminder of what he has left behind, of what he can not recover. The pigeons, the creatures he has trusted to lessen the blow of living in such a terribly foreign world, bring him nothing that he wants, they arrive with nothing more than tiny scraps of a life that he had lived and loved, of a country and people that he had been prepared to die for.
'Sherwood the same, weather is cold and wet, checked on Luke'
They have been here nearly two months now. Two long, searing hot months. It feels longer. It feels as though he has been here his whole life, for he seems that distant from that home and friends that he has left behind.
Their first night in Sherwood forest had felt strange and foreign, when his neck still hurt from the rope digging into it, and his voice had been slightly croaky, as though from disuse. Allan's snores had been an unwelcome intrusion; as had Robin's mutterings, which had crescendoed into the night. The ground had seemed damp and hard, so different from the comfortable pile of blankets that he slept on at home, and he had missed the security of knowing that his dad and brother were only metres away should he need them. There had been no walls, no warmth, and alien sounds going on all around him.
And yet faster than he had expected, Sherwood had become home. Allan's snores had lulled him to sleep, at least until his friend had left the group again. He had adjusted to the cool, become used to sleeping on the ground, grown to appreciate the security of having his new family only metres away.
'Food here is very different from Much's, still hasn't rained, We are still Robin Hood! W + D'
His first nights staying in their new house, enormous and sunbaked, after the others had left, had seemed alien, so much more foreign than the forest had been. He had trusted that things would improve, that before long he would fit in, as he had learned to do with the gang. The heat, the food, the unfamiliar sound of Arabic grating against his ears, he had assumed that these he would get used to, learn to appreciate, to enjoy.
But it has been this long, and he still feels as though he is one man on the outside, looking into a world that doesn't want him or need him. He is an Englishman living in a world that has been ravaged by the English, that has only just stopped fighting the English. Those that don't cringe in fear glare and sometimes spit, hatred of him and the people he stands for shining in their eyes.
He wants to feel justified in hating these people back, the ones who judge him because he is pale and they aren't, though he knows that this isn't fair, because he had been the one who had shrunk back from the caravan the first day they met Djaq, believing, just for a moment, that Turk flu was going to be the end of him.
'Raining enough here for everyone, (there is nothing wrong with my cooking!), We are All Robin Hood!'
Djaq is his cornerstone, his only link with the world that he craves to return too. He feels guilty, most of the time, because he knows that it can not be easy for her either, knows that it is unfair to need her to help him as well, when she is having trouble readjusting as well. People have to call her twice or three times before she will turn her head to the name Safia, and it is obvious, to Will at least, that she finds the fancy dresses she needs to wear restrictive and strange after the clothes she wore in the forest. Here in this country women occupy a different position to the one that Djaq had in Sherwood, they are more ornamental, less important, and Will knows that this sudden loss of status is hurting her, even if it was barely perceptible. He tries to help, to encourage her, to let her know how important she is to him. The weak smiles that he receives for his efforts make him think that maybe he is her cornerstone too.
He knows that she is judged for his presence, can see it in the furtive glances that old acquaintances give him when she introduces him.
'Is the King making headway? Truce is still pretty tentative here, W + D'
He can't get used to the feeling that there isn't someone lurking behind every step, trying to kill him. Sure there are those who are distinctly unfriendly towards him here, but the worst that anything had come to was some bloke grabbing him and throwing him up against a wall, an incident broken up by a passer by before any real damage could be done. It isn't the same as having a garrison full of guards waiting to pounce on any mistake you make, men whose personal mission involves hunting you down and hanging you in a cobblestone square with all of the peasantry watching.
There are few nights when his dreams aren't haunted in some way or another. He dreams of losing his friends in battles in which they are outnumbered, of Allan's pleading eyes losing their sparkle as blood dribbles out of a mortal wound, Much sobbing over Robin's body, Little John overpowered by a never ending stream of soldiers. He wakes sweating and gasping from these dreams, unable to shake the guilt of being safe and warm, too warm, while they lie huddled in the cold, facing odds that were once intimidating, but are now impossible.
Sitting in the middle of the night he wonders how they could have possible thought that this was the right decision, to leave a gang that had already lost Marian another two men short. True, Robin has the king on his side, and he would help them, but fixing England was going to take time, and defeating the Sheriff and Gisbourne was not a four man job. Will misses the feeling that he makes a difference in the world. His axe is growing dull from disuse here.
'Sheriff putting up fight. Holding our own. Some close calls.'
He has spent so much of the last year furious with Allan, all of his hurt at the betrayal channelling into anger. He called him a traitor, and ignored the frenzied calls of his subconscious when Robin had made plans to kill his best friend. He had barely acknowledged the man, ignored his overtures, determined not to be hurt again, to feel that betrayed and used.
And yet hasn't he also betrayed the group? Allan had moved deliberately against them, but he had always returned when they needed him most, saving Will from the hangman, rescuing Marian, letting them all out of that barn.
The climax of the battle between the King and the Black Knights is coming, might have already come, and Will is boiling to death in a country filled with people who hated him.
He is a bigger traitor than Allan had ever been.
'Carter still working to hammer out truce, we are well, hope you are too, W + D'
In England it had always been close quarters, the camps were never particularly big, and though there was an entire forest to escape from one another the threat of patrols finding them meant that they stayed within a small set of boundaries. Will could sit with Djaq whenever he wanted, and they would talk for hours, him whittling slowly, while she stirred a poultice, or practiced with her sword.
Here there are rituals, courtship procedures, rules and boundaries. He had given her a ring on the boat on the way across, wanting her to know that whatever happened he would always be hers. But living here in this country being engaged simply meant a different set of procedures have to be attended to. There are few opportunities for them to just sit and talk in private, which leaves him little chance to talk to her about how different her country is, to ask her whether she misses Sherwood's dark canopy as much as he does. The times they do talk she insists that she is fine, and so he does the same, pushing down all his fears and anxieties, and hoping that everything will improve. They will be married soon, very soon, though even that seems wrong, because his best man is 'not being funny' in a country hundreds of miles away, along with everyone else that Will considers family.
Allan had promised to look after Luke, check on him at least once or twice a month the way Will had, though it is not the same and they had both known it. Luke had lost his father because of Will's stupidity, and now his brother has turned tail and run, leaving him almost completely alone in a country that could quite possibly descend into civil war.
'Visited Luke, doing fine, summer lasted a day and then vanished again'
In the end it is Djaq who snaps first, which surprises Will, because he had been so sure that no matter how she felt she was still happier here, in her home country, than she could have been in England. He has spent most of their time in the Holy Land wondering if she felt as much an outsider in his home as he does in hers.
It is late at night, and he is just out of the shower, loose pyjama bottoms on, when she bursts through his door, tears springing at the corners of her eyes.
He takes her in his arms, unsure if he is breaking courtship rules or not, and rocks her gently until she is prepared to tell him what on earth is going on.
"I want to go home". Despite her tears she speaks clearly, he just doesn't recognise what she means at first.
"But, we visited your home? Remember? It was a ruin. That's why we are staying here."
She smiles at him, exasperated, and he is reminded of a hundred times that she has rolled her eyes like that at him, as Much and John fight in the background about quality of food, and Allan practices card tricks.
"No, I mean home. I mean the camp, in the forest, with the men who do not know how to bathe properly."
His next words are breathless, he is trying to fight down excitement, to make sure that she is sure of her decision before he lets her know how much he misses England.
"Why? Why do you want to go back?"
She sighs, and it is clear to him that she has given this some serious thought.
"I thought that everything would be the same, you know? That things could go back to normal here, that we would fit back in to the life that I had loved so much. But things are not the same, my family is no longer here, and living in this house, being around people I once knew, it does not ease the pain the way I thought that it would. I thought that if I were home I could deal with my father's death more easily, with Djaq's death. But, trying to live this life without them, it just makes it more obvious what I have lost."
She is cocooned in his arms, and he can feel that she is tense, that it is difficult for her to articulate what she is thinking.
"I have been spoiled in England. Now that I am back, now that I am Safia again, there is so much holding me back, holding us back. When I was in England I often thought of being able to come home, to be a woman again, but now that I am here I realise that I was a woman all along, I was simply freer when I was an outlaw."
She smiles, somewhat blearily, at the irony, and then continues, her voice cracking a little.
"I wake up and do not know where I am. The birds are not enough, they will never be enough. I want to know how everyone is, I want to see them again, I want to eat Much's terrible cooking, to bathe in that freezing river, to see you whittling again. I miss knowing that what I am doing is important to someone."
He's always loved her, this moment is just proof of why. It is a startling moment as he realises that her thoughts and his are so closely aligned that they could be from the same mind.
She looks ready to continue, as though she needs to convince him to leave a land that he has never felt comfortable in. He puts a finger to her lips and smiles.
"I love you" he says quietly, and she smiles too, broadly.
'Homeward bound. We will soon be Robin Hood again. W + D'
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Well, that was interesting. Not really the path I planned for it to take, but I think I fitted in everything I wanted. Hope you liked it, please leave me a review and a cookie, let me know what you thought! Thanks!