Following the return of what was left of the outlaws to England, Allan found himself with a lot of time on his hands. Normally he would have located the nearest tavern with passable ale, and a pretty girl to keep him occupied, but now that seemed pointless. Instead he sat on a large log, the remnant of a large tree coupled with a felling storm, and thought. He felt guilt, and decided that the best way to resolve his feelings was to think them over, work out why he felt as he did, and then push this feeling as deep into his mind as he could manage so it wouldn't interfere with his life.
He allowed himself an afternoon, hoping that an afternoon was all it took so he could carry on as usual. He started with the guilt.
He was there for the goodbyes, the farewells. It didn't matter. All he could remember was that he wasn't there for the living before the goodbye. He hated that this was how it turned out. He regretted being taken in by the lure of riches and full meals. And he had thought it wouldn't affect him; he didn't know now how he had expected to make it through without a qualm.
His one afternoon spilled over into the next few. He spent an awkward time discovering himself and once that experience was out of the way, he thought about love.
He wondered often about love, possibly because he had nothing better to do. It was because of love that one of his best friends now lived with the other, so many thousand miles away. It was because of love even that Gisborne killed Marian: he could not have her love and she had given it to another. Robin still lived because of his love for Marian, even though she was dead.
Love had a lot to answer for.
True to form, he did not think so much of the love of others, but more of the lack of love in his own life. Everyone he counted a friend had loved, except for perhaps Much, whose brief encounter may not have qualified as love. Allan had felt attraction and lust in large quantities, but never the kind of love that gave people compulsions to abandon everything they knew. Though, he had felt a barely-there love for his friends that he thought would be enduring.
He found that every morning as he woke up he felt more like Will. More quiet, dependable, even, much as it shocked him, a little more honest. That got him thinking; if he was becoming Will, who did Will wake up as? And the thought of this newfound superfluous decency was a little uncomfortable. Hell, next he'd be nurturing a conscience – not something to have too much of as his preferred method of keeping himself was thievery.
He could spin a web of lies with a thousand words and give so much of what wasn't there, and yet, when he needed to say the things that mattered, namely the truth, he could find only a few words.
The most potent, most important thousand words were the ones he did not say. The meant more unsaid than they ever could tarnished by words and lies. So Allan figured it was best not to think about them, just in case, so there was no chance of them slipping out. Anyway, if he thought too much he might find more of this infernal decency. Who needed that?
