She was a sight so powerful his senses blurred, unable to cope with the full experience of her beauty. He trembled as he held her, the brutal dimension of her delicate form both binding and alienating him all at once: she was contradiction made flesh. Just as he could not understand her, he could not look past her. He might never be able to love again after her; there was nothing left in him, all had been overcome by that sinuous beauty who seduced him even as he bled the life out of her.
Vaizey rode out with Guy to find refuge as soon as they could. The horse wore down in the sun and the sand, but Vaizey pushed forward. The assassination plan had failed, he was exposed as a traitor, and his lieutenant had been reduced to a shocked, delirious mess. A soldier's thick hands gripped him at his mid-section. For the first time he could remember, Vaizey feared Guy. The matrices of blood covering those hands were a warning – if Gisborne could kill Marian, he could kill anyone.
She fills the negative spaces; he can't even breathe without touching her.
He sees her out of the corner of his eye at the castle, a whisper of her skirt rounding corners or passing stairs. Sometimes he wanders the castle, lost in thought, and will look up to find himself at her door, then wonder how he ever came to be there. Somewhere in his soul he does not quite believe that she is not alive, and that the several weeks since her death have only been a joke.
Days after he has killed her, he will still remember the pain, but he'll also remember the anger, too, and the joy – fleeting – of killing her. He hasn't been able to shake it yet, and he knows that's why he'll burn.
They dismounted in the dark. Gisborne needed assistance coming down. His body knocked against the sheriff like a load of stones, all weight and no energy. Like a father with a child, the sheriff cooed and coaxed his lieutenant to sit against a strong tree trunk. Gisborne leaned his head all the way back against the rough bark and let the palm tree hold him. He looked straight up at the sky, searching for light, but the spiked palm fronds above closed around the stars like fingers curling around stones.
The sheriff knelt down and offered Gisborne water, but the man only coughed when he tried to drink. Gisborne's head lolled into his chest and he rasped, "You were right. She never loved me. She lied."
He thinks about it often but can't quite remember it right. The sun was hot, he knows, but the clouds were also gathering, he was melting in the heat but he didn't feel it, they were alone, they were being watched, she screamed, she said nothing, it was an accident, and he was always going to do it.
The next time he sees Robin of Locksley is in his dreams. The man stands over him with a flaming sword, reciting scripture, and the Biblical allusions are so obvious they're annoying. He remembers the day that Huntingdon held a fire-heated sword at his neck, having found the black wolf's mark on Guy's arm.
"You are not God, Huntingdon," he growls, and the next thing he sees is movement, and then nothing. He wakes up.
Marian is a thought, an ember between his eyes.
In between the opening and shutting of eyes a ghost with her gaze comes to his bed and brings him a comfort laced with shame. She is his torment and his joy, his greatest guilt and his easy lay.
He knows he's going to hell anyway, so he tells himself he might as well enjoy the rest of his life while he can – Vaizey would – but some sort of deep-seated hatred of himself keeps him going, keeps him craving and grieving.
He didn't touch himself for months, after. He tried once, just to get the handle back, just to prove that he could, and it felt like it had taken hours. When at last he came, there was barely any relief, just short, jagged bursts, stars between his eyes, and pain. Even his fantasies were tainted. The whole experience left him feeling empty and unclean.
He felt like a rotten shell afterwards, like a chair without legs.
Marian did not cry, but he did. He wept.
The ache in his lips stopped at the tint of fresh bile; the last embers of his lust washed away. He dropped her and she sank down to her knees before him, her eyes never leaving his. Her eyes were water blue, North Sea blue.
The last time he had seen her cry was when her father died. He could still taste the salt on his lips after she had pushed him away, that day, and yet she had not once cried on the voyage over.
Marian had stood on the ship's prow with him, and he had held his tongue in the salt-tinged air, sneaking glances at her, but never speaking, never kissing. She had stared out at the shifting horizon, back towards home, and when she looked at him her eyes were full of the sea.
The sea: the sea that pushes you away from home, the sea that exiles you from your father's grave, from your mother's grave, from any human who knows your name but the hollow shell of a girl by your side. The sea that grows between you, even when you're near.
He hated water, but he wouldn't trust flame.
The heat of the sun pressed down on him suddenly, like it had been hiding before, and he was back in Acre, away from the safety of his memories, his nightmares.
He led her onto the arcade, steering her away from the sounds of the justice system at work, emanating from below. She kissed him here once, in the summer. It seemed a different world now.
Do you know the worst crime a man can commit? he had asked, gently trying to explain the ways of the world to a woman he foolishly thought he understood.
Her eye was keen, her reply swift. Murder?
No, betrayal.