Summary: 'He knows he can shoot a man dead at a mile away, because more than once, that's what he's done.' A year after the horrors of the Holy Land, the nightmares Robin brought home with him have no intention of leaving him behind.
A/N: My first RH fic, filled with enough angst to choke on. You have been warned, so on that bright note - I hope you like it.
He's falling. Always falling.
For six years, he's been falling deeper and deeper and there is nothing to stop him. The black abyss has taken him, sucking him into its treacherous depths. He's stumbled into a swamp that will never relinquish its prize.
He tries to fight it, but there's no victory in this war.
There's no victory in any war. He knows that now. He didn't understand before, but that's come to change. He could fight his whole life but there's one battle he'll never win. One battle that was lost the first time his blade pierced human flesh.
He's swimming, but there's no fighting this current.
He's being swept away, left scrabbling for a handhold against the tidal wave that his memories have become. But the mighty torrent of his past deeds is many miles high and it has become swifter than the man it reflects. No one could beat this tide, and he doesn't have the strength to try.
He's hanging from a rope, but even death will not gift him with sweet release.
He feels like he must be dead. Surely hell holds no greater torment than this? Another agonising scream echoes in his ears and long dried blood splatters fresh on his hands. He rubs the appendages frantically until they are raw red, yet still he can feel a stranger's blood there.
He's frozen. Despair has him trapped, yet life will not release him.
His eyes are closed, yet clear as day before him a man kneels. Dark skinned, his face speckled red. The man is crying out in a language that is as gibberish on his foreign ears, but the message is all too clear. He can see it in the eyes. This man doesn't want to die. He has a home, a life, a family, a sweetheart waiting. But the order is barked, and the gibbering ceases. More dark stains appear on his sleeves.
He's drowning in an ocean and there are cold hands dragging him under.
It's no more than he deserves. Every waking hour he can see the massacre, is deafened by the clash of steel on steel, steel on flesh. And now he pays the penance from the men that fell by his hand.
He hears their cursing, feels their burning hatred.
They hate him. Even from the depths of their own deaths, they loathe the very thought of him. And why not? He killed them. He stole men from their wives, fathers from their children. Wives who will waste away to feed their young ones, children who will have to fend for themselves on the streets. The men will never appease their god for the blood they spilt, and they're headed straight to their hell for it. And he's the one who condemned them.
He's branded, a marked man.
Why didn't he die? The wound was fatal, it should have killed him. If he was saved for a higher plan, he cannot see it. Perhaps this is his punishment? Perhaps it has been deemed that death would be too kind, that he is undeserving of whatever afterlife there may be. Men who slay their fellows, whose only crime is to live another way, are not worthy of even the torturous existence in hell prophesised by fearful churchgoers.
He wipes his blade, but the blood smears across his existence.
He doesn't want to fight any more. Why must he go on? He loathes his bow, the treasure with which he has more skill than any other man. Even as he runs a finger over the surface, smoothed by workmanship and many days of use, it is all he can do not to throw it into the flames. He knows he can shoot a man dead at a mile away, because more than once, that's what he's done. It is stolen craftsmanship from dead men, just like the soiled sword.
He gazes into the fire before him, and can feel it consuming his flesh.
Burning. Guilt, anger. The hated bloodlust of battle. The flames lick over his body, feeding on the dry wood of his despair. What has he done? What demons of hell possessed him through those years – and what folly, what foolish fantasy led him away to it?
He's burning, and he'll burn in hell forever.
For the blood he spilt, the lives he stole, he knows he's doomed to endure an eternity of damnation. He would try to cleanse his soul, but it's too late. An outlaw in his own country, a cursed man in another. No matter how many people he helps now, he knows he'll never be forgiven.
He's falling. Always falling. And this time, there's no way out.