A/N: My first ever Robin Hood fic. I've been wanting to write something Guy/Marian for ages, but before I had any ideas, I saw 3.09 and sort of stopped wanting Guy/Marian. I cried buckets after that one, and after the season finale. Something Guy said in those last moments bugged me, so this fic was born.

Hope my attempt at RH fic isn't too bad – please review with any thoughts, and I hope you enjoy it!

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Someone Waiting

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He could not see, he could not hear, he could not feel anything, not even pain. It was not as if he had lost his five senses, but as if there was nothing to sense. Is this what being dead is like? he thought. Experimentally, he tried to move a finger, only to realise he had no fingers to move. He felt curiously disembodied. He knew who he was, but not where. For what seemed like hours he stayed – lay? Stood? Floated? He did not know – there in the darkness, until finally he would have even been relieved to find himself in hell. Endless torment, perhaps, but at least he would have something tangible to dread, something to try and escape, however futile the efforts. Anything would be better than this all-pervading nothingness.

If he had had a voice, he would have cried out. But what was the use in even trying? As far as he could tell he didn't even have a mouth to cry out with. If he could have rammed his fist into something, he would have. But where was that something? Where was his fist? There was nothing. Just Guy and the dark.

This was why when he felt a light touch on his hand – his hand! He had a hand! – the explosion of sensation almost took the form of something visible, and he could almost see the light which kindled a tiny spark of hope inside him.

Gradually, his senses came back. He could feel the touch now with more clarity, and he could even feel the softness of a feather mattress beneath him. He could even smell faintly, a scent he was certain he had inhaled before, for all that he could not quite remember what it was and where. However, he still could not see, but it was not blindness – he could see the red of his eyelids and knew that if he could only regain the power of movement – which, it seemed, had yet to return to him – then he could open his eyes.

Surely this cannot be hell? he thought. The comfort in which he lay, the familiar and pleasant scent in his nostrils; this could not be right. Perhaps this was hell – perhaps in another second it would all be gone and he would find himself in the pool of fire and brimstone, and the true agony would be that he had thought for a moment that he, the lifelong sinner, could escape it all.

What he heard as he regained his sense of hearing drove all such thoughts completely out of his mind.

'"No one waiting for me" indeed,' a very familiar voice muttered, the annoyance in her voice at odds with the gentleness with which she continued to stroke his hand. 'Men; typical.'

He could not breathe, he could not swallow; he could not decide if his heart was racing or if it had stopped altogether. He had to open his eyes now, had to see for himself... With an almighty effort and through sheer power of will, he forced open his eyes, and all he could do was stare up at her in joyous disbelief. As she looked down at him, her eyes filled with tears and she smiled such a smile of warmth and affection as had never been directed at him before. Her next words when they came lacked conviction. 'Ungrateful little bastard,' she said.

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