Author: vultues
Fandom: BBC's Robin Hood
Title: Of Threads and Fate
Rated: G
Spoilers: Season two finale.
Characters: Fate, our hero and the girl he loves.
Summary: She is a determined mistress, Fate.
Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it isn't mine.
A/N: Just a little bit of oddness, written in the middle of the night.
She is a determined mistress, Fate. More so than any woman could ever be for the simple fact that she has not the slightest shred of humanity. She knows what must be done, and she ensures that it is.
Make no mistake; my mistress is an artist, not a creator. She does not make the threads - destiny, time, life - but she weaves them expertly into her tapestry, the fabric that is reality. She is beyond the affairs of humans, beyond emotions and the beautiful, brutal, fleeting thing that is life. She was never born so will never die, and cares only for her tapestry. The individual threads do not matter so long as they fall into place.
But lately her weaving grows ambitious, depends too much on just one thread. It takes the form of a man, one she has skilfully shaped as the hero f her tale. But he is mortal and alive, no mere fabrication of her own, and possesses that tricksome quality, free will.
There are rules, you see. Unwritten and so old that their origins have long been forgotten, if they ever existed at all. But she knows them, and adheres. She grooms and moulds, carefully sculpts and guides, but never takes control.
She is perhaps a jealous mistress too, dear Fate, because she has always existed alone, intangible so she can never be touched. She will never be loved. It is a fascination of hers, this emotion that her pawns so easily succumb to. Her perfect little hero is so full of it. It makes his thread brittle, liable to snap and unravel all of her plans. Fate will never feel heartbreak, never suffer grief, and does not comprehend the attachment her hero has for the mortal girl with the brown hair and sky-coloured eyes. She understands, though, that the girl interrupts the pattern. If she is not careful, this hero will give his life for the girl, and she has already planned for his use elsewhere. Fate can't afford the tangles the girl creates in her careful web. She cuts the thread.
And now she has it, the perfect weave and her perfect protagonist, so easy o manipulate now that she has cut those ties that linked him to distractions. He fits her pattern perfectly now. He will do what he must, and leave no loose ends.
But his thread frays, weakens rapidly now and she can only hope hat it will last long enough. She cannot comprehend this loss of strength, does not know what heartbreak feels like. But she had shaped him skilfully, and is reassured that the thread will not give until she has finished this weaving.
When the thread finally breaks it is all she can do to tie if off. There is regret, but it is tempered by a sense of satisfaction; this particular portion of her tapestry, named the legend of Robin Hood is completed. Her hero served her well, served his purpose. That was what he existed for, in the end.
Fate still doesn't understand love or heartbreak, and perhaps she will never learn to see the people rather than just their cause. But just this once, she does what she can. She takes the last few frayed fibres left of him and weaves them together with the girl's. Into legend.