JUSTICE
A/N: Okay, awful title – but I honestly have no idea where this story came from. I never had any intention of writing Robin Hood fanfiction. In fact, I almost certainly didn't write this, it just sort of ... appeared on my laptop one night when I was meant to be redrafting the Harry Potter story I have been writing since the dawn of time.
Must be a virus, right?
Anyway, I figured the only way to get rid of this evil plot bunny, short of stewing it, was to set set it free on . If anyone would like to adopt it you are welcome to the bloody thing!
Chapter One
Meg's body is still warm. A moment ago, when Guy reached out to cover her small hand, the heat from her fingers had almost thawed his own, stiffened from weeks spent in a cold dungeon. He walks to the bank of the lake and does not look back, fists clenching remembered warmth. He longs to touch her again but fears the clammy moisture of death that will soon imprint itself upon her skin – its sickly, yellow-white pallour.
Instead he stares at the still water. The forest is silent. His mind is not.
Images invade it – phantasms of gnawing mice and the sharp beaks of ravens, sticky with dirt and human sinew. Try as he might he cannot rid himself of the sight of her pretty little face ruined by decay. He will have to bury her. Dig the grave with his bare hands because there isn't anything else, hands still slick with her blood, press her into the damp earth with the worms and the centipedes.
No ... it is too much to contemplate that now.
He forces himself to relinquish thoughts of burial, only to find them replaced by a litany of others, in turns gruesome and cruel. He has done so many evil things in his life that he is left with no memories to take solace in. Even the happy ones are tainted with betrayal.
Mist curls across the surface of the lake. He draws it into his lungs, lining them like a funeral shroud, creating within himself the absent certainty that he might sit here forever and never see the dawn, that he has reached the quiet end of days.
It should have been him. The spear biting into his side, his blood spent on the forest floor. Granted, this fate has a cruel symmetry to it – he destroyed Marian out of a love so mercurial it turned to hate, and that same hatred turned to humanity has destroyed Meg. But surely God would not want to exact His vengeance upon an innocent girl?
No. Not God. The Devil has done this. The Devil in him. What on earth possessed him to pick the maggots from her bread? A strange kindness. If he hadn't done so then the wretched girl would still be alive. Would never have come back for him, in any case. Would never have stepped in front of that spear.
Would never have saved him.
A branch snaps somewhere in the forest and he whirls around. Have they followed him, Isabella's men? No. No ... the sound came from the other side of the lake, a bird startled from its perch by an agile fox, perhaps, or an owl swooping for its prey in the velvet darkness. He scans the reeds on the opposite bank. They flutter like his nerves, unsettled by a sudden breeze. Above him the leaves move skittishly one against the other. His shoulders relax slightly.
Just a fox, he thinks.
It is dark when Guy regains consciousness. The clammy night air clings unpleasantly to his face and neck. Even his eyelids are sticky with it. He tries to move his arms and realises with a sinking sense of familiarity that he is tied to a tree.
Somewhere to his right he can hear the low crackling of a fire. Turning his face towards it, a blinding pain slices through his skull. He closes his eyes against the wave of white nausea that follows. When it is past he opens them again, slowly, although he already knows whose face he will see illuminated by the deep orange embers.
Hood hasn't noticed that his prisoner is awake. He stares into the flames like a victim of hypnosis. Guy musters a sneer of contempt as he drags his gaze away from his enemy, losing it in the misshapen blackness of the forest.
He wonders if they have found her.
A few moments later there is noise behind him. Leaves crunch underfoot, followed by voices. Guy slumps forward, ignoring the fresh bloom of pain at the nape of his neck as hairs are ripped from a congealed wound.
A rock, then. No wonder he cannot remember the fight.
He listens to the voices by the fire. It is the giant, John Little. He wants Hood to go back to the shelter and rest. "I'll keep watch," he says.
"No," says Hood. "He won't escape justice this time."
Their voices drop low and terse. After a moment the giant wins out and there is a louder rustling as the two men exchange places. Guy listens to the departing footsteps through the fallen leaves. He knows he should feel something. Indignance, vengeful anger ... but his chest is dry and hollow, like a straw man in a dark winter's field. He has even lost the dull, animal rage that has sustained him in these long months since...
Since.
Tuck and Allan are still awake when Robin enters the shelter. Much snores softly, and nearby Kate is wrapped in his precious rabbit-skin blanket, knees drawn protectively into her chest. A lantern, hung from crude rafters, swings in the breeze.
He wishes he could join them, but doubts that sleep will come easily tonight. Too much has happened: Isabella's betrayal, Kate's feelings for him, and now this...
He glances down at the girl that Brother Tuck is tending. Fifteen, maybe younger. The same age Marian was when he left for the Crusades. Her gown has been torn open to allow him to work and Robin quickly averts his gaze. It is not her nakedness that disturbs him, but something about the wound itself that stirs up long-stifled emotions. Sediments of pain which transport him from the forest to a hot, dusty square in the Holy Land ... one that is stained with his wife's blood.
"Will she live?"
"She's lost a lot of blood," says Tuck, without looking up, "but if we can prevent infection there will be nothing to stop her from making a full recovery."
"Good," says Robin.
His voice feels distant, drowned out by another, inward voice.
Gisbourne has done this...
Tuck finishes smearing a poulstice on the neatly stitched wound and starts bandaging it with lengths of gauze. Robin isn't sure where the material has come from, but he is too distracted to care very much. His thoughts are with Marian, and the monster outside who has killed her a second time. Who I have allowed to kill a second time. A dull headache pounds behind his eyes. Turning towards the bunk, he finds his way blocked by Allan, who steps in front of him with a strangled look upon his face.
"What about Guy?" he asks.
Robin's expression hardens. "He was condemned to death," he says. "We'll wait until dawn, and then make sure that the sentance is carried out."
"I'm not being funny, but—"
"You are being funny, Allan, if you're going to suggest we do anything else." He looks down at the girl. "Gisbourne has shown no remorse for his crimes, and I was a fool to let keep committing them. Even if he had shown remorse then he would still deserve to die. He killed Marian, and he would have killed this girl if we hadn't found him tonight."
Tuck looks up in surprise. "He spoke for her at the execution," he says, drawing his cloak over the girl's freshly bandaged torso. "He pleased for her life, with no thought for his own release."
"No, he didn't."
"We all saw it," Tuck insists, not liking this change in Robin. He glances at the sleeping outlaws, and then at Allan, who gives a tight nod as if not trusting himself to speak. "Ask yourself this, Robin – if Gisbourne was truly responsible for the girl's injuries, then why would he go to the trouble of dragging her so far out into the forest? Why not just leave her in Nottingham?"
"I cannot believe you are speaking for him!" Robin cries incredulously. Kate stirs in her sleep and he lowers his voice to a harsh whisper. "He probably brought her out here so that he could ... so that he could savour the crime without us trying to stop him! After all, we had to interupt him last time—"
"Robin, see sense—"
"This is not a matter for discussion!"
Tuck watches him for a moment and then sighs in defeat, seeing that whatever has come over Robin, there will be no reasoning with him tonight. "Very well. Kill Gisbourne if you must, but make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons. Revenge for its own sake is never sated, Robin. You might find that it leads to more problems than it solves."
Robin smiles at this, an ugly, insincere twist of the mouth. Allan takes a step back. He recognises that smile from the long voyage back from the Holy Land. There was a touch of madness in it back then, mingled with voiceless grief, but it has never truly frightened him until now. He looks away, frowning at the girl – Meg, was it? – at the same time acutely conscious of the condemned man they have tied to a tree outside. Only Tuck can meet Robin's gaze without flinching.
After a moment something in that gaze seems to wither. Robin's shoulders slump in exhaustion, and he turns back to his bunk, pausing with his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, like a man who has travelled long and far only to find himself at the base of an unsurpassable mountain.
He speaks with quiet determination. "When the sun rises, Gisbourne dies..."
