A/N: Again, for those reading my "Don't" series, please be advised I have not left it to work on this...the following story - and the two series it comes from - have been completed for some time, and it is only now being posted at fanfiction.

Title: How to Tell a True Outlaw Story
Author: Neftzer writing as Nettlestone Nell
Word Count: 3868
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Allan, Sheriff, Gisborne, OC Nell Stone; Allan/Nell
Spoilers/Warnings: STANDALONE. Although this is technically 6.5 in the "We Are 2011" universe, this fic is set firmly within the period of the BBC series (sometime post-S2 and the gang's return to England from the Holy Land*), so there's no need to have read any of my fic series to enjoy and understand it.
[*Gisborne did not return from the Holy Land.]
...Of course, doubtless, you will be dying to catch up, and read all the prior entries in the series once you finish here, like how Allan first met Nell, in "The Trip to Jerusalem", or see how they are getting on in the present day in "Why We Fought" and "The Ties that Bind (...and)".
Summary: A story of Allan-A-Dale and Nell of Nettlestone. Bad decisions have a way of creating a ripple effect, and like PCP, the memory of them and the wrongs we've done (not to mention their consequences), are never really out of our system. ...But really, it's happier than that. Swear.
Disclaimer: Characters and characterizations herein recognizable as those from BBC Robin Hood are BBC/Tiger Aspect's.
Category: Drama/Comedy/Romance/Angst (so can we just agree to call this genre mish-mash 'Allan'?); Short Fic
1st Posted at: The *NEW* Robin Hood Fanfiction Archive
A/N: Again, for myself and sylvi10. Because one truly enthusiastic and receptive reader is all any author needs to feel appreciated.

How to Tell a True Outlaw Story

The Sheriff's dungeon. Like many other things that bore his modifier: the Sheriff's will, the Sheriff's table, the Sheriff's decree, the Sheriff's guard...not, really, too terribly worrisome when he, the lord high Sheriff of Nottingham, was away.

But still, hardly a place one would generally wish to find oneself.

He had not meant to get pinched. Not that anyone, generally, did mean to. As such, he was grateful beyond measure for John's hair. Grateful that the oak-of-a-man had found himself fed up with the thick shock of it during the gang's Holy Land travels in the inescapable desert heat, and in a fit of pique (assuming John, actually, experienced fits of pique - the word was far too tempestuous for the big man's sullen storms of temper) and sheared it off, quite close to the scalp.

Allan had been canny enough to get him to tie if off in a queue first - bagging it before John could think of some other use for it - and spent a large chunk of the return journey stitching it into a rather fine wig of disguise.

Good disguises a true necessity once it became clear that the King was not, in point of fact, planning for an imminent return, and that the Sheriff had, in point of fact, escaped rather scot-free to once again rule over and terrorize Nottingham.

Of course, enough time had passed since then, since their return to England, that John's hair was back to its bushy, bristly self, threatening to once again overrun his shoulders. A welcome covering in such a clime.

And so, with a dusting of chalk flakes into his beard and eyebrows, the long wig worn thickly about his face, Allan-A-Dale was close to unrecognizable, his features shielded from scrutiny by the happy result of Little John's (possible) fit of pique.

And how Allan blessed him for it. Especially today.

It had been years since he had seen this dungeon from the inside. How much darker it seemed, how much more crowded. Had he always had to duck his head so? And judging by the state of some of those numerous occupants, the Sheriff no longer allowed the kitchen wenches (as Gisborne's Annie once had) to bring victuals, or even water, to the present inmates.

The air was close, tight, as though he were already placed inside a sweatbox. Some level of panic within him wanted him to tear off the wig - assured him that in doing so he would still not be made, and wouldn't that let his skin feel something of a breeze? Something of the hope of possible freedom? Probable escape?

Richard's eye-teeth, but he hated the thought of being locked up. Here. He could not think here - not about anything productive. His brain seized, shut down its more-efficient functions, like escape planning, and future rescue scenarios.

He found himself quickly awash, enspelled by the past, chained and made impotent by it as surely as had he been physically shackled. The past stronger, though, than any ironmonger's handiwork, and him still unable to find the right pick for its best-built of all locks.

In his mind's-eye, he saw himself strung up, tortured, made to feel pain, slick with his own sweat and dread, though there was no particular or imminent threat of such treatment this day.

And he watched himself accepting Gisborne's bargain, again, again, and always, though there was far less threat of that, Gisborne banished by the King outside of Acre, forbidden to return to England, never to set foot into this castle, into Allan's life, again.

No, it was to be the usual treatment, shoved unceremoniously into a cell. Weirdly, as crowded as the dungeon was at present, he had been thrust into an empty cell. Though, in the compartment it bordered he could see they were no longer even taking trouble to separate out the male from female prisoners. In the shadows there was a woman even now half-crushed into the bars from the mass of bodies in her caging. Wedged there, trying for a fresh breath, his mind told him, less fetid, less just-exhaled air.

Her features were somewhat distorted by the awkward position she was in.

He was in no mood to look at anything unpretty, anything to further tether his mind to this damned place. To his past in this place.

So he looked away, and found himself a corner. And succumbed to despair. And when he should have been plotting and scheming his escape, he instead let himself spiral into a bleak, low place in his mind - yet in all its intangibility, not unlike the dungeon his body now occupied.

He awoke to the stench of the place, to the eternal wonderment that such an at-times over-hot, stale aired area could yet produce a dank, cold-to-the-bones shiver and chill when one had spent too long (or rather, any length of time) on its worn-from-use flagstones.

When he opened his eyes, he knew they were glassy, not quite yet his own. The woman from the night? the afternoon? the hour? before was now in his cell.

"Rouse yourself, Old Man," he heard her call, belatedly realizing she spoke to him.

It was to be his curiosity, and that alone, that brought him slowly 'round. That pushed back the disquiet and despair. How had she managed to do that? To jump cells? No easy feat, certainly. And if it had been simple for her, why had she not done so before? When she might have had this caging to herself?

Rather than speak a reply and give himself away to her by having too young of a voice, he coughed, and artfully blended in a slight wheezed.

But he found quickly she was not one (as some women were) to attempt to coddle the frail. Far from making an effort to cosset him, she did not even comment on 'the Old Man's' obvious breathing infirmity.

Instead of seeing to him, she put forth an effort to work the kinks out of her neck and spine from her earlier pseudo-contortionist's act.

He watched her do so, one eye through the wig's unparted hair, ignoring his lashes irritatingly tangling in John's tresses with each necessary blink.

The light was (of course) quite low, but something about the way she held herself, the way she used her hands, called to his memory, and when she gave her neck a quick thrust-back in the cracking of it, her slanted upper lip banished any further doubt.

"Wot's brought you to this, my girl?" he asked in what he hoped was his best old man voice.

In this hope, he perhaps failed. At the sound of his voice she froze in her self-ministrations. She turned toward him, her neck coming around slowly, chin sliding over toward her shoulder with the disarming fluidity of a large snake he had seen once in a mystery play. The sleek motion both unsettled and thrilled him.

It was then that he recalled in their last encounter it was he who had left with her purse, and, perhaps, some of her seemingly innate dignity.

"You rounder," she said, a degree of wonder and venom mixing in her tone. "You worthless wastrel. What in the name of your mother are you doing here?"

"I might ask you the same," he offered her, his mind now fully engaged, a grin beginning about the corners of his hidden-from-view mouth. "For it would appear you are in need of rescuing."

At this she hissed. "Don't you get in my way, Allan-A-Dale. Not you, nor your 'merry men'."

"'Merry men'? Wot? This dungeon may be full to bursting, Love, but I'm here on my own. I assure you."

She gave him a long look, as if to ascertain the level of truth in his declaration. She raised one shoulder dismissively. "'Tis only the new guy," she told him. "Trying to make a good impression with the Sheriff gone. Wants to have the dungeon full to bursting, show it as a kind of trophy when his master returns from kissing the feet of Prince John."

"The 'New Guy'," Allan chuckled, referring to her referencing Gisborne's replacement, the Sheriff's new Master-at-Arms. "Good one, that. Callin' Michael the Red, 'the New Guy', since, he, you know, in more than one way is and all."

She replied with a glance just a degree away from withering.

In his enjoyment of finding her here, Allan pushed one curtain of hair behind his left ear, revealing half his face. In doing so, he improved his sight of her by more than half.

"Nell!" He could not help himself at the improved ability to closely survey her, "wot 'ave they gone and done?" His stomach immediately was on the knot.

The lower part of her jawline, as it disappeared to form her chin, and just north of it, was (in the low light) mottled in a dangerous, vivid purple. Allan could barely imagine how such bruising might track in the full daylight.

His hand went out toward her. Oddly, she did not pull away when his fingers came up to investigate the hurt. There was no blood that he could see, and yet his fingers felt...oozy, slick.

"Wha - ?"

It was then she jerked away from his reach. "They worry less about hurting those already hurt," she explained the faked injury with a shrug. "My mother's third cousin's uncle worked as underjailer for a time."

Allan's mind reshuffled its cards to keep up. "And so you knew you would be taken? And you have prepared for it?"

She scoffed at his behind-the-curve realization. "Well I would not be here otherwise. It is only fools who get caught. And I do not mean to get caught."

He did not offer up his own tale(s) of unexpected pinching.

Keen interest began to glitter in her eye. "No better time to filch from the new taxes for the ransom of Richard than when the Sheriff is away, and his treasure room loosely guarded at best. Easier to break out of the castle than to have to break in."

"Aye, well, you have my approval, there." Allan agreed. "But of course you will not know the Sheriff has no intention of delivering those taxes to the Exchequer for Richard. He is traveling with them now, even as we speak, to place them in John's hands, to aid in the Prince's takeover of the throne."

Her eyes flickered for a moment as she attempted to process the disappointing news. Her cards apparently did not reshuffle as quickly as did his.

"So I am here..." she looked around her.

"...for not reason at all?" he added. "So it would seem to the casual observer. However, you and I have...unfinished business."

"And how is that?" she asked him, unconvinced. "'Twas my purse you stole the last time we tussled."

They were sitting near enough one another. Her with her bum to the stone, her legs off to one side, him still in half-repose from his earlier gloomy sleep.

"'Twas a purse I fetched back to myself from where you had earlier scammed it from me." He moved himself slowly toward her, "But, 'twas a kiss I meant to leave you with, I later found."

His lips sprung toward hers before she had a clear opportunity to counter his action. Her mouth had been open, ever so slightly when he had brought his own to hers, his head tilted at an angle so that the wig's long hair would fall away from their faces, rather than clutter his work.

Caught in the unexpected sensual overture, she did not immediately pull away, but she closed her lips to him and worked to keep them that way.

But he had no intention of kissing her only as a man might kiss his own mother.

Taking his time, he flicked his tongue at her sealed-to-him lips, pulling some of their soft plumpness in between his own, cementing in his mind the exact incline and taste of her upper lip. He slid himself closer toward her. She neither moved in, nor moved away. But in the end the teasing of his curious tongue finally paid off, and he found her mouth opening to him.

For the briefest instant her tongue came out to meet with his, and like a spark added to a narrow line of black powder, he felt the fated crackle that such intense reactions produce.

And then he felt something quite different. Bumpy, and with the surprising tang of metal. For only the shortest moment he worried that he had encountered a set of fake teeth in her mouth, but as she then tried to pull suddenly away from their tentatively progressing tango, he proved too quick for her, one hand going to hold her firmly in place, the other to withdraw the foreign object from the inside of her cheek.

"So, you've been at your task already some today?" he asked her, the necklace of polished oyster stones stringing from her lips to his other hand's grasp. "Tell me, how'd you manage to still have them with you in here?"

She looked at him, wisely not contesting his taking of the stolen jewelry, but her gaze no less annoyed. "They were not always stowed in my mouth, Outlaw," she told him.

Their moment clearly ended, he pulled away from her, knowing their only anecdotal intimacy could last no longer, the pearls gripped soundly in his own, possessive fingers, his left hand skating along her collarbone momentarily in its retreat from holding her in place. It was there the sensitive pads of his notoriously light fingers encountered an unexpected imperfection in her skin. Immediately, they halted in their withdrawal.

Without asking permission, without even consciously registering what he was doing, his hand forcibly tore down the sleeve of her gown, denuding her entire shoulder.

Even in the scant light, he did not have to ask what it was, the strong 'V' of the bird's tucked wings, the sharp 'V' of the spiky avian beak, neither would have left a doubt in the mind of any soul in Nottinghamshire (perhaps, in all England) as to whose insignia she wore.

"Then you are not from Nettlestone," he said, the sound of his voice that of a man falling into the dark depth of a fathomless well.

"My lord," Gisborne offered, as usual attempting to deferentially accede to the Sheriff's every articulated complaint.

"Well I cannot have it, Gisborne, I tell you. A stop must be put to it. These miners...thinking they can subvert us, escaping the Treeton operation - fleeing the mines to travel to another village and take up work there for another master. Serfs are meant to be tied to the land, Gisborne. Tied, you know. To the land. Would that we could...hmmm. Somehow."

"And so I submit that this is the closest you will come to affecting that tie." Gisborne said, as Allan looked on, watching the Master-at-Arms present his newest fix for the ongoing problem.

It was a particularly slender shackle, meant to be placed like an endless torque about the miner's neck, and fused there by a blacksmith. An irremoveable sign of ownership.

"And the children?" the Sheriff asked. "What of the children, as they grow?"

The mines were filled with children of all ages, perfectly sized to suit any in a range of crevice spaces.

"Fit them for a full-size one earlier on to cut costs?" the Sheriff mused aloud, "Or shell out over time to have them sized up regularly?"

More than half to himself (neither of the other two men having acknowledged his presence since he had arrived on scene), Allan shook his head and objected in his way to the cruel treatment being so calmly parsed out. "Might as well brand 'em like cattle for all that."

Conversation and discussion halted.

The Sheriff raised his hand for silence.

"Cattle?" he asked, obviously not expecting an answer. "Yes, I like that. One branding iron, one fire. Some," he fluttered his hand, "soldiers. No further outflow of capital. No maintenance. Yes. The right shoulder I should think. Where any employer could easily look." His face took on an especially decided quality. "The children, too, Gisborne - boys, girls, the lot. Their bloody dogs. Every family. Remind them whose they are. Yes," his eyes sought Allan's, settling on them in a newly-dawning belief that he had located a kindred scheming spirit, or at the very least a corruptible mind.

Under his gaze, Allan knew better than to look away, despite his internal urge to gag.

Gisborne shifted in his stance, disgust rolling off him at Allan's entirely unintentional 'winning' of the day. "And what shall I use for the brand, my lord?"

The Sheriff had not even bothered to look back at his lieutenant when he tossed him his signet ring.

Allan had blanked after tearing down Nell's sleeve. He could not recall to his mind her reaction. Nor what else had immediately ensued. They were still more or less seated on the dungeon's floor. He knew he held a stolen pearl necklace in his fist. He knew that despite the sight of her earlier cheering him out of his despair brought on by his surroundings and incarceration, it was her very existence and presence here that had now knocked him back into same.

"When are your fellows coming?" she asked him, her voice low but intent.

"My fellows?" he asked hollowly, as a man only newly comprehending English.

Your gang?"

"Gang's in the Forest," he told her, absently, though he had no business doing so. The mark on her shoulder seemed to him to glow in an otherworldly light that made it at once impossible to look at, and impossible to look away from.

"In the Forest?" Her eyes closed. "Waylaying the Sheriff and his booty before he can illegally deliver it to Prince John?"

"Yeh." His own voice sounded vacant to him.

"So there is no hope coming?"

"No hope," he agreed, his tone fainter.

He could see in her eyes that she saw, though without understanding, that this place affected him. And how very badly.

"Right, then," she told him, to-the-point. "I shall have to take our fate into my own hands." She displayed the two appendages which he had once declared 'softer than sheep's teat' before him. "But I do require payment for my services."

He found he had not the energy for his usual quick repartee, even when fed an easy line like that one.

She went on as though he had responded. "One true thing." She told him, not asking instead for the necklace to be returned. "One true story. Tell it, and you have your freedom, as I'll have mine."

He tore his eyes away from the insignia's branding mark, searched out her barely green ones. (Green in his memory only, here, in the dungeon, dark, as were all their surroundings.)

So it was truth this Nell prized above all other things, including quite valuable pearl necklaces, including directions to the gang's hiding places for the general fund, including further osculatory acrobatics. Instead, she chose truth. Well, good for her. Today he found himself uncomfortably full of it, truth.

He would mind not at all spilling a little of the painful overflow in her direction.

"That," he said, slowly pointing to the Sheriff's insignia upon her flesh. "'Twas I who gave you that." Though he was fairly bursting with the guilt of that unintended transgression, it seemed to take more than an average allotment of breath to push the words out.

A beat passed, her eyes on him. Her face impassive, unintelligible to him.

Then, "Oi!" she announced, roughly casting his pointing finger aside. "Hands to yerself! No reason to muss my hard work, there!"

"Hard work?" he asked, connecting her behavior to the faked, painted injury upon her jaw. "How'd'ye do it, then? Spirit gum? A mould and a bit of a plaster?"

She scoffed at his attempts to elicit her tricks of the trade. "None of your nevermind," she told him, as a mother might speak to a child of things beyond their present ken.

He cared not how she treated him, though, learning the mark to be a clever fake caused his lungs to seem to find the oxygen in the air again, his mind to re-set itself to churning toward its usual pace of quick-thinking.

She leaned forward toward him and where he sat near to her. Taking her thumb and first two fingers she kissed the trio of digits like she had just dipped them in Holy Water, and then lifted them toward a certain spot where his left eyebrow joined his nose, and feathered her thumb and fingers across that space in opposite directions.

"For luck," she told him, and produced from within her stays a snaggly-looking key of uncertain history.

"Howzat?" he asked, in wonder at her reveal of the key.

Her brow furrowed as though his question had inconvenienced her. "What?" she asked defensively. "One of my stepfathers was a dodgy locksmith."

"One of?" he asked, curiosity, vitality returning to him.

"My mam fell in love easily...and often," she replied.

"Like her daughter?" he asked, cheek finding its way back into his demeanor.

"Like her daughter has learned to avoid," she silenced him.

Regrettably, once they were out of the dungeon and clear to the kitchens, he turned back to tell her he had to continue on his errand in Nottingham Town for Robin. Possibly he was going to thank her, going to say something of note that he was not such a fool not to know it was her who had brought him through this day, this experience, in more ways than one. Possibly. He would never know what he would have done. As he turned 'round, he found her absent from following him, and his mind recalled to him the necklace, and that fact that he, himself, would not like to have wasted an opportunity for further gain within the castle walls. It was easier, in general, to break out than to break in.

In his mind he wished her luck, surprised to feel a prickle at the head of his left eyebrow at the thought.

'May you find thirty more ladies with poorly-guarded jewel cases today, my girl, and may your exceptional mouth expand to hold as many of their baubles as need be.'

He smiled beneath the wig, stepping out into to late afternoon sun, and headed off on the gang's business.

It mattered little to her, her relative need for speed or hurry in her pursuit of Allan-A-Dale and what he had taken from her. She did not rush in the setting of herself back to rights post-dungeon.

And though she brought water to her face to take off the bruise she had painted there, she did not even attempt removal of the mark she had claimed to Allan-A-Dale was faked upon her shoulder. Such work to reclaim that area would do no good.

She had lived long (and at times, hard) enough to know...there were some things in life impossible to ever wash away.

The End

"We Are 2011" the series
A Bit Too Much
Deposed
The Long, Dark Knight of the Soul
Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair
Much Gets By with a Little Help From His Friends
Why We Fought (series end)

...also occurring within the "We Are 2011" universe
Loose Ends
Stop the Presses
Royally Sacked
The Ties that Bind (...and)

The Allan-A-Dale series, "A True Outlaw Story" (some of which overlaps with the 2011 series)
*not all may yet be posted at fanfiction.
The Trip to Jerusalem
Why We Fought
The Ties that Bind (...and)
How to Tell a True Outlaw Story
Under the Greensward Tree
The King is Dead. Long Live the King?
Pardon Me, Please
A-Courting We Will Go