A/N: Hey! So, have no fear, I'll be updating "Where There Was None"-very soon. I've just been busy with final projects. However, to make up for the delay, here is the first of two Guy/Marian one-shots, in which she DOES die in 2x13. I love my angst! This one might be a bit odd-if you don't like it, don't flame it. It was just an unusual thought that I had and decided to make good on! Hope you like! Read and Review please!
~TolkienGirl
In his dreams, he is an artist.
He paints it all with such care, drawing it how it ought to have been. No Sheriff, no Robin. No blue dabs of the rain that keeps him awake at night with the sound of its sobbing, sighing storm. Only strokes of green, swaths of brown thatch over a homely house that is as he remembers it, full of pride and not of memories. Locksley. He sketches it into being—sketches it all, painting with precision, with such fine brushstrokes that it becomes clearer, deeper, no longer imprisoned by its canvas—
He is ready now, with a new palette, all beautiful colors. He paints her. Marian. Every tender sweep of the brush seems to spell out her name.
She smiles, she laughs, she runs towards him—no longer a painting. There with him, awake in the dream. Alive. Hair as luscious and brown as ever, dress as white and pure—
And red.
He pauses, brush halted, dripping. Plop, plop. Drops of red. He hadn't painted any red into the dream. No crimson curse—no scarlet fury.
But the red won't leave, and with it grows the pain—her smile fading, a great stain swelling on the front of her white dress—he dabs at it frantically with his brush, trying to erase it, but his brush is a sword now and he plunges it through her.
He wakes up, gasping, into blackness. No dreams, no beauty, not even a paint-daubed canvas. It is still raining. It still hurts him. She is still gone.