A Sequel to Vamping: Family Ties and Antidotes
Many thanks to my beta reader, Desi, for help with containing my rampant words errant.
Rating: M for language and adult topics. *Spoilers* for the finales of Series 2 and 3.
Disclaimer: The original, non-parodied versions of these characters belong to the BBC and Tiger Aspect. No copyright infringement intended; just mockery, rudeness, ridicule, snorts, yuks, and the usual snarks. Vampires, on the other hand, are in the public domain!
Chapter 1
Being a vampire was the handiest trick Robin could ever have imagined. It even made up for all his unrequited devotion to that blowhard Richard. Robin had to conclude that his youthful allegiance to his king was based on, well, unquestioning loyalty, which is more of an insult than a compliment to the person giving said loyalty. Just because a guy wears a crown on his head doesn't improve the quality of his intelligence. What a bloated lot of self-serving gits the Plantagenets are. Crown, be damned. The madhatter didn't even have the sense to question how he had been given the information of Robin's alleged treason. What a dolt! Get this. An agent of his enemy—an enemy whom the king had fought on the most hellish battlefield on earth for years and incidentally killed thousands of enemy soldiers and civilians alike in the process (helped in this questionable task by yours truly, it pained Robin to admit)—this agent, it must be reiterated, tells the madhatter, er, king that his most trusted, albeit former, loyal captain of his very guard is a traitor, and not one alarm bell clinks in the old rusty, royal noggin. A five-year old could have seen the problem in that logic. Moron.
If only he, Robin, could save England and hand the crown over to someone who'd know what to do with it, like Eleanor. Now there was an interesting woman. If she weren't such a fossil…. Well, never mind that line of thought. Water under the dam, of course. Besides, Robin was committed to his Marian and his vampirehood. He sighed contentedly for a moment. But no matter, there was still the fact that if not Richard, then John would be king. John? To think how nations rose and fell—and populations lived and died—by that woman's womb! Eleanor should have learned some of the many contraception tricks up Saracen sleeves. Royals really need to be more careful about how often they reproduce. Four sons is way too many for any one king.
All in all, Robin was rapidly becoming overwhelmed by the sheer number of stupid people in the world, but the story didn't end there. What about that travesty out on the desert? Fortunately, the Lionheart didn't have the guts to execute his captain outright, the captain who had saved his life most heroically (plenty of guilty conscience must have been fermenting somewhere under his skull), so energetic Carter, ever willing to take the initiative, checked his brain out of the confines of the royal tent and formed a rescue plan. (Carter would have made a fine vampire, by the way.) Another curious fact that Richard never questioned: Robin recuperated immediately from the attempted execution because it really couldn't have killed him anyway, so even though he was still pissed over Richard's colossal lapse of judgment, Robin was able to fight Saladin's muscle-man assassin less than an hour later. Well, nearly able. The man was three times his size, after all. Had to be. Didn't that dunce of a king see anything odd in that?
Then the rest of the comedy of errors played out. Gisborne's sword didn't really kill Marian (it missed her heart, obviously), but Marian knew immediately, as well as he, that she had to appear to die. At least it offered an opportunity to get married, more or less, by the king (lucky they didn't need him to say the words for them; chances were nil that Richard had any idea what the actual words were supposed to be), and it wasn't such a bad wedding for a pair of vampires. The bride was dazzling in bloodied white with a honking big red jewel for a matching wedding ring.
After she had appeared to die, which scene she rushed a little too quickly for Robin's liking, he, the bereft husband, had asked everyone to leave them alone a few moments. Robin thought he should get an award for his part in this acting job. To be fair, so should Marian. It was an excellent ensemble piece. People were too stunned to react at first, but finally, even a duly impressed Much had backed off a suitable distance giving the tragic couple some space. Allowed this chance, Robin tried his best to whisper his questions to Marian while pretending to sob. Marian kept her eyes closed and assured him in mumbled tones that as long as the shroud he provided for her could keep the sand well off her face, she would need no air and could sleep in the ground until Robin dug her up in the night. Robin told her that she was the most beautiful and courageous undead woman who ever lived or died and then took the opportunity to extract a particularly passionate kiss from her while hoping that no one would observe what he appeared to be doing to a corpse.
Robin continued to be impressed all that day and evening by Marian's play-dead act. In fact, she was so good, that he had begun to worry that something was actually wrong with her. He worried all the more about it as he at last carried her unmoving but still rosy pink form to her grave, to lay her in the ground next to the hapless Carter—what a waste, that Carter. But then, Marian didn't seem to like having Carter around, as if she were jealous or something. Wasn't the jealousy supposed to work the other way around? Shouldn't he be the jealous one, of Marian and Carter? Maybe this was another vampire thing. Being a vampire could still confuse him. But Carter was gone, and perhaps it had all worked out for the best then. Robin didn't need to buy more trouble.
Yet Robin worried all that day and evening. The difficulty was that a vampire could go into such a deep sleep that no breathing or heart beat could be detected. Thus, some of his distress at the grave site was unquestioningly real, and he had no trouble working up the rest of it as needed for show.