Title: A Healthy Dose of Pain
Characters: Much, Marian, Robin, Eve
Rating: PG (for non-explicit adult themes)
Summary: "No Saracen blade, no hangman's noose, no leather whip could ever hurt as much as the sound of his wife's laugh overlapping with his best friend's."
Much finds them in the barn one afternoon, as the sunlight shifts to hit the golden hair cascading down her back. He knows that laugh, knows those laughs, and knows that nothing before has ever hurt as much as this. No Saracen blade, no hangman's noose, no leather whip could ever hurt as much as the sound of his wife's laugh overlapping with his best friend's.
For the first few months, he thinks it is just another phase, another whim that Robin will soon grow bored of and abandon.
Except he doesn't.
When they were young, this was funny, something to be laughed at and boasted of over a pint of ale; Robin's conquests of married women were legendary in their youths. But now, it's not so funny. Not now that they are married men and it is his own wife that Robin is bedding.
They think he does not know. He wishes that were so. He has known since the beginning, since before the beginning in fact, since the first moment that Robin had seen Eve. He had been too happy then, to be free of the woods and free to start his life, to worry over his friend's smiles and familiar pats, Eve's blushes and side-long glances. But he who has known them best in this world, he knew what would happen before it did.
He had just hoped it wouldn't happen quite so quickly.
If nothing else, he at least has the comfort of knowing that his first child is in fact his. Hugh is born in the winter and it is not until the summer, after he first sees them, that Robin's visits and Eve's absences become too obvious for him to ignore.
She no longer allows him to come to her after that. When she announces in the late fall that she is with child again, he leaves the house for a week. He goes back to the woods, sitting alone in the abandoned camp for hours without moving. He shouldn't be surprised, and really he isn't, but his is angry. He had never thought that he would actually ache to kill a man, want to wrap his hands around someone's throat and squeeze all of the life out of them. And certainly, he had never thought that he would want to kill Robin.
But he does, so badly, and so he stays in the woods until that urge has passed. Then he returns home, without comment.
The girl is born in March, just as the first flowers at Bonchurch come into bloom. Eve insists that she be named after her godmother. Before that day, Much had not realised his wife's true capacity for cruelty. Never again will he forget it.
The christening is painful, watching Marian hold the baby who so obviously resembles her husband. She has no children of her own yet and the village wives consol her afterwards, assuming her tears are those of frustration, not grief. They share their remedies, their wisdom, their methods of enticing troublesome husbands to their beds. Marian, so tired of playing the dutiful wife, the noble lady, shouts at them all, swatting at those closest to her. They scatter quickly, gossiping gleefully of what a shrew Lady Locksley has become since her marriage.
In the end, it is only Much and Marian alone in the small Bonchurch chapel, the others gone back to the house for a luncheon, neither of them noticed in their absence.
"Why?" Marian finally asks, looking Much in the face. They're close together now, standing less than an arm's length apart. "What did we do wrong?"
"I don't know." He answers after a long pause. "How long have you known?"
"Since Midsummer's Eve. I saw them, on the hill just beyond Locksley. They didn't see me then. They think they're so clever." She sneers, wiping her eyes furiously with her sleeves. "And you?"
"Since May Day, since the beginning." He says.
"He doesn't think I know, did you know that? He thinks that I'm completely oblivious to everything, even though she flaunts it constantly." A moment after she says it, she realises what she has said and lays a hand on his arm, "I didn't mean that, I just…"
"No," he laughs sadly, "no, that's exactly what you meant. And it's true."
"He comes home some nights and he smells of her." Marian says bitterly, "I hate him so much now. I didn't know I could hate anyone like this. How much longer can it last?"
Much wishes he could tell her, but he has no answer. It should have been over by now, months ago, but something in Robin has changed and this child, this girl who bears his name but looks like Robin, has formed a permanent bond between the two lovers.
Marian can see the answer in his face. "I'll leave him one day. I'll finally go to the convent and lock him out of my life. I won't stand for this."
"Don't go." He says, surprised by the strength of his response. He grasps her forearms, holding her close to him, looking down into her tired face, into her sad eyes. "Of all the things I have loved in this world, you are the only one left. Ignore him, hate him, but don't leave. Please Marian."
"Oh Much." She whimpers, leaning her head on his chest. They stand there for a long time, arms wrapped around each other, his chin resting on her head as her silent tears soak his robes.
In the end, it is Will who finds them. The young man stands there silently for several moments, his face slack with shock, before Much opens his eyes and notices his him. He squeezes Marian tightly before releasing her, leaving a familiar hand at her back.
"What is it?" He asks Will, his voice even and his body language unwelcoming.
"Robin was wondering where Marian was." He stutters, still staring at the two of them.
"And when Robin wants something, we must all jump." Marian says sharply, nonetheless moving towards the house.
"Marian…" Much chides gently. She says nothing, but tosses a fond smile over her shoulder as she continues on her way.
"What were you two doing?" Will asks him angrily once Marian is out of earshot. Much laughs sadly, but doesn't answer the younger man. "How could you? With Robin and Eve only steps away, and at your daughter's christening!"
Much laughs again, because in Will's tone he can hear himself of old, another of Robin's adoring fans, his devoted followers. But Will never knew Robin as he truly was. He knew the self-sacrificing Robin from their years in the woods and the distant Robin from when he was a child in Locksley, neither of them the true Robin of Locksley: egotistical leader of men, heartless seducer of women.
Much laughs because it may have taken him twenty-odd years but finally, finally, he knows that Robin has no hold over him.