A musing - Guy, after abandoning his son.

***

He never asks the boy's name. He sees the babe soon after birth, when it is red, screaming, cradled in his mother's hands, perfect curves across her palms. The tired smile on her face is nearly enough to make him sick. He will send them away. He will put them out of sight and forget them, so gladly, so easily. The boy continues to wail. The idea comes to him then.

It is his first and last time holding his son. This might not be his firstborn, but it is close enough to tug at his mind a little, to make him pause and pull back with one finger the edge of the rough wool blanket and stare at the pink cheeks, the bowed mouth, the beginnings of what may be a father's chin taking shape in a son. The babe starts to move, restless with hunger. He puts it down at the base of a tree where it is cradled by roots. As he rides away, he hears the child begin to scream.

When the news reaches him that the Outlaws did take the child, and escaped, and Anne and the boy were far away, his anger is tinged with an odd jealousy - an injustice - that Robin Hood has touched his son, and redeemed him, and made him safe.

At night, every now and then, when he closes his eyes, he sees a face. Every now and then, he dreams, and there is a perfect weight in his arms.

He knows still which tree it was that had held his son. Every now and then, he finds himself staring up at its branches, looking at the sunlit leaves, seeing a never-future, and a never-boy, and an always-ache.

***