A/N: I haven't written anything for here in awhile. This has been on my mind recently. Maybe you'll enjoy it?
Robin Hood had waylaid a wandering knight, but in a gesture more to punish his errant endeavor through the thick of Sherwood than the man's nobility, Robin let him keep his purse and took his horse instead.
The chill of autumn was setting in and Robin stopped to water his new mount at the edge of the River Trent. He heard a sob break out and a splash downstream. Tying up the horse, he pursued the sound.
Finally, he caught sight of a young woman quaking in the raging water, her skirt billowing on the surface.
"You're going to get yourself killed crossing there!" Robin shouted.
The woman turned, unperturbed, and balefully replied, "That's the point."
Robin quickly understood.
"Don't. Please don't," he said.
"You can't stop me."
The woman backed further into the current.
"Stop!"
She took one more step and her foot slipped. She crashed into the water, but was not yet swept away. Robin jumped off the bank, hissed as the cold water hit him, and waded carefully towards her.
"Do not—do not save me," she stammered, shivering
"Marian, please!" he said.
The woman caught her breath at the sound of her name.
"You know me?"
"Of course I know you, now please take my hand," Robin said, reaching for her.
Marian resisted.
"If you know me, you have to let me go."
"I will not. Give me your hand."
After a taut pause, Marian slipped her hand into Robin's grip. He yanked her forcefully back up onto the bank. Once she was safely on the grass, he disappeared and returned with the horse. He pulled the blanket from under the saddle and offered it to her.
Marian sighed without taking it.
"I wish you hadn't done that," she said.
Throwing the blanket across her shoulders, he replied, "I apologize, my lady."
Robin collapsed on the ground next to her and tugged off his waterlogged boots.
"How do you know me?" she asked.
"You know me too, though it has been some years."
Marian continued to look at him without recognition.
"My wedding at Locksley. You attended with your father."
"Locksley!" she repeated with wide eyes.
Robin nodded.
"You're Robin Hood," Marian whispered.
"That's what they call me," Robin said, smiling.
"Oh, then you really shouldn't have saved me."
Robin stared at her until she could no longer avoid his gaze.
With tenderness and caution, he asked, "What of all the things in this world could make you, the Lady of Arlingford, go to the bottom of the Trent?"
"Are you mocking me?" she answered tearfully.
"No. No, not at all."
"You wouldn't understand," she said. "You have a wife."
"Had."
"Oh."
"I may understand, if you felt the need to confess. If not, at least come back to my camp, before night sets in."
"I can't go to a camp of outlaws!"
"Outlaws?"
"Yes! Your band of thieves!"
"Who said I had a band?" he asked.
"You cannot be just one man," she said.
"Can't I?"
Marian gave him a puzzled look.
"Then I'll take you back to Arlingford," Robin said, standing up.
"No!" she cried desperately.
"It's your choice. Sherwood or home."
"Yet you won't let me choose to die?"
"To live is the only demand I make of anyone," Robin replied.
He held out his hand for her. Marian eyed him with wonder and accepted it.
Robin and Marian sat dressed in dry, roughly sewn layers of warm rags around a small fire wedged between the rocky walls of a small ravine.
"Thank you for feeding me," Marian said.
"Some day you will thank me for saving you too."
Marian frowned.
"This is where you live?" she asked, turning the conversation towards him.
"No, this is just one of a few safe spots I know."
"Where do you live?"
"I can't tell you that," he answered.
After a moment, Marian mused to herself, "Perhaps I could live in the woods."
"Perhaps you could."
She gave him a weak smile.
"I'd be free," she sighed.
"You are already free.
Marian snapped, "How dare you?"
"Well, you are," Robin shrugged.
"Free to marry Roger of Longchamp?"
"Ah."
"You, sir, may be at liberty to roam the woods, but I must endure another fate."
"Who is he?"
"An old Norman nobleman, a creaking relic with a crumbling castle at Montfaucon, the real prize for my father. He traded me for a towering heap of stones," Marian replied, looking at the rock walls around her.
"I am sorry," Robin said.
"There is no need for you to say that."
"All the same, I am sorry that you believe you are not free."
"I am not," Marian repeated succinctly. "Girls can gambol as lambs, but as women, we are chattel. Only chattel."
"Who says that?"
"You had a wife. Please don't play the fool with me. You are free now in the forest. You may have forgotten."
"I am not free from danger," he countered.
"Yet no man is your master!"
"No man is yours either. Not your father, not Roger Longchamp even if you married him."
"How?" she asked, growing angry.
"Even in the keep of Montfaucon, lex naturalis holds ground."
"I beg your pardon?"
"We are naturally sovereigns of our own selves," Robin explained.
"You're a heretic."
"Maybe so. I already have a bounty on my head. I'm allowed it."
"What other dispensations are you allowed?"
"Any that I can take."
"Just as you take men's money?"
"I don't take just money. I show men what it means to live and live rightly."
"And if they don't want to be shown?" she asked.
"Everyone wants to have a life that's true."
They sat in silence as the fire crackled. Robin snapped a twig and threw it in the flames. Marian picked up a stick next to her and studied it.
"Is a knot on a tree trunk a branch that broke off or a branch that simply couldn't grow?" she finally wondered aloud.
"I've never really thought of it," Robin said.
"You don't see the trees for the forest?"
"Hm?"
"I do not understand you."
"Please let me remedy that," he said, turning to face her directly.
"What was that phrase you used? Lex-?"
"Lex naturalis. Natural law."
"What is it?"
"A life of liberty."
"For everyone?"
"If they will live it."
"What does that require?" Marian asked.
"All actions have consequences, seen and unseen. Every choice comes at a price. Be willing to pay that price and you are free," Robin said.
"Have you paid it?"
"I live in the forest when I could live in a manor."
"Why?"
"I'm sure you've heard the story."
"There are many stories, yes. But what is the real one?"
"You're certain there is a real one?"
"You didn't murder a man," Marian said with assurance.
"And yet I did."
Marian gasped.
"How?"
"An arrow in the neck," he replied dryly.
"No, not how. How? You spend your time helping people survive, but you took another man's life. How?"
Robin crossed his arms.
"I was angry and it was easy."
He added quickly, "And before you start thinking I was converted by the experience, I assure you, everything I believe now, I believed then."
"You knew it was a crime," Marian stated.
"And a sin."
"Yet you didn't give yourself over to justice. You ran. Why?"
"I will be made to pay for it, I am certain of that. But what good would my imprisonment and probable execution be when I can live and atone?" Robin said.
"Is that part of lex naturalis?"
"Is what part of it?"
"You determine the price?"
Robin furrowed his brow.
"I wonder," Marian said, "if you killed a man to have an excuse to live out your natural law."
"That's very shrewd," Robin said.
Marian grew quiet.
"Have I shocked you?" he asked.
"This whole day feels like a nightmare."
Robin laughed lightly and looked at her in the firelight.
"Your appearance is different now, but when I saw you earlier, I swore no time had passed," he said.
"Well it has."
"Indeed."
"I am sorry I didn't remember your wedding."
"You were young."
"What was your wife like?" Marian asked.
"Beautiful and weak."
"Did you love her?"
"Does it matter?" Robin asked, amused.
"Yes!"
"I was and am sufficient unto myself. Is that a satisfactory answer?"
"Hardly."
"It's true," he said.
"It cannot be."
"What could a woman give me besides what I can get, forgive me, quite easily without love?"
"You have it all wrong," Marian argued.
"Do I?"
"Love is not a filling in, it is a filling over. Love isn't about finding another person to make you whole and sufficient. It's about being more than you are alone. Wouldn't you want to care so deeply and perfectly for another person that you are a greater man because of it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Love can just as easily empty a man."
"How?"
"The loss of it."