I really have no idea where this idea came from—I don't even like World War II! Ironically, my gig is the Renaissance and Middle Ages. But I loved the idea of this story and I plan on writing it out as best as I can. Since I'm an American and not terribly familiar with the British side of the war, I'm doing my best to research the story before I write it. If I'm off on anything, don't hesitate to PM me—I know there are plenty of people who know more about this than I do!

Most of this story is going to be about the Allan/Djaq/Will relationship—'cos I love it. There'll be a smidgen of Robin/Marian as well. Since it's WWII, I figured that Sherriff and Gisbourne characters aren't really needed—there's enough evil in the world already, isn't there? I had to change the character's ages a bit for the story, and they are as follows: at the start of this chapter, Djaq is fourteen, Will is fifteen, and Allan is sixteen.

Disclaimer: I don't own the BBC's Robin Hood. Darn.

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

January, 1939

Allan a-Dale stood on the doorstep in the sleet of the late afternoon, impatiently banging on the front door to his friend's house. He'd been hoping that Will would be about—he was bored silly of late. He hadn't had much time off at the restaurant, either. Much was running him ragged, as one of the only full-time waiters he had on staff, and his shift at lunch had just ended, so he was hoping to see his old friend.

In the last year, since he left school, he hadn't seen so much of Will Scarlett. The two boys had become unlikely friends, despite their resoundingly different personalities. Allan was a little bit silly, talkative and friendly, and concentrated much of his efforts on having fun whenever he could; Will, on the other hand, was often described as "a little too old for his age", apprenticed to his father, a cabinetmaker, and sometimes almost painfully shy.

Perhaps it was their differences that made them such good friends, balancing one another.

"Will! Come on! School's been out for over an hour, and I know you're in there—don't pretend you haven't heard me and go hide under the bed!" He yelled at the closed door. "You know I could very damn well open this door myself from out here!"

After he still received no answer, he huddled himself into his coat. The January sleet was miserable, tiny little icy bullets stinging his face and hands, getting in his hair. He was better off back at home, he decided, where he rented a room with John and Alice Little.

As he turned about to walk back down the garden path, he nearly collided with a little black-haired boy in a school uniform coming the other way. He stopped himself short and slid on the icy ground, landing on his backside in a puddle.

"Oh, bloody fucking brilliant, that!" He growled, lurching to his feet. His coat and trousers were soaked.

"You shouldn't swear like that, Allan," the boy said. "I could pick up some really bad habits from you."

"Your brother told you to say that to me, didn't he?" Allan growled.

Instead of answering, Luke just grinned broadly.

"So where is my old friend?"

"You mean Will? He had some errands to run for Dad after school. Should be back soon, though."

"Oh," was all he said, feeling very stupid for standing there and yelling at an empty house. "Well, what about you, kid? You're home awfully late for a school day."

"I'm not in trouble if that's what you mean," he said defensively. Just like his brother. "I stopped at Robin's stables after school to have a look."

"They're just stables."

"I know, but he's hired a brown boy to work there. I wanted to see him."

"'A brown boy'?" He repeated.

"Yeah. He's not from around here. Didn't say anything to me, though."

"Huh. Well, that's about the most interesting thing that's happened around here since that two-headed calf."

"What is?" Came a voice from the end of the path. "And why are you all wet?"

There was Will, still in his school clothes and looking much like a bigger copy of his little brother, carrying a paper bag in front of him.

"I was just telling Allan about a new boy Robin hired," Luke explained. "That's why I'm late."

"All right, then, thanks for telling me," he said. "Dad said he'd be back before dinner tonight. Here, take these inside and put 'em away." He handed off the bag to his little brother.

"Why me?"

"Because you're the baby."

Luke grumbled on his way into the house, but didn't argue. This left Allan and Will alone out front.

"So why are you all wet?"

"I fell in a puddle trying not to step on your baby brother."

Will snorted. "I'd feel sorry for you, but that's funny."

"Oh, thanks, my dear friend."

"So—what's going on?"

"I need an excuse to come see my old mate, do I?" He asked with a silly grin, slinging an arm around his friend's neck and dragging him around in a circle.

He lurched around gracelessly, scraping at his friend's arm in an attempt to get him to let go. "Gaak! Allan, get off of me!"

He obeyed, flinging Will to the other side of the path where the teenager nearly fell over.

"C'mon—let's go have a look at this new kid Robin's hired."

"Why?"

"'Cos it's something to do."

Will sighed. "Are you that bored? Why don't we go to the cinema or something?"

"We can do that after—please?"

Another sigh; he was acting like this boy was a new exhibit at a zoo. "All right, fine. We'll go. Just try not to be an idiot, all right?"

"Me, an idiot? How do you mean?" He demanded, following his friend down the path and out onto the road.

He narrowed his eyes at him. "You tend to talk before you think about it, you know. Sometimes it's like your mouth operates faster than your brain."

Incensed, Allan gave him a shove; the pair argued most of the way along the roads towards Robin's place on the other end of town. The route was a familiar one, taking shortcuts between and behind buildings, and cutting across properties.

Nottingham was a place that occasionally looked like it was stuck in a time warp. Some of the roads were still cobbled for horses and carriages that didn't run anymore; alleys were sometimes so narrow that there was hardly enough room for the two boys to walk abreast. Buses, trucks, and the occasional car lumbered along in clouds of gray-white steam, adding to the heavy gray overhang of clouds and the varying shades of gray in the buildings and the ground.

A lot of gray.

It was days like this when Will longed for spring.

He and Allan made their way to the big house at the bottom of a hill; in the dim evening light, they could see that the curtains in the old stablemaster's house were open. Luke was right—clearly somebody was living there.

Robin Locksley was an anomaly; a young man from an old and very wealthy family, he refused to live as others of his station did. He seemed to live with the strong conviction that he ought to use his good fortune in birth to help others. He was heavily involved in a number of charities, and it wasn't uncommon for him to offer work to people who needed it—even when he could just as easily do the work himself. For example, tending his horses, animals he dearly loved.

Together, the boys wandered down the hill and headed for the stables—Robin never really minded when they came onto his property, just so long as they didn't mess the place up—where they could see a small figure hurrying back and forth carrying a rake. They leaned on the metal gate for a closer look at this new lad.

The young dark-skinned boy was wearing old overalls, cuffed a few times to keep them from dragging on the ground, Wellington boots, and a too-small coat covered over in sewn-on patches. His black hair was cropped unevenly, away from a round—almost feminine—face; his eyes were large and dark. He looked like he couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen. He was bustling about the stables with his rake and hardly took any notice of them aside from a quick glance.

"Hey, mate!" Allan called, reaching out to try and grab the boy by the coat as he passed. The boy looked up briefly with a puzzled expression on his face, then shrugged and went back to work.

"Maybe he doesn't speak English," Will suggested.

"But don't they learn English in school in India?"

"Maybe he's not Indian."

"Lad, you speak English?" He called out. Will buried his face in his hands, embarrassed for his friend.

"Shut up, will you?" he hissed. "You're just making a prat of yourself and he doesn't understand a thing you're saying!"

His advice was swiftly ignored.

"Come… here…" he said slowly, now gesturing wildly. "We want… to talk… to you…"

Will was desperately fighting his urge to punch his friend in the face for being a moron. "All right, we've seen him but it's obvious he doesn't understand us, so why don't we just go—"

"No, I think I'm getting through!"

There was an angry yell and some incoherent growling in a language neither of them understood before the boy reappeared from the stall he was clearing with an angry and frustrated look on his face and a hay fork slung over his shoulder like a weapon.

"That is the trouble with you English speakers!" He shouted. His voice was lilting and heavily accented. "You all think that anybody will understand your language provided you just… speak it… slowly enough." His slow speech and tone mocked the way Allan spoke to him.

"So you do speak English—"

"Yes, I do! But I was ignoring you. But apparently you are not clever enough to realize I wanted nothing to do with you. Now if you will kindly let me be, I have work to do."

"Hey, come on—there's no need to be so short with me. I was just trying to be friendly," Allan protested.

"You call it friendly—I call it irritating."

Instead of defending his friend, Will just stood back and watched the situation unfold; he put a hand over his mouth in an effort to keep himself from laughing too loudly, but the quaking of his shoulders gave him away.

"Your skinny friend here thinks you are funny, as well."

"Will, shut up!" He turned back to the young boy who was calmly making him look like an idiot. "You—why are you being such a pain in the bum?"

"I suppose this is what you English call 'from the horse's mouth'," he quipped, sticking his hay fork into the ground and leaning on it.

Will was past the point of keeping himself under control and folded his arms over the metal gate, laughing helplessly at the exchange.

"Some friend he is," Allan snorted. "Look, lad, I didn't come here to be insulted. I just came to say hello—"

"Well, you have said your piece and made yourself look a fool. Now if you do not mind, I have things to do which will be made all the more easy by your leaving."

Allan stood with his mouth open, looking back and forth between the boy and Will, who was still laughing and offering absolutely no support. With that, he stalked off, but he slipped in the mud on the way back up the hill and landed on his hip. He swore colourfully and stood up, having decided that he was going home to change clothes and dry off.

Will watched him leave and the boy went back into his stall.

"Hey," he climbed the fence into the stable and followed him. "I'm really sorry about him. He doesn't mean it, but he's a bit of an idiot. He can't help but say stupid things."

To his surprise, the little dark-skinned boy looked back over his shoulder and smiled slightly. "I know. Some people are just silly."

He was taken aback by the sudden realization that he was… cute. He was really cute. Almost like a girl…

No! He mentally slapped himself.

"So, um—I'm Will. Will Scarlett." He put out a hand. The boy looked at it a moment before hesitantly taking it and shook it; the small hand was icy-cold without gloves.

"My name's Djaq. Just… Djaq."

"Well, 'just' Djaq," he said, grinning despite himself. "Welcome to Nottingham. I hope you like the rain—we get an awful lot of it around here."

He sighed, shaking his head. "I know—but that is just England. I have lived here for some time, but I can count on one hand the number of days it has not been raining or cloudy."

"Funny, I've lived here my entire life and I can count on one hand the days it hasn't been raining or cloudy," he countered.

Djaq laughed a little at the joke.

"It is good to see some Englishmen have a sense of humour," he said. "Some of the ones I have met have acted like smiling is physically painful."

"Some," he conceded. "But not Robin."

The side of his mouth curled up in a half-smile that made him look briefly, fleetingly, like a girl.

"No, not Robin."

"He's a good man—you're fortunate to be working for him."

After a long pause, he nodded slowly, as if he understood this far better than Will realized.

"So… whereabouts are you from, anyway? If you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all. I come from Palestine."

His eyebrows raised, and light green eyes widened. "That's quite a ways."

"That it is." He shivered slightly as a gust of wind blew by, and tucked his hands under his too-small coat.

"You know, I'm sure Robin would get a coat and some gloves for you if you asked him—he takes good care of the people who work for him. It's better than being miserable—"

"Thank you, but no," he interrupted. "I do not wish to take charity. Just because I am a…" he trailed off and cleared his throat, as if he was about to use the wrong word. "Just because I am young and small, doesn't mean I need protecting. But thank you. I shall manage."

Will combed a hand through his hair. "Well—it was nice meeting you. I ought to get home, though. I forgot to tell my brother I was going out and I don't want him to worry about me. And I'm sorry again, about Allan. He's really not so bad once you get to know him."

"I imagine not. Maybe we will meet again, Will Scarlett."

And with that, Djaq went back to work and Will left for home through the sleet.

o…o

He leaned against the open closet doors and sighed. He knew he had a coat in there someplace—they never got rid of anything in the Scarlett house if it could be reused. Anything their father didn't wear anymore, Will started wearing; and whatever Will outgrew, Luke would grow into eventually. So he was pretty sure there was an old coat or two he could take and give to Djaq.

The poor boy didn't have anything suitably heavy for the English winters—that old coat that was too small for him hardly kept him warm and looked as if it was ready to fall apart any day now.

He'd surprised himself with the sudden friendship. Normally, he was quiet and didn't take well to new people. Shy. But somehow he found the Palestinian easy to talk to; certainly he could hold up his end of a conversation better than most people his age. He was good company for the times when he was tired of Allan. Even if they were just in the same general area doing different things—Will was usually idly whittling and Djaq was working—he felt oddly at ease and comfortable around him. He just couldn't explain it.

When the boy wasn't working in the stables, Allan usually tried to coax him into their usual haunts around Nottingham. Even though he seemed distant at first, it soon became clear to Will that he quite liked the company.

"It is nice," he'd explained one afternoon on a walk down through the square. "You and Allan are so unlike other people. You didn't hate me right away for being… dark. Or not a Christian."

He couldn't imagine what that must have been like. Being in another country, so obviously different from everybody else and shunned for things that he couldn't help, being forced to support himself as a grownup at such a tender age, and all without family. It was never directly talked about, but Will was pretty sure that his friend had no parents—there could be no other explanation for his current situation.

"The contents of the closet aren't going to change if you stare at it hard enough."

The voice behind him startled him so badly that he nearly jumped right through the ceiling. A heavy hand settled on his shoulder.

"Easy, son."

"Sorry, Dad," he apologized. "I was thinking."

"I figured." He looked into the closet around his son, taking note of his height. Already, the lad was up to his shoulder; in time he'd be taller, he had no doubt. "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

"One of my old coats. I've got a friend who could use it."

"Your new stable-boy friend?"

Will nodded.

"You think of him like another little brother, don't you?"

He wasn't quite sure how to answer that—certainly he'd grown quite fond of Djaq over the course of the last weeks as their friendship blossomed. But he didn't know if he felt brotherly towards him. He just felt an inexplicable desire to protect him. Yet another thing the fifteen-year-old couldn't exactly explain.

To answer his father's question, he just shrugged. "I don't like that he's all alone," he said. "I s'pose I just want to help him."

Dan Scarlett sighed and clapped the boy on the shoulder. "You're turning into Robin, aren't you?"

"Seems like it sometimes, doesn't it?"

"Well, I hope you can find what you're looking for. I've got to go to the church hall and have a look at some cabinets they need repaired. I'll probably be out all afternoon, so when you get the time, I need to you give the shop next door a quick tidy."

"'Right, Dad."

"I'll see you later, boy."

He vaguely registered the front door slam as he stared into his half of the closet. He and nine-year-old Lukey still shared a bedroom, a fact that became more and more irritating as he got older. But their house—a cottage, really—was small and had only three little bedrooms, one of which served as a drafting office for Dan. Maybe if he begged hard enough, he could persuade his father to let him use the tiny office for a bedroom; he just wanted his own space.

A quick search of the other half of the closet came up with two old coats that his brother had yet to grow into. He picked one at random—a heavy coat of oily green wool.

Now the only thing he had to worry about was getting his young friend to take the offering from him.

He was proud for a lad so young—he refused to take charity, even though he must have been acutely aware that he needed something to keep him warm. Coming from a warm climate like Palestine, he wasn't used to the cold, icy, gray winters here. But neither could he afford the coat himself; after paying his rent, gas, and water bills and feeding himself, there was not a great deal of money left.

Will found it heartbreaking that a boy so young had to worry about such adult matters; when he was Djaq's age—he thought the boy maybe twelve or thirteen—the worst things he worried about were embarrassing voice changes and acne.

He bundled the coat up in his arms and trotted down the stairs to the front door. He left a quick note for his brother before heading out. It was a deceptively sunny day, blue sky and fluffy white clouds breaking two weeks of almost non-stop rain and sleet; it almost looked like a lovely spring day, until one stepped outside into the cold air and was reminded, quite suddenly, that it was February.

At least the walk was pleasant in the sunlight.

When he arrived at the stables, Will was surprised to find that Djaq was nowhere to be found. He was usually busily at work in the stables, trotting about in those Wellington boots and overalls. Or he was quietly doting on his favourite horses, talking soothingly to them in Arabic, which was a beautiful language even if he couldn't understand a thing he said.

He went around to the little house on the other side of the stables where he lived, hoping he might be in there. The curtains were closed and the door was locked, so he gave a few quick raps and waited for an answer.

After a silence, there were a few bumps and scuffles from the inside, and the door wrenched open. Djaq was looked a little cross, as if he'd interrupted something. He was holding the door open a few inches with one hand and fastening the shoulder straps on his overalls with the other.

"Oh, Will—it is only you."

"Were you expecting somebody?" He asked.

"No, I was… it was just… never mind. Did you need something?"

He thought to ask what was going on, but he thought the better of it. If Djaq wanted him to know, he'd tell him. He became acutely aware of how much smaller his friend was as he looked up at him with those observant, shining black eyes.

And then he became aware that he was staring.

"Something wrong?" He asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

For a brief moment, he himself forgot what, exactly he'd come for. It was only when he shifted the coat in his arms that he remembered the purpose of his errand.

"Oh—I found this coat in the closet. I outgrew it but it doesn't fit my little brother so I was wondering if—"

"I do not like charity, Will," he interrupted. "You know that. I appreciate the thought, but I cannot take it."

"You're going to freeze in that old thing you wear."

"It is suitable, and winter will not last forever."

"You could catch your death in pneumonia out here," he protested.

"I will be fine."

This was astoundingly frustrating.

"Now, if you had something I could do in exchange…" Djaq began absently, as if dropping a hint.

"Huh?"

"If I did something for you and the coat was my payment, then it would not be charity. I do not like taking something for nothing—but as long as I can pay you back…"

"Are you serious?"

He nodded his dark head.

"Well, I can't think—" and then he cut himself off. An idea struck him. "Actually… my Dad wants his workshop tidied up today, and it's a big job. D'you think, maybe you could give me a hand with it?"

A smile crept into his face and his dark eyes lit. He nodded slowly. "I think I can manage that."

0…0…0…0…0

o…o

I'm afraid I've never been to Nottingham before in my life, so I had to base 1940s Nottinghamshire off of the only part of England I know: North Yorkshire, a place that has not changed appreciably since approximately the Norman Conquest.

An update will be coming in a week—about half of this story is already written, and I'll be posting chapters once a week on Fridays, so people can read it over the weekend. I know a lot of people don't have internet access during the week.

Feedback and reviews are much appreciated, but not demanded. Chapters will come out one way or the other.