She was just a girl he knew. He charmed her, won her, liked her for her spirit. Liked her for the way she always argued just because. Because she had a brain and will and strength he never saw in anyone else. And he felt sorry for what he did even as he was doing it, but he didn't love her enough to stop. Stop leaving, stop running away, stop stopping growing up. That's what she always said to him: "Grow up." But he couldn't, not yet. So he left her. Left her behind without knowing if she'd wait for him. Would she wait for him to grow up? To come back, if he came back? He returned deeply scarred to find, yes, she had waited. But for him? No, not for him. For herself, for herself to stand up for her life, the way she wanted it. This time he had to love her enough to give her that. And he did. And finally she saw and she followed him into the forest. He fought for glory: he loved it. He fought for others: it was right. And he fought because his life was hers. So now, when it was she who was running away, running back to the castle, he let her go because he knew: she belonged to him too.

Robin wondered if it was possible to hurt someone without meaning it. He was sure he'd done it before, he must have—some inadvertent injury against someone sometime—but he couldn't remember a time, couldn't recall an instance, and so he wondered with a little bit of hope if maybe it wasn't possible. Maybe you couldn't really hurt someone unless you meant to hurt them. He swallowed this thought as he rode into view of Knighton Hall. He'd never been so cautious with choosing his words as he had been today, all day, playing the conversation out in his head. Even when he was caught in their flirtatious banter, he never thought out what he said. He never had a plan, barely even half a plan. He'd speak without a care. It was the trait Much hated most in him. But today, he was very careful to say everything right. He knew he could count on Marian to be unpredictable in her response, but at least he had arranged his side of the conversation. It was solid and unemotional, practical and straightforward, but he was prepared to offer words of love and regret, if she would let him.

He saw her walking from the stables to the house. She loved to ride, he knew. Of course she would have been out riding, he should have known, and yet he envisioned her during their conversation with her embroidery. She spotted him and smiled brightly. He pulled up on the reins and hesitated. He had wanted to speak to her in the house, properly, but she was walking towards him. This wasn't how he wanted. He couldn't tell her outside, not in the yard, but he didn't want her to suspect anything—better to tell her without that anxiety, without that tension of dread. He knew she would see on his face that something was serious. He half-pulled for his horse to turn around, but then he heard her voice and he froze.

"I don't normally see you out and about before noontime. Is this a special occasion?"

"Marian—" he stopped. Abandon the plan, he thought. The situation had changed. He had to accept it and adapt. But he didn't know where to begin.

Eyeing him suspiciously as the pause grew longer, Marian broke the silence.

"My father is at the castle of course, so you'll have to be satisfied with speaking to me in broad daylight in view of all the villagers. For the sake of propriety," she added.

He smiled tentatively. Dropping his head, he breathed deeply and swung his leg over to dismount. On the ground, he tried to avoid her eyes.

"Robin?" she said with tense longing and foreboding.

"I don't—I don't know how to tell you," he started. Say it quickly, he thought. Just say it now.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice growing cold as she realized what it was. Of course she already knows, he thought. She's not a fool, she's Marian.

"You know of King Richard's Crusade?" he said weakly, barely looking at her.

"Yes, Robin, what of it?" she snapped.

"Marian, I—I—"

"Well, I hope you have fun, little boy," she blurted. Tears starting out of the corner of her eyes, she turned and walked firmly away towards her house.

Robin didn't follow her. He let her go. His chest was tight with the knot of held-back tears as he mounted his horse. He kicked him into a gallop and didn't look back. He knew all his planned words had been just to ease his conscience. He knew Marian could see right through him with a glance and yet, he had wanted something to take away the sting of hurting her.

It was over now, though. It was done. He thought if he could have forgotten that morning that Marian liked to ride, then it was possible he could forget all of her. She wasn't so much in his thoughts and heart, was she? The entire journey to Palestine, Robin forced himself to forget. Until after that first day of battle, when all he could see when he closed his eyes was blood and the empty eyes of the dead, the image he reached into his mind for, the image he clung to was her. Her laughing, her sighing, her fighting him with her words and her soft fists, her breath on his neck when she reached up to embrace him. When one year at war became two and then three, Robin had played out so many little scenes of her, his heart ached. There were scenes that made him blush, made him burn, made him sick with desire and there were scenes so tender they almost made him cry. So when he awoke from the fever to find orders to return home, he felt the anxiety at seeing her creep up and tighten his throat. He hadn't asked her to wait, there was no reason why she would have.

But then he got back and everything was different, everything was broken, everything was wrong. She had waited, but what did it matter when nothing in Nottinghamshire was right. She had changed; leaving her had made her distant. Then, in the woods, with everything lost but his fighting will, perfected after years of war, he saw how their lives pulled them apart from each other. Always different directions, she said. He resolved then: he would keep his home from crumbling under the cruel hand of the Sheriff and Gisborne, he would care for his men and for the people of England, and he would prove to Marian that he had grown up, grown up in a direction not just in line with hers, but entwined with hers. He would love her at all costs. Not because one day when he was young he wronged her, but because the idea of any more days without her was an impossibility.