Author's Note: I wrote this because KeepingAmused requested more Will/Djaq/Allan and I have a standing order from I Am the Lev to keep the Allan-centric stories coming : ) Plus I wanted to write something about the finale, but I haven't decided how I want to bring Marian back to life yet! Also, I just had to work in the fact that I noticed Allan carrying that pigeon basket as the end credits rolled…and sadly, I have no right to the characters.
Waves of Thought
It wasn't so much the rocking of the ship that made Allan sick that night. It was more the dizzying circularity of his thoughts. He betrayed the gang, he protected the gang, he gave away their secrets, he guarded their most important—Marian. He paused on that thought and his throat tightened with grief before another spiral unraveled. He worked for Gisbourne, Gisbourne stabbed Marian, Robin wed Marian, with the King as a witness, the King left them in the desert to die. He stopped—the desert.
His tongue felt thick again remembering his thirst under the scorching heat, but that tangible memory gave way to one far more uncomfortable. For it was there in the desert, bound and desolate, that he had heard their profession of love. Though he had noticed a change in them during their journey to Acre, until that day, he still held onto doubt—doubt that Will had actually spoken up. They were close enough friends for Allan to know that Will worked best with quiet. He was the kind of craftsman who could whittle and hammer without anyone noticing and he barely took credit for the result. Allan figured Will would apply that same patience to matters of the heart and abide his feelings for Djaq in silence indefinitely.
For someone who loved her, though, Allan had overlooked Djaq's voice. Had he known that it was she who spoke first in the barn in Nettlestone, it would have deepened his disappointment. But no one ever told him what happened that day or how it came to be that his best friends were staying behind, thousands of miles away behind—together.
So Allan was left with his whirling thoughts, wave upon wave, always crashing on the same jutting rock—the realization that Djaq was gone. And Will was gone. And Marian was gone. And, for better or worse, Gisbourne was gone. And suddenly his world looked frighteningly unpopulated. Much and Little John, as true as they were, were hardly consolation for the friendships lost on this trip to the Holy Land. Never a religious man, Allan gave even less credit to any God or divine order, that in such a supposedly sacred place, he could have lost so much.
He looked over at Robin, humbled at the thought that his grief was greater. Whatever seed of love unnurtured Allan had for Djaq, it paled in the shadow of the towering love between Robin and Marian. Whatever attachment Allan had for England, it never met the ferocity with which Robin fought for it and for its King.
Just as exhaustion was beginning to scramble his thoughts, Allan started down one more circle. The King—it was on the King's birthday that he learned of a pigeon called Lardner. He had proven himself to Gisbourne in his loyalty by taking him to the bird. He had proven himself to Will by letting a key go unnoticed. He was in both camps and neither camp and at the end of the day the pigeon was dead, plucked from flight by the Sheriff's falcon. And yet, cooing next to him, as perturbed by the ship's motion as he was, there was Larnder alive and ready, waiting to fly that infinite stretch of sky to the land where he left the ones he loved. Allan wondered, as he drifted off to sleep, what the price would be of a pair of wings.