Lately the distance between "she loves you" and "she's yours" seems longer than ever. (Robin and Marian in the forest circa 2x07-08)


No one had even tried to stop them leaving.

With Marian's arms wrapped around his waist, they'd ridden out of the gates like they were no one. Not a fugitive and a prisoner - not even an earl and the sheriff's daughter, as they once were - no one. There wasn't a guard or a peasant who batted an eye to see them riding off together, and while Robin isn't a man who asks too many questions, he does wonder.

The gang are all waiting when Robin and Marian arrive, and John helps her down from the horse. She doesn't object - just takes his arm and gives him a smile that looks almost painful. Robin hops down after her. "Marian'll be staying with us now," he says.

They all pipe up half-heartedly, glad you're here and you'll like it and other nonsense, but as always Djaq walks right past the bullshit. "I am so sorry about your father, Marian," she says, putting one hand on Marian's shoulder.

It feels like the entire forest is holding its breath, and then Marian nods. "Thank you," she says softly.

Marian clings to him throughout that first day in the forest, something that is unlike her, if not entirely unwelcome. She follows him like a shadow as he gets everyone ready for yet another tiny, questionably legal wedding.

When Robin says the words that marry John and Beatrice he cannot help glancing at Marian. He knows it isn't the time - when will it ever be the time? - but she is here with him in the forest, and that has to be a step in the right direction.

Later on Much starts the cooking fire, and Marian curls up next to Robin as they eat dinner. The mood around the fire is more subdued than usual, for even though they are all here and they have the pact, they cannot forget what it cost them. Certainly not with Marian here, looking into the growing darkness of the woods with doleful eyes.

One by one the outlaws wander away, to solitude or to bed, except that Will and Djaq go off together and Robin wonders about it, not for the first time. By the light of the dying fire, Marian turns to him. "Where shall I sleep?"

Ah. "We've got an extra bedroll," he says, not pointing out that it used to be Allan's. It shouldn't smell too bad, anyway - Allan had been surprisingly clean, most of the time. "I can show you where Djaq usually sleeps, if you'd like to-"

Marian shakes her head, almost imperceptibly.

"Or you can stay by me." His voice is barely a whisper already and it breaks at the end, but Marian's fingers twine through his, and she holds his hand like she is afraid of letting go.

They walk off. Robin shoulders Allan's bedroll and then his own, and leads Marian away from the camp. After a few minutes, he sets their bedding down under an enormous willow tree. Its branches hang down around them like curtains, letting the sky through in patches. The stars shine through the leaves.

Marian sits down on one of the old tree's enormous roots while Robin makes their beds - carefully, not too close together, but close enough that if Marian reached out in the night she would find him there, and know that he hadn't left.

She strips down to her undergarments and doesn't ask him to turn away and her hair is everywhere, and it wasn't all that long ago that she had almost married Gisborne and left him forever, but here she is.

Here she is.

When they are both curled up inside their blankets, Marian looks at him. "My father."

He's been waiting for this - dreading it, if he's honest - all day.

"Was he in much pain?" Her voice is quiet and rough. It sounds like it hurts her to say the words.

Robin shakes his head on instinct, even though she has to know it's a lie. They've both suffered wounds like that. It is nothing but pain. "Not for very long," he says, and hopes it will be a comfort to her. "It happened quickly."

Marian nods. He can see her throat work as she swallows back tears. "Before he died I said things to him that - things I shouldn't have said, and I didn't mean..."

"He knew you loved him," Robin whispers back. "He knew you were proud."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do now." She rolls over onto her back, eyes wide, staring up at the stars through the branches. "For so long I've been helping you and keeping him safe, and now - I don't know. What he would have wanted."

Robin is not stupid. Whatever Edward had said, what he'd wanted for Marian was a safe home with a warm bed and bouncing babies and a husband who wasn't an outlaw. Come to it, that's what Robin wants for Marian, provided that said husband is him.

Still. He wants to tell her, but he wants her to ask.

"Did he say anything else?" Her voice gets quieter every time she speaks, and he hopes for her sake that she's falling asleep. Though he doesn't envy the dreams she will have tonight.

"That he was proud." He doesn't know how to say the rest without sounding like he's taking advantage, but if he's going to say it he just has to come out with it. "And that I'm not as bad as he thought."

His attempt at understatement doesn't go unnoticed, or unappreciated. Marian smiles for the first time in hours. "Did he now?"

"He said he'd never understood what you saw in me," he says, serious now, and Marian closes her eyes, "but that he thought you were right, after all."

"Of course I was," she says, almost laughing, still sneaking a hand out of her blankets to brush the tears from her cheeks. With closed eyes she doesn't see the fond smile on Robin's face, but he can't make it disappear no matter how much he grieves for her. Edward is dead, and he cannot quite believe it yet, but even so: Marian is here, she is with him, and she thinks he is a good man, and she is still always right.

She is always right, so she must be right about him.


It's possible, Robin thinks, that Marian was right all along.

She's been in the forest for barely a week when she starts to get reckless and agitated. "I just wish I could wash my hair," she grumbles.

Robin raises an eyebrow. "You've only been here a week. How often did you bathe in the castle?"

"In the castle I wasn't sleeping on the ground," she snipes.

He throws his arms out. "Fine. We have soap. Any of us can take you to a stream."

"And what if someone walks by and sees me?"

"Like who, Marian? A deer? There's no one out here."

She narrows her eyes at him. "You're out here."

He tries for levity. "Well, that wouldn't be all bad."

While this doesn't elicit an ideal response - not that Robin really thought he'd get an invitation, but it seemed worth a shot - it does get her to roll her eyes and sigh in exactly the way she does when she finds him both irritating and adorable. Given what she's been like all morning, Robin counts this as a win.

"Look, I know this isn't ideal-" She snorts, but he continues, "but it's better than the alternative."

What he means is it's better than being alone in the castle, it's better than being with Gisborne, it's better than swinging while the Sheriff arranges to put your head up on a pike - but from the way her eyes flash, he knows that all she hears is her father's name, unspoken. To Marian, the alternative still means in the castle, with her father.

"Is it," she says tersely, through gritted teeth. And turns on her heel to stalk off into the forest.

"Oh come on, Marian," he calls after her hopelessly. He presses the heels of hands into his forehead and he wants to rage and he wishes there was someone horrible around so he could throw a punch and relieve some of the frustration that's burning him up, but alas. When he turns around it's Djaq standing there behind him, silent as a - well, as a Saracen - and looking at him appraisingly.

"What?" he snaps.

"Nothing," she says, doing that little head-shake and pursing her lips. It does not help Robin's mood.

"What?" he says again. Harsher this time.

Djaq takes the last few steps to stand right next to him, and she echoes his body language, crossing her arms and staring off into the forest. "You need to be gentle with her, Robin."

He's not proud of it, but God, does he hate being told what to do. "I am." And he is, he thinks. Surely. All those nights holding her when she awoke from yet another nightmare. All these days walking on eggshells, trying not to talk about her father or her house or the past or the future.

She lets him sit with her silence for a few minutes before she speaks again. "She has lost a great deal."

"I know that," he says, but thinks, so have we all.

"Then why are you so frustrated?"

Robin can think of about fifty thousand reasons, many of which don't involve Marian at all, and frankly he prefers those. The reasons he finds Marian frustrating don't make him look very good.

"You cannot take the place of her father," Djaq says, and talks over him when he starts to object. "That is not what I mean. It is not fair for you to expect that it will be enough, just to be with you."

He stares resolutely into the middle distance. "It is for me."

She puts a hand on his arm, and he's forced to look at her. "Was that true five years ago?"

For a second his hackles rise, and he grits his teeth and prepares to say something sharp - when he suddenly deflates. She is right, after all. What objection can he make?

He'd left for the Holy Land because Marian wasn't enough. Because he'd wanted things that couldn't happen at home, no matter how much he regrets it now. No matter how much he sees what a poor trade he made: the love of a brave, clever woman for the gore and horror of the battlefield. He cannot change it now.

She hadn't been enough for him, so how could he possibly expect any different?

They stand there for a few minutes more, looking into the shadowed forest, and as always there is something calming about Djaq's presence. It has occurred to Robin that if something happens to him, Djaq would probably be the best person to take over the gang - Will is smart, but he isn't loud enough; John is big but a terrible planner, and Much is - well, he's Much, and wonderful in his way, but a leader of men he is not.

"I don't know what to do," Robin admits, finally.

"It will take time," Djaq says.

He lets out a short laugh.

"But she'll come around," she continues. Then looks up at him: "She loves you, Robin."

It's true, he knows. But lately the distance between she loves you and she's yours seems longer than ever.

"Thanks, Djaq," he says, and he mostly means it.

"Of course." She pats him gingerly on the arm. "Now you must return to camp and stop Will from helping with dinner."


She does not mean to be reckless.

It is just this: for years now, she has had to be so careful. When the Sheriff first showed up and deposed her father, she packed her things quietly and comforted her father and cast her eyes down when powerful men addressed her. When they started starving out the villagers, she went into the woods to practice fighting for the first time since Robin left, preparing to don a mask and hand out stolen goods in the dead of night. Until Guy stabbed her, she never got caught - because until that night, she was always careful.

Marian is quiet and deadly and careful, because she has always had to be. To protect herself, and - more importantly, so much more - to protect her father. She knows she could handle anything they throw at her, but her father - tired and frail and increasingly so, every passing week - he could not have withstood a flogging or diminished rations.

And now he is gone, so what reason does she have to be careful? In the face of her father's death, Marian is free of all duty and obligation, and after so many years of being so careful: well, it is no wonder that she has started taking risks. When has she ever had the opportunity before?

Clun was a mistake, she sees that now. But she's never had to answer to anyone before, for however much Marian loved her father, she cannot think of a single time that she obeyed him. She pretended to listen to Guy and the Sheriff, only to undermine their orders at the first opportunity. Taking orders doesn't come naturally to her, especially after acting alone for so many years.

And she wonders, wandering around the empty camp, whether this is what she wants, after all. Living in the forest with Robin and all of them. Taking orders, making dinner, sleeping alone surrounded by the birds and raccoons and John's inescapable snoring. She would never tell Robin this, but her father wasn't the only reason she avoided coming out to the forest. Marian knew even then that she might chafe under Robin's leadership - she who had loved him so long and could count every one of his flaws.

It is hard being in the forest, something she doesn't think Robin understands: having come from five years in the Holy Land the outlaws' camp seems heavenly, she's sure, but coming from the comfort and familiarity of the castle - it is not, so much.

Moreover, she knew her role in the castle. It was a part she'd gotten good at playing - the innocent, always in the right place to hear the castle gossip, but never so close as to be suspicious. She got good - too good - at getting information and passing it on, and Guy hardly suspecting.

In the forest, what is her role? She's as good a shot and a fighter as any of them, but they've all been together so long that they move perfectly together, each making up for the others' gaps, each picking up where the last leaves off. Marian isn't part of that, and she doesn't know that she can be. That there is room for her to be part of Robin Hood's gang as well as Robin Hood's - she blushes to think the word but she cannot find one better - lover.

In any case, Marian is not altogether displeased that Robin saw her kissing Guy. Perhaps it'll make him think a little bit.

It makes her think a little bit. There was a time when it did not seem such an awful thing, to be married to Guy. It was not what she wanted, but as she had said to her father: there are worse things than marrying a man you do not love.

Of course, then he had stabbed her. And burned her house down.

And as much as she tries to avoid thinking about it, she cannot forget the way she felt after she saw her father lying dead on the ground. Guy had tried to hold her - a gesture of real affection and whatever kindness exists in him, she is sure - but his touch made her cringe and left her no warmer, and when he tried to kiss her, her entire body recoiled.

When she went into her room to find Robin there waiting for her, she felt, for the briefest moment, like she could breathe again.

He had come for her, like he always did, like he always would. Just as she would do for him.

And Robin Hood told her that her father wanted her to keep dreaming, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from drowning, and maybe he was.

Maybe he still is.

And when she tells him "I'm sorry," she means it. And when she takes his hand and feels him standing warm beside her, looking out over the long road, she cannot imagine being anywhere else.

For now, that is enough.