Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Merry Men, Women, or Relatives of said Men or Women
Fractured Lullaby
He used to sing to her when she was a child: a few brief snatches of half-forgotten melody from when he himself was a boy. She would stare up at him adoringly; raven dark hair fanning out over her pillow creating a halo … like an angel.
His little angel…
But now his angel was weeping endless diamond tears and Edward was floundering –
His wife would have known what to do. His darling dead wife would have known exactly how to comfort their Marion, how to pick up the jagged pieces of her broken heart and how to show her how to put them back together again – the same yet different … changed somehow.
Edward wasn't sure he knew how to do anything anymore.
He hated the invisible barrier that had taken root between him and his Marion. It was a dark, insidious weed creeping its way slowly between them, suffocating everything in its path and obscuring his daughter from view.
Marion barely left her room now, immersed in her own sorrows and crying over an all-or-nothing man who didn't know how to balance love for country and love for her.
Robin came to see him three days before he left for the Holy Land….
He was being pulled in two opposing directions and had ground to a halt in the middle.
Was it wrong that Edward gave him somewhere to turn?
"Robin of Locksley you are a man of honour and men of honour fight. I will take care of Marion and she will be waiting when you return."
Edward remembered those words as if he had uttered them just yesterday and he repeated them silently to himself every time he began to resent Marion for shutting herself off from the world. The only person in this whole sorry mess who deserved resentment was him.
He would learn to be a good father somehow and he would learn to make up for the mess he had brought to the door of an angel…
In Edward's eyes guilt was a misplaced and ill-intentioned emotion...
But in this case misjudgement had turned out to be near fatal.
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