This chapter is about... oh, four months overdue, due to a serious industrial relations dispute between the part of my brain that comes up with the ideas and the part that writes the words. Many thanks to everyone who's encouraged me to continue, and I apologise for constantly promising that it was nearly done and would be up soon. (I really did believe it - clearly, I have delusions of my own efficiency.)

It follows straight on from the end of the last chapter, in which being on a ship provokes some very painful memories for Djaq. It's very introspective and action-free, even by my usual standards - but these issues regarding her character have been stuck on the tip of my pen for ages, and I needed to deal with them. The way I see it, she needed to deal with them too.

Seasickness, Part II

The momentum of her flight had carried her to the stern of the ship, where she stood, head bowed, watching the churning water the vessel left in its wake. Her face was wet with spray, whipped up by the harsh wind that had shocked away the last traces of her terror, leaving her feeling cold and somewhat foolish. Now that the moment was past, Djaq did not fear the things she had seen and heard below deck. They were nothing more than chimeras and could not hurt her; what troubled her was the power they had had over her while they lasted.

She did not turn as the tentative footfalls stopped a few paces behind her.

"Djaq?"

"I am not going to jump off and try to swim back to shore, if that is what you're afraid of. I have not completely lost my mind yet." Her attempt at laughter rang false even to her own ears, and the strangled sound seemed to dispel Will's doubts about coming any closer. Djaq stiffened instinctively as his long arms wrapped around her, still unused to such close contact and in no mood to enjoy it at present. He released her instantly, with a mumbled apology that made her feel guilty enough to reach her hands back for his and draw them about her shoulders like the edges of a cloak. She was too distracted even to raise a chuckle at this awkward farce of under-rehearsed intimacy - or to smile, as she might otherwise have done, at the blend of chivalry and shyness that made him cross his arms where they encircled hers, hands resting on his own forearms rather than anywhere she might not be comfortable with them touching.

"Did... did you have a bad dream?" She could feel his chin moving against her hair as he spoke.

"No, not a dream. I was awake, but I was not here." She kept both her words and her voice abrupt and impassive, needing to stay in the realm of fact rather than melodramatic fancy. Of course, there was no matter-of-fact way to describe how, for those few minutes, reason and reality had deserted her, turning the cabin into a stifling prison, the warm body of the man she loved into a lifeless corpse, and the face of her trusted rescuer and leader into that of her most hateful enemy. So she didn't even try.

"Where were you?" Will asked gently.

"The ship that brought me from Acre to Venice nearly three years ago." Cities, dates: these were hard facts, things that could be trusted. But they were false friends tonight, reminding her of all the months and miles that had passed since she had left the one-eyed man's ship, and mocking her for the folly and weakness of losing her head over an ordeal that was ancient history.

Her captors had stripped her of her sword, but besides the amulet, she had other weapons they could not take from her. She was proud of the armoury she had carried with her on that journey by ship and slave-cart: strength, courage, honour and wits that had seen her through the war in her homeland and the adventures and misadventures of a Sherwood forest outlaw. Three nights ago she had faced death - certainly not without fear, but she had mastered it and used those last hours to tie up the loose threads of her life.

And yet here she was, starting at shadows and battling an enemy who was not there. It was -

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Will's white knuckles growing paler before her eyes as he dug his fingers into the cloth of his sleeves, pulling her more tightly against his chest. "The slave ship."

"Yes." Djaq lifted her head, focusing her eyes on a distant point of light in the sky. It was, strictly speaking, a cure for seasickness - one that circumstances had not allowed her to test on her last voyage - but she hoped it might do something to relieve the tumult in her head and stomach anyway. Behind her, Will was silent, as if sensing her need to gather herself. She knew he would stand there all night, if need be, letting her stare at the stars and think, as patiently as he had listened to her babbling about these same stars in an attempt to keep herself from thinking.

Now she recognised the one she had chosen at random as the brightest point of Cepheus, the King: one of the constellations she had been describing earlier, just a few hours further along its nightly progress across the heavens. Would it be the same for her, she wondered - forced to relive the same journey night after night until they reached their destination?

"As long as I was on land, there was not a day that I was not planning an escape." She recognised the note of defensiveness in her own voice, though Will certainly hadn't accused her of anything. "I never succeeded, but there was always that hope," she went on. "Men can be fought, or frightened, or persuaded. Ropes and chains and bars... there are ways..."

Even as she spoke, an image flashed before her mind's eye: a tall, thin figure stamping a burning serpent of rope beneath his feet. Then, she had been thankful that this band of English brigands included such a callow youth, gullible enough to believe in Turk flu and foolish enough to play right into her hands and untie the knot that held the cage closed. If someone had tried to tell her that day how much she would come to appreciate Will Scarlett's presence by her side, she might have started to believe in Turk flu herself: a fearsome disease that melted people's brains.

"But on a ship, there is nowhere to run. When you are surrounded by miles of empty sea, there is nothing to do but wait," she said. "It was the only time I have ever felt helpless."

"Nothing like that is going to happen to you again," he said fiercely. The subtext was clear – I will not let it - and though she knew he meant well, Djaq felt that he was missing the point. Of course he would do anything he could to keep her from harm; she would do the same for him, for any of the gang. But when it came down to it, she had to trust to her own resources to see her through whatever dangers lay before them. The six of them were stronger together, but each man or woman needed to be strong enough alone. She needed to be strong enough alone.

"No!" she insisted. "The point is that it did happen again. It felt as real as the last time."

"I know. It must have been terrible. Nobody should have to go through what you did, and when I think that it was Englishmen who..." Will spoke in a queer, halting fashion, clearly struggling to keep his voice calm and comforting, and restrain the anger that threatened to run away with his words. "Since I met you, there've been days I'd have given anything not to be English," he finished.

He meant it. Djaq supposed she should not be surprised; she had rarely discussed much of her past with the other outlaws, but of course that didn't mean that Will wouldn't have thought about it, Will who thought about everything, felt for everyone, and took far too much on his own shoulders. He would have felt like that, not because he loved her, but because he was a good man, to whom cruelty and injustice were anathema; that he loved her was simply her good fortune.

"Better to wish all Englishmen were like you." She leaned back, consciously relaxing the tense posture that had held her somehow apart from him even though her body was pressed against his from her head to her heels, and felt his shoulders shift as he literally shrugged off her compliment.

"You're safe," he said staunchly.

Djaq sighed. "I know that. But I do not like the thought of being afraid for no reason. I do not like the idea of seeing things that are not real." She thought wryly that that was an understatement of which Little John would have been proud; the whole truth was that it both shamed and terrified her.

"It sounds like what Robin was talking about, in the barn," Will mused.

"Perhaps. But... this does not happen to me, Will." To others, perhaps, but not to her, to all these Englishmen who had fought in her country – Robin and Much, Carter, the one they called Harold. If she had been as superstitious as they, she might have believed it was a punishment for the things they had done to her people, a curse that struck the invaders and passed over their victims. But she knew better than that. These "demons" came not from the vengeful God of either side, but from their very own minds, and she had credited her strength of will with keeping her free of them. She had always been able to put past danger and suffering behind her – not forgotten, but never overwhelming her like this, never clouding her judgement, never hampering her sword-arm or her physician's hands.

Well, it seemed she really was no different from any of them. That made twice in three days that she had been proved wrong about herself, about things she had thought set her apart from the people around her. She had barely had time to get used to the fact that she was not, as she had sternly told herself for so long, immune to love, and now here was another force against which, it seemed, her defences were weaker than she had believed.

Slowly, inexorably, a new and equally unwelcome thought came to her: perhaps the timing of all that had happened to her of late was no coincidence.

She was too tired to decide whether the idea made perfect sense or none at all, but she was used to looking at the world in terms of cause and effect, and the theory was not one that could be dismissed out of hand. In truth, it even had a certain, dreadful appeal: if she knew what had triggered tonight's little performance, then she could make sure it did not happen again.

She turned and slid away from Will, moving to face him, her back to the sea. "You go back to sleep," she said. "I want to stay up here and think for a while."

"I'll stay with you. I don't mind," he assured her, as if concern for his comfort was the only possible reason she could have for not wanting him with her at a time like this. It was all so simple for him, she reflected enviously. "We can probably even sleep up here if you don't want to go back below," he added.

"Thank you, but no. I would prefer to be alone."

He looked as if she had slapped him, and she longed to soften what she had said, to temper it with a smile or a touch. More than anything, she wished she could reach up and press her mouth to his, more to reassure herself than him, as if she could draw from his lips some of the desperate certainty of that first heartbreaking kiss by the doorway to certain death. But it would be unfair to him – and besides, it would only serve to remind her of how different things were, now that she was left alive after all and choices that had seemed so simple were suddenly far more complicated.

On impulse, she reached out and squeezed his hand. "Thank you. You have helped. But please, you can help me most now by going back downstairs."

"Djaq-"

Already on edge, her patience worn thin, she had to fight the urge to snap at him, aware that it would be cruel, not to mention counterproductive. Anger would simply keep him above deck longer, trying to make amends. Instead she met his eyes and repeated firmly, "Please, Will."

He reluctantly retreated, glancing back over his shoulder more times than she would have thought possible for a journey of only a few dozen steps, and she exhaled with a great gasp of relief when he disappeared from view. Glad that he had left her alone with the rising flood of trepidation and doubt, before it reached her tongue and burst out in words that would hurt him far more than sending him away had done. Words that she might still have to say, but not until she had had a chance to think.

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If by letting Will go after Djaq, Robin had hoped to get back to sleep sooner, then he was sadly mistaken. Marian had never been far from his thought since he'd heard the news of her capture, but now the constant dull ache of worry was replaced by sharp, vivid images: Marian, awakening in terror in the belly of a ship – and she had reason enough to be fearful, in her present compant. Marian in chains, unable to run outside for a breath of fresh air. Marian in distress, with nobody to comfort her; nobody or Gisbourne. It was hard to say which was worse.

The unpleasant reality was that he knew the answer: he had to hope that Gisbourne was by her side, because the vile cowardly traitor was her only shield now against Vaysey's wrath. However much he hated to imagine her beset by nightmares and shackles and Gisbourne's unwelcome attentions, they were the least of Marian's troubles, little more than irritations compared to the real dangers that threatened her. She was brave and clever and resourceful, but Vaysey was a madman who now knew her for his enemy. Against that, the rest was as insignificant as the nagging sting of a horsefly in the face of an army. Robin wouldn't even waste God's time praying to keep her safe from bad dreams - all he asked was that she stay alive. Whatever else she suffered could be healed and avenged. He just had to reach her.

Though they could not be more than a day and a night's sailing behind Vaysey's ship, for the first time in years he had no idea where she was and there was no ingenious plan that could get him to her any faster than the tide and the ship's sails. He was at the mercy of the ocean, powerless to do anything more than repeat, endlessly, his impotent warcry. I'm coming, my love.

If truth be told, he was jealous of Will and Djaq. It sounded absurd, that the Earl of Huntingdon should envy a former slave and one of his own peasants. But who was to say what made sense any more, when an English carpenter and a Saracen woman could fall in love and be together as if it were the simplest thing in the world, while two English nobles, practically betrothed since childhood, were kept apart by an ever-thickening web of duty, intrigue and mischance.

Will and Djaq had lived side by side since the first day they laid eyes on each other, while it seemed that he and Marian were being pulled further and further apart, separated first by the walls of her father's house, then by the ramparts of Nottingham Castle, and now by an indeterminate expanse of water.

Everything was so easy for them. No. Not everything, he reminded himself: the ring on Djaq's finger could never be anything more than a sham, their union never recognised by either of their faiths. But when all was said and done, they were up there on the deck of the ship, together, and neither of them had had to climb through a window or shake off a guard for it to be possible. He had to wonder how much divine approval was really worth, compared with the chance to spend time with your beloved on Earth.

He forced his thoughts in a more cheerful direction. Their chance would come, it had to, and until then hope for the future, when Locksley could flourish again and its Lord and Lady could live there in peace, would have to be enough to sustain them both through the trials ahead.

So, just for tonight, he broke his rule and asked a little more of the heavens. God bless her, and send her pleasant dreams of home.

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Left alone, Djaq crossed the deck and sank down cross-legged beside the sleeping Little John. Solid, silent and completely oblivious to her distress, his presence was comforting in a way that Will's had ceased to be from the moment this new worry entered her mind. Even without saying a word, Will focused his whole attention on her with an intensity that made her feel like a lock he was trying to pick. His earnest desire to help made it impossible to concentrate – at least when what she needed to think about was him, and the disquieting possibility that this was a punishment of sorts after all, not for breaking the laws of Gods or men but the ones she had set for herself.

When she had blurted out her little string of last confessions - truths she herself had not known until her mouth was already open to say them - she'd assumed that her love for Will was the most important discovery she had made. In her hurry to tell him how she felt while there was still time, she had barely noticed the other revelation that had come tumbling out between the words of love. The realisation that she had not spoken them before, or even thought them, for one simple reason. She had been afraid.

Of what - that he would laugh in her face? Hardly. Her feelings for Will had not been alone in that dark, shuttered corner of her mind where she had kept them locked up until that moment. They had kept company with the memory of every look or touch or loaded conversation that she had not been able to dismiss as friendly cameraderie, or at most youthful infatuation, and so had chosen not to think about at all. As she had finally spoken out that night, even before his stunned expression had finally cracked into a smile, she had not feared rejection. She had known what he would say - for all that his somewhat unique choice of words was not something she could ever have predicted, even if she'd been the type to waste time imagining such conversations.

So what had she been afraid of? The answer was sickeningly clear: of this. Of becoming the proof of what she had long half-suspected: that love was for the weak, that love made people weak – and of learning she'd been wrong in her conviction that she was stronger. Afraid that whatever it was that drew her and Will together would rob her not just of her heart, but of the very qualities that made her who she was.

It had been more than a rebellion against the lessons her mother had taught her by word and example – that a woman had no business loving a man until she was safely married to him, and that a wife's duty was to be meek and submissive and everything else Djaq was not. She knew that, because when her mother was dead, and she was in Sherwood, and the only man within a hundred miles who'd read the Qur'an was a cocky outlaw leader with no interest in condemning her for breaking its rules, she had still felt the same way.

It was more, too, than the sensible caution of a lone woman among a group of warriors, her acceptance dependant on making her sex mean as little as possible. From the first, she had taken it for granted that none of the outlaws could ever be more to her than they were to each other: not much of a sacrifice, she'd thought, considering the ignorant state of their minds and the unwashed condition of their bodies. But even as her hair grew longer and her clothes tighter, as she began to flirt with Allan, to accept Will's considerate gestures, to acknowledge that Much and John saw her as a surrogate sister and daughter, rather than a brother and son – in short, as it became clear that she could be at once a woman and a respected member of the gang – still it had been inconceivable that she should love any of them except as dear friends.

No, leaving aside what others might think or expect of her, the problem lay with the very idea of love. An all-consuming, irrational emotion, blind to choice or circumstance and incomprehensible to those who did not feel it, that could turn wise men into fools, friends into enemies, and fetter free souls to each other as if by some invisible thread... If even half of what was said of it was true, it did not take a genius to realise that for someone who revered reason as much as she did her God, and who, for years, had been reliant on her wits to keep her alive and safe, such a sentiment was best avoided.

And so she had. Most of the time it was as unconscious as breathing, or wrapping her blanket more tightly around her on cold nights, the reflex that made her twist out of the way of an enemy's sword or any of the myriad other actions dictated by the instinctive animal need to survive. When she did have cause to think about it, it was always with a faint sense of pride that she was above the folly of those who allowed their hearts free reign over their heads – at best like Much, so easily swayed by a smile and a little attention; at worst like Robin and Gisbourne, unlikely conjoined twins sharing not a common spine or stomach but a burning core of passion, jealousy and reckless desperation exactly as wide and as high as Marian Kate Fitzwalter.

Djaq had not been oblivious to the wary looks the others – Will, especially – had cast in her direction in the wake of Allan's defection from the gang. But where their concern might have irritated her, instead it served as a silent vindication of her strength, a daily reminder that anyone who expected her to be – there was no better word, ill though it suited her - unmanned by his departure had seriously underestimated her. She had been hurt by Allan's betrayal and sorely missed his company. She had continued to believe that he could change - and she'd been right - but she had neither pined away like some tragic ballad maiden, nor sulked like... well, like Robin in one of his lovesick moods.

In the last few days, though, with her eyes newly opened and turned inwards on herself, she had had a clearer view than ever before of that fork in the way: the dark and twisted path down which her heart had ventured before turning back to the straight, fair road that led in the end to a barn in Nettlestone village. So perhaps, she admitted, what Allan's treachery had really proved was that love had no power to destroy you unless you spoke its name and acknowledged its hold on you, if only to yourself.

That, of course, was exactly what she had done three nights since, and now it seemed that in conjuring this slippery feeling out of its prison and giving it a solid form, she may have taken on more than she had bargained for. That was the irony of it, she thought: if this had not happened tonight, she might have believed that she'd outsmarted love after all, for she had been relieved to find that voicing her feelings for Will had not suddenly changed them into the kind of dizzying madness the poets were so fond of describing. It remained the same love, simple and sweet and safe, that she had felt before setting foot in that barn without recognising it for what it was, and only valued when she thought she was about to lose it; not the impetuous work of an arrow or a lightning bolt, but affection for a dear friend and respect for a truly good man, grown into something more.

Love might be the enemy of reason, but this was not an unreasonable love. Of all the choices her heart could have made, Will was the one that made sense, deserving of love in more ways than she had had time to say that night. If she could love anyone without making a fool of herself, surely it would be Will, who would never hurt or deceive her, never give her cause to be jealous or uncertain.

She should have been safe. But the consequences of her choice had attacked her from an entirely unexpected direction, one that had nothing to do with Will himself. The memories that had haunted her were from a time before she knew there was such a person, but that was a half-hearted comfort at best against the doubts that had taken their place. How many times had she seen a body weakened by one illness or injury, then carried off by another that came creeping in through defences already lowered?

If it was true, there could be only one solution. Everything would have to go back to the way it was before. At once she was assailed by stabs of protest from two sides, her conscience taking Will's part while a purely selfish voice cried out on her own account, but she steeled herself against them. It was time to come back to reality. She had always known that love was too dangerous a force to have a place in her life, at least while it was so perilous and uncertain. These few days had simply been an aberration. She had flouted the rules in the belief that she would only see one more dawn, but now she had a future again and she must face it as she always had. It was just fortunate that she had realised so soon, before either she or Will had become too used to the new state of affairs.

Except he already is, she conceded. That couldn't be helped. He would be hurt, but with luck he would understand why she had to do this, that she had not meant for it to be this way. And she would push what she felt for him back down into the darkness, and if she did not allow herself to think about it, it would flicker and die like a flame starved of air and she would be strong and free again.

The pang she felt at the prospect forced her to admit that Will was not the only one who had quickly grown attached to the idea of their being together. Instead of the surrender she had always dreaded, the last few days had felt more like a victory. Like all Robin's men, she spent her days trying to cure what was wrong with the world – sickness and hunger, corruption and war - and it had been refreshing, for that little while, to have something that was hers alone and that simply felt... good.

She let regret wash over her unchecked for a few moments before stifling it. Self-pity never helped anyone. Against all the odds, she had a life that the terrified woman dragged aboard that one-eyed villain's ship would never have dreamed of: she would not be so pathetic as to bewail the one thing she could not have. Besides, this bitter remedy was far preferable to the alternative: the possibility that this had nothing to do with admitting her feelings for Will, and thus could not be easily fixed by banishing them. If it had all happened solely because she was on a ship again then she was in an unthinkable position. She refused to spend the whole journey – three months at least - at the mercy of some imaginary menace, unable to trust her own senses not to revolt against her. No. Far better to do what she could and pray that it worked.

Still, that stubborn, selfish corner of her heart persisted in whispering that perhaps she need do nothing right away – perhaps this would not happen again anyway. After all, a good scientist does not leap to conclusions from a single observation...

But nor does a physician wait to be sure the illness is fatal before she lifts a finger to cure it.

This was not only about her, though. Surely she owed it to Will not to act rashly. Or was it more unfair to let it go on like this, when she was all too afraid she knew how it must end?

Djaq sat on the deck for a long time. The sailors had changed their watch and Cepheus's crown had almost disappeared over the horizon before she came to her decision: she would take what had happened tonight as a warning. If there was another sign that this had all been a mistake - that love could not co-exist with the self-control she had spent so long instilling - if that happened, she would know what she must do, and she resolved to do it without hesitating. It would not be easy, but she had survived far, far worse – and if this was the price of that fortitude, she would pay it.

But not yet. For now, she would give herself one more chance, to see if, after all, she could love Will without compromising everything she valued in herself.

Surely that was an experiment worth making.

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Will was still awake when she crept back downstairs, his eyes meeting hers in a question and answer that had passed between them enough times before to need no words.

Are you alright?

Yes.

In her tense and over-weary state, sleep was slow to come, and it was almost daybreak when she finally dozed off, but the spectres of her last voyage did not return that night. Perhaps it was a little harder now to mistake this ship for the other, for even when her eyes were closed she was aware of something that had never been there the last time she was at sea - the warmth of a hand curled gently around hers.