A/N: Thank you so much for hanging on! I've put a little bit more WillxDjaq in this one, as I feel I have been ignoring them slightly.

Chapter Seven

Truth

"He's still breathing!"

"How bad is it?"

"He's been impaled, how bad do you think it is?"

"Djaq, can you do anything?"

"I don't know, I can't see."

"I'll take the sword out."

"No!!"

Guy was vaguely aware of many voices around him and many shapes above him. He could just make out Bassam, Saira and Djaq, slightly fuzzy and out of focus. He could feel the hot sand beneath him, but it seemed to be growing colder. Hadn't someone just said something about peace? He couldn't remember. There was another form hovering as well, so pale and blue and beautiful. It couldn't be an angel… he wasn't dying… he didn't want to die… he'd only just started a new life, a good, simple life filled with the love that had been absent from the last one. He had Marian… Marian! She was the pale, blue angel.

Marian…

He tried to say her name but he couldn't make the sound come out. He reached for her but she seemed so far…

Her hand caught his.

"I'm here," she said, and he could feel her tears dripping onto their clasped hands. He wanted to comfort her and wipe away those tears. Finally he regained his tongue, willing himself to hold onto precious consciousness for just a little while longer.

"Marian…" he managed, before letting the fuzziness become absolute…

"No!" Marian screamed. She jumped up from the ground and ran at Robin, slapping him once, twice… She raised her hand for a third blow but it never came. Instead she collapsed onto him, fresh floods of tears her incapacitation. "This wasn't how it was supposed to be," she sobbed. "It's all my fault."

Firm yet friendly hands pulled her away from Robin.

"Marian, he is not dead, we will do all we can," came Djaq's voice. Marian's heart soared, those few words giving her hope of indescribable dimension. Blurred by tears, she saw Djaq run across the square and enter Bassam's house, where they had taken Guy.

The hold on her arms loosened slightly.

"You're calm now?" asked the owner of the hands whom she now recognised to be John. She nodded and he let go of her completely as she turned to survey the area. It was buzzing with excitement and people in the wake of the shocking news that had just been borne through the town. She, however, couldn't focus on it. She couldn't think of the happiness and the celebration. There was so much that needed to be done, or rather, explained, before she could accept anything new. She saw Robin through the crowds, sitting on the edge of the fountain with his head in his hands.

The outlaws parted unconsciously to let her pass, clearing a direct path from her position to his. She turned to John, still standing steadfast and silent behind her.

"Please don't go," she whispered. "I think I shall need some support."

John said nothing but nodded his acquiescence. Marian took a deep breath and began the purposeful journey towards Robin. It was not a long path, but she walked it feeling as if she were a murderer about to be hung. It was time for her to tell Robin the whole truth for the first time in longer than she cared to remember.

XXX

"What are we going to do next?" asked Bassam.

"What can we do next?" asked Saira, in such a tone that made it a much more pertinent question in the circumstances. Djaq paced up and down alongside Guy's body, lying so horribly still as if he were lifeless, the sword standing true, a mocking reminder of the situation they faced. She tried to answer the two questions for herself. There were so many ifs and buts, yet with every second she took deciding her course of action, she knew his chances of survival ticked slowly away.

A sword to the stomach shouldn't kill… however if it's untreatable… how deep is it… how do we stop the bleeding…?

Suddenly her incoherent thoughts moulded themselves into a plan.

"I've got it!" she said, tearing the ever-present vial of her mysterious elixir from round her neck and kneeling to administer it. "We can kill him!"

"What?" exclaimed Saira. "I thought we were going to save him!" She turned to Bassam, only to find him smiling too.

"Like Marian," he said. "Saira, find some bandages."

I only hope this works, thought Djaq gravely as she tentatively began to tend to the wound, waiting for his pulse to slow so that the sword could be taken out with minimal blood being spilled. It was ironic that both Marian and Guy should be saved in this way, a unity by the matching scars of their battle to be together to add to their tumultuous love story.

Eventually, his heartbeat at nearly nothing, Djaq worked faster than she had ever done before. It seemed that when the human pulse slowed, so did the pulse of time, making every second more precious in case it suddenly resumed its regular pace without warning. As she worked, Will's words of that fateful night came back to her.

"We're doing this for Marian. Not you."

Marian's face haunted her with every stroke of the needle that she pulled. The tortured anguish when she thought she had lost her loved one, unashamed floods of tears cascading freely down her nose and dripping off her chin, and then the unspeakable relief that had lit up her countenance when Djaq had given her fresh hope. There was no doubt in her mind that she was doing it for Marian. She couldn't bear the thought of killing that hope…

XXX

Robin felt dazed, as if the entire world was moving around him and yet he remained still and heavy, weighted to the Earth with the amount of confusion and anger he felt. His anger, however, was not towards Marian, more towards himself for being unable to form an opinion of the situation for more than a few seconds. On one hand, she had been kind in letting him close the door on the part of his life with her in it and allowing him to move on, but then again, to deceive him so totally… He kept replaying snippets of her explanation in his mind, not noticing the outside world or the fact that she was still sitting silently where he had left her, needing to be alone with his thoughts.

I'm so sorry Robin… I love Guy… I wanted you to be able to move on… I didn't have enough courage…

… I didn't kill her… PEACE!

Robin closed his eyes, trying to focus his thoughts but her form, in luminescent white, still swam in the forefront of his vision, the missing parts of his dream fitting suddenly and painfully into place.

"I love you," she says, and he turns to see her step into the arms of his constant, and now victorious, adversary. Gisborne murmurs with a smile: "I love you too."

"Robin. Robin!"

He opened his eyes to find himself face to face with Will.

"You knew," he said. "That's why you stayed here in the Holy Land. That's why you tried to stop us coming back. You knew. You lied to me to help Marian and Gisborne."

"We helped Marian," said Will stoically. "It just happened to involve Gisborne."

Will could feel Robin's anger at their almost-betrayal emanating from his leader like heat waves.

"Even if you can't have her, you want her to be happy, don't you?" he said, trying to mitigate the situation as best he could. "Marian's happy out here with Gisborne."

"Which would you rather?" asked Robin snidely. "That Djaq died or that she left you for another?"

"I don't know what I'd do without her," admitted Will. "But I think it would be worse to have to live knowing that she was definitely not and never would be mine because she was in the arms of another. But," he added quickly before Robin could interrupt, "even if she left me I'd want her to be happy. That's the mark of a good, true love, Robin. If you can let her go."

"But I don't want to let her go!" said Robin. "I want her to be mine!"

"The heart works in mysterious ways," said Djaq. She had emerged from the house and come over to them unnoticed. "I'm sorry Robin. Where's Marian?"

Robin indicated silently.

"I thought that the last time I saw her she was in love with me," he said, a slight bitterness and sadness permeating his voice.

"That was her plan. If she was going to disappear in order to spare you some pain, then why should she cause you even more pain by letting you carry on doubting whether she loved you when she died?"

It all seemed so horribly logical to Robin. He could now see why she had done it and why Will and Djaq had helped. Contrary to his first belief – that they were laughing at his love for her – they had done it because they didn't want to cause him more anguish than necessary. And the plan had almost worked until he, Robin, had foiled it unintentionally with his dogged insistence.

He drove his fist hard against the soft sand in frustration. Should he feel guilty for stabbing Gisborne or not? The anger rose in his head again.

If I can't have her nor can he.

He shook the worrying thought away, trying to tell himself that he had not attacked in revenge, merely protection of the King, prevention of regicide and the fall of England, but he could no longer gild his actions of vengeance with a veil of patriotism. It was pure, red-mist revenge.

"I'm sorry it had to be like this," said Will sincerely.

Robin looked out of the corner of his eye to see Marian and Djaq enter Bassam's house, and he wondered with a leaden stomach the outcome of the surgery. What was Gisborne's fate? What was his own fate? As he was once again lost to musings and fears, another thought entered the mixture. Perhaps it was fate that had caused this in the first place. Perhaps he could still do some good here in Acre in the wake of the new peace that had only just been agreed.


A/N: I'm sorry to have to tell you that the next chapter may take slightly longer as I haven't finished writing it long-hand yet, let alone typing it. It's in the pipeline, but I have coursework and a scholarship application essay to write. Ok, that's enough of my excuses. I hope you liked it and please review!