One more section, which is close to done, and I'm finished with this chapter. Then one more, much easier, chapter, and I'm finished with this fic. Which is good, because I have a feeling canon events are about to catch up with me. (Of course, if I cared that much about canon events, I wouldn't be including Marian, Will and Djaq in these things, would I?)

Title: The Prodigal - Chapter 5 (Part 2), "Long Memories"

Author: DCWash

Characters: Robin, Marian, and Djaq, with extensive talk of Allan

Disclaimer: All characters belong to BBC/Tiger Aspect.

Rating: Let's say late teens. Warning: Rather extensive discussion of rape, though nothing graphic. Description of a death (not of a main character) is more explicit, however.

Spoilers: None, really.

Length: 3557

Summary: Robin gets Allan's version of events. Or starts to, at least.

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The back door and window were shut so Robin decided to try the front—not only would it be less disturbing for Allan if he were asleep, but it would give Robin a bit more time to plan his approach. He could hardly blurt out, "So, Allan! Did you rape Emma and Juliana?" especially if he already thought Allan didn't rape Emma and Juliana. On the other hand.... Marian had talked about seduction. He saw her point about Emma but Juliana was something else altogether. She had been, as Marian so delicately put it, a "robust" girl—buxom, pleasingly plump, always with a grin and a bit of lip. She was also a little older than Emma. Robin thought she might be Allan's type, and, though Robin felt uncomfortable thinking ill of the dead, she had always seemed more likely to be open to persuasion about these things than perhaps was quite proper for a young girl. That might be an angle, but it still wouldn't be easy. But maybe a more generalized approach was better. I dunno, Robin thought. I guess I'll make something up as I go along.

Robin had half convinced himself to go away and come back another day if the front was shut up as tightly as the back, but instead he saw the door and window wide open, and Allan sitting at the table beyond, seemingly concentrating on something in front of him.

Robin paused in the doorway to study Allan. He was thinner. And possibly paler, though in a way that was better—at least he was no longer black and blue (and yellow and green) with bruises. The bandages and splints were gone, too, and Allan's hair had grown back enough to start to curl again. But what Robin found the most surprising was what Allan was doing. He was hunched over, lips open and tongue pressed against the edge of his top teeth with intense concentration, using a kind of sharp stick to trace something on what appeared to be a board laid on the table in front of him. It took Robin a moment to realize he was watching Allan practice writing letters.

For some reason, Robin was suddenly and profoundly moved by what he saw. He stood stock-still in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt. But, without looking up, Allan soon said, "I know you're there. You're blocking my light." He leaned back and admired his handiwork with his trademark half-grin, then turned to Robin with the same expression…which immediately froze when he saw who it was.

"When I was a boy, we practiced our letters on slates. And walked two miles barefoot in the snow to do it. Uphill both ways. I don't know that I approve of this new-fangled technology you lads use today," Robin said as he walked over to the table. At least now they had something to talk about that was less weighted than the more obvious options.

"Yeah, slates—that's what Winifred said. She rummaged around looking for the one she taught her children with but when she couldn't find it, Djaq came up with this idea. She said it's what she used. I guess she had Will run it up for her."

"Wax tablets. I've seen them before. Scribes use them to make notes and rough drafts and things like that. Scratch the letters in the wax, then rub them out when they don't need them any more." He examined Allan's efforts. "So what brought this on?"

Allan shrugged, half proud and half embarrassed. "Boredom, mostly. I know it's kind of a silly thing to take on at my age, but I didn't have naught else to do. I started fooling around with a quill and parchment Djaq left out, and Winifred raised holy hell, saying parchment was too dear for me to doodle on, and then Djaq joined in, and next thing I knew, they were showing me how to hold a pen and form letters. Still not sure what to do with them, but…." He shrugged again. And went quiet.

Robin nodded, but didn't say anything, either. Both of them seemed to have come over all bashful, perhaps remembering their last encounter. Allan scratched aimlessly on the tablet with his stylus, and Robin thought he saw in his eyes a hint of melancholy. He was right—Allan was a bit melancholic. Like Robin, Allan had been doing a lot of thinking lately, about who he was and why he did the things he did and how he fit in the world. However, he had reached a completely different conclusion. He had come to realize that he had, consistently, been too easy on himself, and as a result had done a lot of damage, to himself at least as much as to others. The worst part was that he had no idea how to even begin to repair that damage. The only thing he could think to do was to find a place where he could make a fresh start, and to resolve to make no more excuses.

And now here was Robin, the man with whom Will said he had "burned all his bridges," the living reminder of how badly he had screwed things up. If cornered, Allan would stand by what he had said about his reasons for going over to Gisbourne; his heart still pounded at the thought of it. But while he told the truth that day three weeks ago, it wasn't the whole truth. No more excuses, he thought. This could be a chance to try that out. Hell, it couldn't make things any worse.

"Robin…" Allan began. He continued to doodle. "That stuff I said…about me and Guy. All that was true, but there was more to it." Robin felt a chill. "The truth is, I thought I could play him. A little of the old this-and-that, you know? I mean, he was never the sharpest tool in the shed. I knew he was a hard man, and bad, but I'd been around hard men before and handled myself all right. I was hardly an angel myself, and could be hard if I needed to." Allan, still doodling, shook his head. "But Robin…I'm not being funny when I tell you, I thought I knew 'bad,' but him and Vasey…they redefined the word!" He sounded almost awestruck. "Compared to them, I was just a little naughty! I got myself in right over my head, from the first day. Right over my head. I was a fool. I'm sorry."

Allan got up to warm his cramped hands over the hearth and so missed seeing the tension leave Robin's shoulders. When Robin heard, "There was more to it than that," he expected the worst, though he couldn't imagine what could be worse than what Allan had already told him. But this? This was one of those frailties Robin had begun to forgive. Besides, it was pure Allan. Robin almost smiled, but saw that Allan still looked troubled. Apparently, it was harder to admit to being a fool than to admit to betraying your friends out of a sense of righteous indignation.

After a moment, Robin said, "I'm sorry, too. I said…I said some things that I shouldn't. It's just…when you said I didn't take care of my people…." Robin had in mind making up for their fight, but was finding apologizing to be harder than he expected. He wasn't used to making apologies, especially not to men he usually ordered around. "My father used to take me around with him, and say, 'Don't every forget—these are your people, Robin. They depend on you. You've got to look out for them. It's your job to take care of them.' He told me that, over and over again. So when you said what you said…it was like waving a red blanket in front of a bull."

"And I wasn't one of your people?" Allan asked from his place by the hearth.

Robin looked up sharply, expecting another blow-up, but saw that Allan wasn't making an accusation, only looking for an explanation, as if what mattered most now was simply connecting the dots. No more excuses, thought Allan. But excuses aren't the same things as reasons. Are they?

"No!" Robin said. "Of course you were. But I can't think of a time when Much wasn't there, depending on me, you know? And Will and even John. I remember Will running around in nappies, and my father always told me to stand up to the big boys in the village who would terrorize the little boys about how Big John Little was going to get them. And you…well, you were new." Robin paused, wishing he had something to occupy his hands the way Allan did. "If it's any help, all that 'take care of your people' stuff my father said…it means he didn't think they were smart enough or strong enough to take care of themselves. And he passed that on to me, to a certain extent. It's something I'm struggling with now. But I never saw you that way. Or Djaq, for that matter."

Allan nodded, thoughtfully. After a moment he said, "You remember Will in nappies? I didn't think you were that much older than him."

"Will," Robin said, conspiratorially, "Wore nappies for an awfully long time. It was the cause of some comment, as I remember."

"Well! I'll have to bear that in mind! You never know when that kind of knowledge might come in handy," Allan said with a smirk.

Just like that, their terrible blow-up and its causes were put behind them, forever. Put behind them, but not exactly forgotten and forgiven. Later, each man would realize the roots of the conflict were still there—Allan would always feel he had been abandoned, Robin would always resent Allan's impossible expectations and the betrayal itself—but now tall, strong fences stood around the great gaping wounds Marian had alluded to, and each respected the signs saying "Danger! Keep Out!" while they slowly healed.

Of course, none of this brought Robin any closer to knowing the truth behind the rumors about Allan, Emma, and Juliana. However, it did make him feel more comfortable in his plan of approach.

"Allan, just what was life like with Gisbourne, anyway?" Robin asked.

No longer needing the light, and wanting to keep the chill out, Allan had gone to shut the door. Robin couldn't see his face, but did see his back visibly stiffen.

"There's a point to this, Allan, I swear! Bear with me!" Robin hastened to add, hands up in protest. When Allan turned to face him, Robin said, "When we were fighting Gisbourne, I was angry about his taking over my lands, but I mainly thought of him as Vasey's enforcer and as an assassin. I didn't think about how he managed the estate—how he acted as lord of the manor. Tactically, in terms of what it took to get rid of him, I don't think that matters. But now that he's out…." Robin moaned and put his head in his hands. "Now, everybody's filing claims against each other, I've heard seven different versions of how the crop rotations worked over the past few years…I swear, I don't think the man held a single manorial court the whole time he was in Locksley…." He looked up with a pleading expression. "Allan, you're the closest thing to a disinterested observer I've got. All I'm looking to do is understand how things worked under Gisbourne. That's all! No blame, nothing like that, just insight on how the manor was run, so I can get things headed in the right direction again. Please?"

Allan paused to consider. Robin was right—now that the guards were gone, he probably was the only one who didn't have a vested interest. He was intrigued, but, "I'm not sure how to start…."

"You said he gave you responsibility," Robin prodded.

"He did. He put me in charge of the search for Vasey when he went on that walkabout, remember?"

Robin nodded.

"And I supervised the corn production on the Locksley home farm."

Robin looked so surprised Allan laughed. "What? Is it that amazing? I told you how I used to make my way doing sowing and harvesting," Allan said, with a touch of prickliness.

"No! Yes! It's just…I never thought of you…that way," Robin said.

"Robin, this is the way you acted when you found out I used to be a rent boy!" Allan started to laugh at Robin, hard—the first time in a long time he had laughed like that without it turning into a coughing fit. After it died down, "What can I say? I gave myself the job. Guy was always complaining about how low the yields were, but that's all he seemed interested in doing about it. I thought it'd be a way to make myself valuable without doing much of what you might call 'collateral damage.' And after a while…well, it got to where it was nice to have an excuse to get out of that house."

Robin made a mental note to return to the subject of Allan as farm manager; for now he thought it best to start with a general picture of life in the manor and then gradually narrow in on the specifics.

Allan, always savvy about these things, was a step ahead of him. "Look, I'll help you as much as I can, but if you're looking to find out what your average day in Locksley Manor was like, well, there wasn't an average day, at least not for me. Wherever Guy was, he wanted me next to him. I ran back and forth between Locksley and the castle so much I got to where I was doing it in my sleep."

"And Gisbourne kept you next to him so you'd…." Robin gestured to indicate he wanted Allan to finish the thought.

"Make him feel like a big man, mostly," Allan said, dryly. He poured a jug of beer from Winifred's keg and brought it and two mugs over to the table. "I know sometimes I said I was his right-hand man and sometimes I said I was just the whipping boy. And yeah, at the time, I was trying to make a good impression on whoever I was talking to, depending on the situation. But the truth is, I was his right-hand man and the whipping boy. It all depended on what kind of mood he was in. And a lot of that depended on the Sheriff. If the Sheriff gave Guy a hard time, Guy passed it on to me, and I got the back of his hand and the job of cleaning his boots. If Guy did something to make the Sheriff especially happy, then I was his Golden Boy. Though in some ways that was worse."

"How could that be worse?"

"Because then I had to have dinner with him and drink with him and listen to him talk. And he could go on!" Allan groaned. "All about power, and loyalty, and ambition. Power, especially. He had a thing about it. He lusted after it more than he lusted after women, and that weren't trivial. 'Course, he never seemed to know what to do with it once he got it. Except…." Allan looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped himself, and looked thoughtful. He gave his head a little shake and took a sip of beer instead of completing the statement.

He seemed to have changed the subject slightly from that thought when he started up again. "Look, you know how when you're a little kid, and you imagine what it'd be like to be king of the world, and you think of how you'd punish the people who've always been mean to you, and how you'd never have to work, and how'd you get to eat sweets anytime you want? And as you get older, it gets more complicated than that—you start to think about why people love a king, and what you'd do to get them to love you?"

"Put a lot of thought into being king, did you?" Robin interrupted, teasing.

"Even poor boys dream, Robin," Allan said with some sharpness. "Until real life beats it out of them." Robin was beginning to realize he still needed to tread with some care around Allan. "Anyway. With Guy…it was like he never got past that first way of thinking."

"And Locksley manor was his kingdom?" Robin asked.

Allan shrugged. "When he could be arsed."

Robin said, "I guess that passed down to the guards. A lot of the complaints I'm dealing with come down to them."

"Pffft!" Allan snorted. "Yeah, well you better take those things with a big grain of salt. I'm sure there were a couple of bad apples, and I can't vouch for how things went when we were at the castle—'when the cat's away,' you know. But from what I saw, Guy kept them under a pretty tight rein. He gave them a decent cut from the money they collected for him, and just enough freedom and that power he loved so much for them to put a bit of swagger in their step, and in return, he didn't allow them to go freelancing. Said he needed them to stay disciplined." Allan, a step ahead of Robin, added, "And before you ask, yeah, that's how it worked for me, too, more or less. I even kipped with the guards a lot of the time; that's how I know so much about them." He chuckled. "In fact, at first Guy had this idea of putting me in charge of them, but that got shot down real fast. Too many of them remembered fighting me."

"So it sounds like he didn't treat Locksley so much as a manor as a garrison," Robin said. "That would explain the chaos I'm dealing with now."

"Exactly!" Allan said. "I think that was the only way Guy knew how run things—like a territory his army was occupying. I mean, he'd been a soldier all his life, hadn't he? Now, he liked to call himself 'lord of the manor' and he…he…enjoyed some of the privileges…." A kind of cloud passed over Allan's face, and again he gave his head a little shake, and again, Robin got the sense that Allan was changing the subject, ever so slightly. "Like, he'd talk about changing the name of the place from 'Locksley' to 'Gisbourne.' But he looked at land the same way he looked at power: having it in his hand mattered more than doing anything with it."

It was obvious to Robin that Allan was struggling with how to tell him something, or with whether to tell him at all, and it made Robin uneasy. He didn't know what to do besides continue to draw Allan out about his memories of Locksley during his time there.

"I'm always surprised at how many women you find around garrisons and barracks. You think of them as men-only kinds of places."

Allan nodded. "They were always hanging around. It's the money, isn't it? The men who worked for Guy were the only ones that had any, and there wasn't a lot to spend it on besides birds. And there's lots of girls who like having money spent on 'em. You remember Constance?"

"That woman of yours in Brockton?" Robin asked.

"Yeah. That's how we met. Her friend was courting a guard, and she'd bring Constance along sometimes. (Come to think of it, they got married and moved off somewhere when things got hot.) Working for Guy…well, it made you a catch, to be honest."

Allan began doodling on the wax tablet again, giving it an inordinate amount of attention, writing letters in combinations that he didn't know made no sense.

"Straight-ahead girlfriends, but lots of others, too. Washerwomen. Girls peddling cakes. Whores. Beggars. They were practically lining up at the gates. Looking back on it, I wonder how many of them really wanted to be there. There was one girl…. I remember I was heading up to the manor house at about sunset, and there was this girl just…pacing, back and forth, like she couldn't decide whether to come in or not. I went up there to see what she was about, and she was this little slip of a thing, all tricked out, with berry juice on her lips and her bodice half open. I almost thought she was playing at being a whore, playing dress-up or something, but she was serious, and she was just this kid, you know? Seems they had run out of everything and that was the only way she could figure to feed her little brother and sister. The poor thing was scared to death."

He slapped the stylus down and looked around, fretfully. "I never know what to do with girls like that. I mean, some grown woman who'd rather make her money on her back than scrubbing floors, that's one thing. But somebody who's on the game as an absolute last resort, or who's only doing to it keep from getting a beating…. Seems like whichever way you go, you're going to make it worse for them."

"What did you do?" Robin asked. He pressed the matter because he had a feeling they were nearing whatever it was that had been bothering Allan so.

"I gave her what I had in my purse and sent her off with a flea in her ear. Told her if she came around like that again, I'd tell her father. Turned out her father had sent her! Can you imagine?" Allan looked at Robin, horrified. "Robin! What did you think I'd do? She was…she was just a kid!" Robin had to smile a little. He remembered something Allan had said weeks ago, about there being a line he wasn't willing to cross, and it made him feel a bit more comfortable about whatever Allan was debating internally.

Though Allan didn't look that comfortable. What he reminded Robin of was a cat in a thunderstorm, anxious and unable to sit still. Now he was up again, headed towards the kitchen. "Lunch. That's what I want. Oi, you want anything?"

"Sure," Robin shrugged. "These women. Did they ever go to the manor house? Or did they only make it as far as the barracks?"

"That's the thing about being the lord. You don't have to pay for it, do you?" Allan said, brittlely.

Allan said it as a quip, but Robin felt a chill go through him nonetheless. "He…enjoyed some of the privileges," Allan said….and didn't Gisbourne himself say something about Robin's serving maids in one of their encounters? Robin thought he had an inkling about what was making Allan so anxious, and he didn't like it. Not one little bit.