This was a sad chapter, and it took a while to write it. It's less about fluff and more about plot. I'm amazed that I actually kept the plot up this long—all I wanted to do was write a fluffy-smutty one-shot about Will and Djaq and I ended up with this whole story. Such is the price of long-windedness, I suppose. I also can't thank MissWed enough for being my sort-of beta on this story—she helped me quite a bit with this chapter.

Disclaimer: The BBC's Robin Hood isn't my property, nor are any of the characters of events or borrowed lines therein.

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It was surreal. It was terrifying. It was the worst thing ever. It was the thing that she'd feared the most about their endeavours in her homeland, the worst possible outcome—and it had happened. She was in an awed state of utter, utter shock. The scene played over and over again in her head, in slow motion, every time she closed her eyes. The dread rose in the pit of her stomach, the feeling of defeat flooding through her whole body in realization of what had happened—the sick helplessness when she saw the sword coming through Marian's back and realized that there was nothing she could do to help her or save her life.

She hadn't even had the presence of mind to cry. She was… numb. She felt absolutely nothing.

Then they'd buried her, in a clean linen dress and the ruby ring that had been her wedding band for the few fleeting moments between her vows with Robin and the life draining from her body. They gave her, too, one of the white shields with the red cross on it that the Crusaders carried into battle, to declare their faith in their God. He carried her limp body there to the grave himself, kissed her goodbye, and left. He couldn't stand to see them put her in the ground and cover her with earth, and in truth none of them could.

They went back to Bassam's house in a daze. Nobody spoke. Nobody ate. They just sat around the house, bodies taking up room. The Sherriff and Gisbourne both escaped, and were most likely on their way back to England at this very moment to make the lives of the people of Nottingham miserable and carry on with their plans to destroy England once again, but nobody could find it in themselves to care. They were all completely consumed with grief—there was no room for anything else.

They all kept to themselves and ignored one another—to the point where they were accidentally walking into each other when they blindly walked from one room to another, and didn't even notice it.

Her friends alternated between periods of dumb shock, anger, and bitter weeping. Grown men crying bitterly for their fallen comrade and friend. Even John cried—big, strong, solid John Little wept for Marian. Allan, too. All of them.

Except for Robin, who sat still and stony and unfeeling, like a human statue.

This had been her worst fear, the one thing that scared her more than anything—lovers being parted by death. The pain of anguish gripped her, hate and fear and shock and disbelief all jumbled together inside of her. It left a sick feeling in her stomach and a bad taste in her mouth—and it wasn't even her love who had been killed. She couldn't begin to fathom what Robin was feeling right now. Whatever grief she, and the rest of them, felt couldn't begin to compare with their friend and leader's pain and anguish. He had always been such a strong man, so tough and resilient, and now he seemed so frail and human and broken. A man who had lost his reason for living. He would never be the same again.

He was probably still completely numb and unfeeling and in denial—once he realized what had happened, he would be an absolute mess.

In the meantime, they would leave him alone. That was what he wanted, and they were in no mood to try to offer him comfort or kind words or reassurance. It would all be futile in the end, anyway. Their words would just be hollow and empty, and they wouldn't even believe it themselves, and no empty words they could possibly come up with would help heal his wounds.

Djaq was sitting in the aviary, tucked into a tiny little nook near the back, in the shadows, where nobody would see her or find her or bother her, and she could be alone. She had absolutely no desire for food or company, not even Will. All she wanted to do was to cry for Robin and Marian, but the fist-sized lump caught in her throat near the top of her neck and she couldn't make it go any further.

Even the familiar gentle cooing of the pigeons around her did nothing to calm her mind or settle her uneasy spirits.

So she just sat there, her legs drawn up to her chest and her feet braced on the other side of the corner; she wrapped her arms around her tucked-up legs and put her face against her knees. She wished she could cry—just open the floodgates of emotion and let herself go. But she couldn't do it. The lump stayed firmly lodged in her throat, hard and painful and choking her.

Maybe she had been desensitized to death and loss and pain. Working as a battlefield physician for such a long time, seeing people die of horrific injuries every day for years and years; she couldn't show her pain or her feelings to the men she treated, or to those she worked with. She kept it all bottled up inside, learned to swallow her pain and her tears and to keep her feelings from showing. Even before she became a battlefield physician, when she saw the people in her homeland slaughtered by Crusaders on their bloody, violent 'holy war', she learned how not to feel the pain. Her defense against the overwhelming and crippling grief of loss had always been to simply ignore it and not feel anymore—after all, if she felt pain for all of the injured, bled for all of the bleeding, she would long ago have gone mad. And so she learned how not to feel it at all, become detached from it, and she eventually had stopped being affected by the pain of death. That might well have been the worst thing of all—that she couldn't even cry for her friends.

Footsteps sounded on the stone floor nearby, and she ignored them in hopes that whoever it was would just walk through the aviary and not notice her. The footsteps grew closer, and she instinctively tightened a little more into her little ball and tried to be as invisible as possible. The last thing she wanted right now was to have to talk to somebody.

She inched into the shadows of the darkened aviary and waited for the visitor to leave.

"Hi. I thought you might be in here."

The low male voice sounded over her head. It sounded exactly like she felt, the voice thick and listless and tired, as if he had to concentrate on actually getting the words out.

She looked up slowly into Will's drawn face and tired green eyes; he didn't smile, and neither did she. She wanted to tell him that she'd rather be alone, be by herself with her thoughts for a while, that she would rather not have any company right now—but she couldn't make her voice work and so she didn't say anything at all. She looked away and turned her face back into her knees.

"D'you mind if I sit here?"

She remained silent; he took this to mean that she didn't mind and sank to the floor beside her. He looked just as exhausted and emotionally drained as she felt. The spark was gone from his eyes and he looked even paler than usual under the pinkish-red sunburn and the thin layer of dust on his face.

When he reached out to touch her shoulder, she wriggled away from him, not wanting to touch or be touched right now.

"Djaq…"

"No," she croaked around that uncomfortable lump in her throat. "I don't want—I just want to—" she cut herself off. She didn't know how to explain it. She sniffled.

"You can cry," he said.

"I cannot."

"Go ahead. I won't care."

"No, you do not understand. I… I can't cry."

"What?"

"I just… can't."

"Why?"

"I do not feel death anymore," she sighed. "I have seen it too many times. Here and in Nottingham, on the battlefield and off. It just… is. And now I simply cannot feel it anymore—Marian was my friend, and I loved her and admired her, and now she is dead and I cannot even feel sad."

"Weird. I've only just stopped crying." His voice was dry and raspy and humourless. "I feel like a sissy."

"You should not," she said. "I envy you. I would give my soul to be able to cry like that."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I."

Silence.

He inched closer to her, and she inched away; he put a tentative hand on her shoulder and she coldly shrugged him off.

"Please," he begged. "Don't move away."

"I am sorry," she apologized. He reached out again, put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. This time, she didn't pull away. It took all of her strength and willpower to resist the overwhelming urge to push him off of her and run away—if nothing else than for him. He needed this.

He wound his arms around her waist and shoulders and pulled her closer to him, practically into his lap, and held her tightly; he buried his face in her shoulder, shuddering breaths against her neck. His arms shook as he clutched her. She sat there dumbly, stiffly, unsure what to do.

It was several long moments before she realized that he was crying again.

This took her by surprise for a fleeting moment before she steeled herself and gathered him into her arms, holding him protectively as one might hold a small, frightened child; he crumbled into her hold and wept piteously against her, his whole body racked with bitter sobs. She pressed her lips to the top of his head, clucking softly, crooning gently and reassuringly in Arabic as he cried.

"I don't believe it," he sobbed. "I just can't believe she's really gone."

"Neither can I," she murmured.

"It doesn't seem real."

"I know."

He hugged her tighter, crushing her in his arms as he continued to tremble and cry. She could hear him sobbing and feel the tears rubbing off from his cheeks to her skin and dampening her clothes. Her heart wrenched for him. This was the first time she'd been confronted so directly with the bitter pain of Marian's loss—for days, she had distanced herself from her friends as they all found ways to separately deal with their sorrow. She knew they had all been sad and grief-stricken, and that they had cried for their fallen friend and for Robin, but she did her best to keep away from them and keep to herself.

But as Will grasped her, crushed her in his arms as he held her, the lump in her throat swelled and strangled her; the desire to just break down and cry was so intense that it actually hurt. Sobs shook his body and his arms trembled, but it took her some time to notice that she, too, was shivering. He sniffled gently and hiccoughed into her shoulder, holding his breath in an attempt to keep his sobs under control.

"You do not have to try to stop," she told him. "It does no good to hold it in."

"I'd've thought I'd cried enough already."

"There is no such thing."

He sat back, raising his head from her neck and bringing one hand up to wipe the tears from his face. There were tear-tracks in the dust on his cheeks. He looked absolutely heart-breakingly sad, his eyes red and bloodshot and glistening with unfallen tears. She leaned forward and pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to his forehead.

As she looked into his eyes again, she felt that painful lump in her throat slowly begin to dissolve—there was a rush of emotion through her veins, loosening and flowing through her whole body. It was a strangely relieving feeling, as if a tight and constricting hand on her neck and chest had been released. As she released a long, slow, shaky breath that she didn't even know she'd been holding, the floodgates opened up; tears spilled down her own cheeks.

Crying.

She couldn't even remember the last time she'd done this. Nobody ever saw her cry before—not when she worked on the battlefield or when she was a slave or during her time in the forest. Even as a child, she'd always felt that she somehow had something to prove by showing she was tougher and more resilient than others, and refused to shed tears over anything. She'd always kept it to herself.

But not this time. It all bubbled up inside of her and boiled over. Sorrow and anger and grief and pain all combined into a painful mess and came up in bitter tears. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, breaking away from a surprised-looking Will as she hugged her legs up to her chest and cried into her knees. When he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, she didn't even feel the urge to push him away. Instead, she turned into him and cried into his chest, just as he'd done to her only moments before.

This time, Will comforted her; he lifted her up and cradled her in his lap, wrapping his arms protectively around her and murmuring against her hair. She held onto him tightly, her arms around his chest and her hands gripping the loose clothing behind him. She felt like if she let him go, that something awful would happen to him and he would disappear and she would be all alone. That she would suffer the same loss as Robin.

It was uncomfortable. She hated crying—she felt like crying was showing incredible weakness that somebody would take advantage of her—but finally being able to cry for her friends and letting all of that painfully suppressed feeling out was such a relief that she couldn't find it in herself to be uncomfortable with crying.

He kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and her back. Those simple actions were soothing and reassuring and calming her down more than she'd imagine they would. The calm lasted only a few seconds before a fresh wave came over her and she began to sob again. He gathered her into his arms, placing one around her back and the other under her knees and carefully, gently lifting her up off the ground.

"What are you doing?" She asked between sobs and hiccups.

He said nothing—instead, he hefted her in his arms and nuzzled her cheek, continuing to carry her through the halls and rooms of the eerily quiet house. She tightened her arms around his neck and continued to cry quietly into his shoulder, which was now sporting an expanding puddle of damp from tears and spit. As he walked, he ignored everything around them, but she saw people as he passed them—Bassam's household staff, people that she'd known for most of her life, looked at her strangely as Will carried her by them and then looked away quickly, only to carefully watch her out of the corners of their eyes. It was probably astounding for them to see her like this, so uncharacteristically emotional and weeping like a little girl and being carried in the arms of the Englishman.

Their friends, too, saw them as they passed by. They had much the same reaction as the members of the household staff, doing a quick double-take before watching them carefully from the corners of their eyes and trying not to be so obvious about it. Robin cast a sideways glance at them with hollow eyes, then immediately looked away. Only Much, who had absolutely no sense of tact, blatantly stared at them.

She didn't even care about this. Normally she would have been embarrassed at having been seen in this state, but she couldn't even manage to care about it. She just snuggled closer to him and cried harder.

He made his way to the back hall and carried her up the stairs to the third floor, moving slowly and gracefully and being careful not to joggle her. He stopped at the top of the stairs and softly nudged her. She knew the silent question and sniffled into his shoulder.

"That way," she pointed ahead of him, directing him to her bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall. "Close the door behind you."

He obeyed her order, closing the door soundly behind them with a swift kick and leaving them alone together in the room. The drapes were drawn over the window screens to keep the heat and the sun out of the room, making the whole place suitably dark. He crossed the room in two steps and deposited her on the soft bed and pillows. As he moved to stand back up, she gripped his shirt around his shoulders to try to keep him close to her. When he tried to stand up, it caught him by surprise and he stumbled forward. He landed in a crumpled heap on the bed next to her as she caught him off-balance.

He must not have realized that she did it on purpose, because he went to stand up again; again, she kept a tight hold on him and prevented him from doing it. He looked at her, confusion written clearly in his face as he sat there next to him.

She clutched at his arm and buried her tearstained face in his shoulder, still sniffling and crying softly. She didn't want him to get up and go away. Didn't want him to be any more than a few inches away from her. If he left, or if he was out of her hands and away from her for more than a second, something would happen to him—she knew it. As long as she kept her hands on him, kept her arms around him and kept him close to her, and she could feel him breathing in her arms and hear his heart beating, he was still there and still alive and still safe and still with her.

"Please don't go," she whispered, pleadingly. She must have sounded absolutely piteous because he almost immediately nodded.

"Of course," he whispered back, gently and reassuringly. "I would never—"

She lunged forward, cutting him off as she hugged him around his shoulders and continued to sob into him, this time not taking care to be quiet. There was nobody up here to worry about drawing their attention—though even if there was she doubted she would care at this point—so she let herself sob as loudly as she cared. There was a great deal of nearly overwhelmingly powerful emotion inside of her, and now all she wanted to do was to let it out. He held her shivering body as she cried, his face buried in her neck as he, too, was once again overcome with sadness and began to cry himself.

It seemed that every time they felt like they'd calmed down and gathered themselves, the grief overtook them again and they just dissolved into tears. While Djaq had accepted the fact that it would be a very long time before any of them even began to heal from their loss, she had at least thought that they might be able to control themselves. And after the floodgates were opened, there was just no going back.

They stayed there, latched onto one another for dear life as they both wept. Just cried and cried, until she was completely worn out and she felt him, too, growing tired as he stopped crying and simply breathed heavily into her neck and slump against her. Eventually, her sobs and tremors subsided; her breathing evened out, into slow and deep breaths against the familiar scratchy wool of Will's old tunic. She had no idea how long they'd been like this, sobbing on one another, but it must have been a while, and by now she'd simply exhausted herself. She simply had no more energy left to expend. Even her tears had dried up. She just couldn't cry anymore.

Neither of them had any strength anymore. They held each other up, leaning on each other for support, afraid that if either of them moved, both of them would tumble to the ground in boneless heaps.

Impulsively, she leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek. She just wanted that littlest bit more contact between them—anything to prove to herself that he was still alive, still real. She felt an intense galloping paranoia that she would blink and he would vanish and she would be all alone to mourn him. The fact that she had that fear at all frightened her almost more than the fear itself.

She felt him stiffen and go rigid against her lips, surprised at her action. When she did it again, he softened and sighed and tilted his head down to softly nuzzle her cheek. She kissed his neck this time, letting her mouth linger there against the gentle pulsing skin; he kissed her cheek and her temple and smoothed her hair back with one hand as he kept the other arm around her waist and held her close. He was warm and soft and comforting—his pulse underneath her lips reassuring her that he was alive.

She traced little kisses down his neck to his collar bones before coming back up and planting another kiss to his neck and ghosting her fingertips down the back of his neck, feeling the goosebumps raise in their path. Her other hand lay flat on his chest, feeling his heart beating rhythmically.

He stroked her cheek, sliding his fingers under her chin and tilting her head up to him and kissing her sweetly, tenderly. She returned the kiss and pulled him flush against her. She pressed her hand to his cheek and pulled him as close as she could with an arm around his neck.

More and more, closer and closer—that was all she wanted as she kissed him again and again, refusing to even break away from him to breathe. She decided that she would much rather suffocate than relinquish contact. It all came back to her desperate desire to be as close to him as humanly possible. To touch him and feel him and smell his scent and hear his breathing.

"I love you, Djaq," he rasped between kisses. "I love you—love you—"

She echoed him, repeating his words to him amid ever-more frantic kisses. She couldn't say it enough—couldn't hear it enough. Marian and Robin, each too proud and stubborn and tough, never said it enough, and now it was too late for them. Life was so uncomfortably, frighteningly uncertain, and she was not about to waste whatever time she had left; she wanted to tell him as much as possible, because something could…

Her breath caught in her throat, but she knew that she was just too emotionally exhausted to cry anymore. Instead, she kissed him arduously and wound her arms a little tighter around his neck.

With hesitating uncertainty, he leaned into her, pushed her back the tiniest bit. She didn't resist and let him slowly lower her back down into the pile of soft pillows and blankets on the bed. She kept her arms around him as she lay the rest of the way back, pulling him with her until he hovered over her.

She stroked her fingernails through his hair, along the sides of his head until she clasped them in the back and pulled his mouth closer to hers. Their kisses slowed from frantically desperate to long and languid, each kiss slow and sweet as they tried to make each one last as long as possible.

There was too much space left between them. Any air separating Will's body from hers was too much. But even pulling him down to her and closing that distance between them wasn't enough. Not enough contact. Even in her desert homeland, they all still wore the clothing they had left England wearing—rough linens and heavy wools that were too hot for the climate and too thick to allow any decent contact between them while they were in the way. She couldn't feel him, couldn't touch him through the clothes. They were in the way. So they had to go.

She pawed at his clothing, immediately forgetting how to negotiate the various ties and knots keeping his clothes in place; the only thing she could do was to slide her hands down the back of his shirt and gently scrape his back with her fingernails. Quickly, instinctively, he pulled away from her to drag his tunic off and began to remove his shirt.

And then he paused and looked questioningly at her, silently asking for permission to keep going. They had done this countless times and she knew that he knew what she wanted him to do, but he might well have been uncertain of his own interpretation of her silent signals and untrusting of himself. Instead of answering, she pulled her shirt up over her head and shrugged out of it. There was a brief pause as he looked at her, his gaze soft, and bent low to kiss her again. Then there was a renewed frenzy and a rush as he pulled the rest of his clothing off and she carefully wriggled out of her own.

In the next instant they were bare, pressed into one another, skin on skin, arms and legs entangled; she pressed warm kisses to his lips and cheeks and neck as he did the same to her. No matter how much they kissed and no matter how close they were, she wanted more, craved more contact, wanted to be closer to him. She wanted every inch of his body pressed onto every inch of her body. Being this close together was the only way she could be reasonably certain that he was real, and she desperately wanted that assurance. The irrationally intense fear that he might suddenly disappear into thin air was still very prevalent in her mind. She couldn't shake it.

And so she wanted him even closer.

She tightened her arms around his shoulders and snugly hugged him around the hips with her legs. His body was warm and sturdy and familiar against hers, and she clutched him tight, wishing that she could just absorb him into her own flesh and crush his body into hers. More, more—closer!

His heart thudded wildly in his chest, pressed firmly against hers. His skin was beginning to go damp and sticky with sweat. He was breathing against her lips and her cheeks, heavily and hotly between kisses. He was quivering, or maybe she was the one who was shaking. He kept his movements slow and steady and rhythmic.

She pressed warm kisses to his neck; his lips found hers again, kissing her deeply and passionately and sucking the very breath from her body with every caress until she was limp and boneless beneath him. He was trying to communicate his love for her as thoroughly as possible, with every movement and kiss and gentle touch.

He guided himself to her, swift and easily. There was no crackling tension, no moment of release as he entered her. This wasn't about the sex; they both knew that. They just wanted to be close to one another, to touch one another—to smell each of their unique scents and hear their coupled breathing and feel their coupled racing pulses.

Their breathing grew ragged and frantic, their hands grasping at one another. They ground their hips into each other's in that familiar rhythm. Each other was the only thing that was familiar now. The only thing that made sense anymore was this—warm bodies, warm hands, sweet kisses.

He was being as gentle as possible, exploring the familiar curves of her body with his roughly callused hands on her stomach and hips and waist and breasts. It made her shiver as he ground his pelvis into hers in deep thrusts—but even those movements were careful and tender, taking care not to be rough with her this time. He brought his hands back up to her face and cupped her cheek and kissed her again. The kiss was more exhilarating than any previous, moreso even than their lovemaking and his caresses on her body. She gripped the hair at the nape of his neck to keep him in place there at her lips.

She began whispering, at first so low that it was barely audible even to her own ears over Will's heavy panting and her own wildly pounding heartbeat. The whispers grew louder, the words spilling from her lips.

"I love—you. Love you…" she repeated around their ever-more impassioned kisses. He repeated them to her, garbling them and mixing up the words, but Djaq had never heard anything more beautiful or sweet than those very words.

"Djaq…" he sighed her name. "Djaq—!"

He gasped, and then released his breath in a long, low, rumbling sigh as he thrust into her one last time and stayed there, his arms giving out under him as he crumbled into her. Their hips were tightly knit together, their bodies flush against each other and their legs a tangle; his face was buried in her neck and shoulder as he caught his breath while she stroked his hair and forehead.

They stayed that way for a long, long time, silently absorbed in one another. There were no words that they could use in either of their native tongues that would do anything but shatter their peace.

She didn't know or care how much time had passed—hours, probably—but they didn't move or speak or fall asleep. They didn't even move to pull the blankets up to cover themselves and shield themselves from the cool night air or potential discovery by somebody unwary.

They were there. Twice they had faced death, and twice they had cheated it and come away alive when by all rights they should have been dead. Now all either wanted to do was to stay in the bed and bask in each other's warmth, in their long deep breathing and pounding hearts and gentle shivers and in the reassurance that they were both still very much alive.

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So much for a fluffy story. This became quite decidedly serious! I hate writing sad stories, but I'm told I'm good at it. This story is also going to end soon, I'm afraid—I hadn't planned to make it such a long one to begin with, so I'd like to draw it to a close sooner rather than later. Do leave a review if you feel like it—feedback is always appreciated, but not demanded.