Notes: Just two more left after this. Thanks again, all, for your support & patience. Like the last chapter, this is really just a one-shot from their future, which is, despite its angstiness, far better than the one the BBC gave them.

And God is a looming presence, counting all of his sins and paying them back tenfold. (Nightmares. ~1198-1202)

It was never going to be easy.

When he'd returned to a badly changed Nottingham, there had been so much to do for so very long. Rebuilding what had been destroyed - the buildings burnt to the ground, the fields untended, the families separated - had consumed him and Marian for years. Added to that their own child - and a second, now, on the way - and Robin has had very little time to think about his past.

It hasn't left him, though.

His nightmares now are different from what they used to be. Now he dreams of Marian bleeding to death in Acre. He dreams of Gisborne returning to Locksley, raping and murdering Marian while Robin watches, helpless. He dreams of Katherine taking ill and dying, suddenly, before they can try to treat her. He dreams of watching his friends hang or burn or fall in battle.

And always, always, these nightmares return to their old familiar landscapes, and as his friends' bodies fade away he finds himself in Jerusalem again, slashing men to pieces on the battlefield.

And God is a looming presence, counting all of his sins and paying them back tenfold.

Robin can never speak of any of this: it is all unspeakable. But he knows that it shows on his face when he wakes and exhales, pulling Marian closer to him. He cannot always stop himself from screaming.

But he is learning, he is learning.

In the winter, as they approach the birth of their second child, it gets worse. Robin wakes screaming every night - sometimes more than once - and Marian sleeps through the late morning now, he's keeping her up so late at night. He'd suggested, hesitantly, that he should sleep in another room, but she had forbidden it.

"How will you know I'm here?" she'd asked plainly, and in that moment Robin knew that she knew everything about him, but he still could not bring himself to speak.

One night he is so loud that he wakes Katherine as well, and one of the servants who's fallen asleep downstairs rushes up to make sure all is well. Robin is mortified, and Marian gives him a quick glance before pulling on her robe and stepping out into the hall, shutting the door behind her. Robin sits at the edge of the bed. He can hear her placating the servant, then stepping to Katherine's room to comfort her as well. Robin's heartbeat still hasn't slowed.

He presses his palms against his eyes, trying to rub out the visions. He knows why he called out loud enough for Katherine to hear. He was calling for help. For Marian, for Marian. Everything. Behind his closed eyelids, she is dying or maybe already dead, her skin pale except for the bruises, and the blood, pouring out into the sand. The world behind his eyes is red. Robin is shivering and anxious, and he cannot make any of it go away.

When Marian finally returns to their bedroom, her face is deadly serious. "This cannot continue," she says from the doorway. Softly. "Robin."

He looks at the floor, ashamed, and she crosses to him, kneeling at his feet. She takes his hands in hers and whispers his name again. The tenderness in her voice might break him. To be loved so well by such a woman, after everything he's done.

She traces her fingers along his forehead. Worry is etched onto his brow and she smooths it away. "What do you dream about?" she asks, as though it's the kind of question one might just answer.

Robin just shakes his head. He lets himself meet her eyes just for a second, but even that is too much to bear.

"I'm your wife," says Marian. "You can tell me anything."

"Not this."

She rises just enough to kiss him, full and soundly, and he lets himself be comforted. "What kind of woman do you think I am?" she asks, her lips only a breath from his. "I will always love you, Robin. No matter what."

"It's not about the kind of woman you are. It's the kind of man I am."

"A good man," she says firmly. "A brave man."

"A killer."

"A husband," Marian insists. "A father. A friend."

"I am all of those things."

"It might help," says Marian, coming to sit next to him on their bed, wrapping her right arm around his waist, "if you talked about it. It doesn't have to be me, if you don't want. Much was with you. Surely-"

"Much used to try. I never let him. I'm not sure he'd let me, any more. I think he's forgotten all of it." Robin does think so: or more like hopes so, but Much is so happy now. Bonchurch Lodge and Eve and his son, just starting to crawl. How could Robin do that to him? Bring the nightmares back to Much, just to relieve his own?

"So you're just going to let it eat away at you for the rest of your life."

So much sadness in her voice. So much shame in his. "Yes."

"You lost part of yourself in the Holy Land, Robin. You told me so yourself. If you can't talk, if this keeps eating at you - one day there will be nothing left." He notices how her arm tightens around him as she says this. Like if she holds on tight enough she can keep him from disappearing.

"I can't, Marian." Robin turns away. "You might just have to be content with what's left of me."

That isn't what she meant, and he knows it. "That's not fair," she whispers.

Robin's voice is even softer when he answers, echoing the long-dead sheriff: "And life is usually so much fairer?" He traces the outline of her jaw, his touch gentle, but his words are sharp.

"Don't," Marian bites off, turning from him. She stands up and walks toward the door, but she doesn't leave. Please don't leave.

"Damn it, Marian, what do you want me to say?"

"Tell me it'll get better!" she cries desperately, spinning around to face him again.

Shaking his head, he says, "I can't promise you that."

"Of course not," she snaps. "You won't even try."

Robin swallows. "I am trying. I'm learning, Marian. Please. I'm trying. Please don't go."

All of a sudden, her demeanor shifts. Her face pales. It's a long time before she speaks, and by the time she does her eyes, and her voice, are full of tears. "What?"

"I'll try harder," he repeats, quieter this time. "Just don't-"

"Robin." From across that uncrossable distance she wraps her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. Anchoring him. "I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

He clutches her to him, his fingers pressing into her back. "But what if it doesn't get better?" he says, his voice muffled against her shoulder. Marian should be with someone whole. Someone who sleeps through the night. Someone who doesn't watch her die in his dreams, over and over again.

But Robin's heart will never allow it. Marian belongs with him, she is for him, as he is for her. Through every scrape and storm. All the years of his life that have been worth living, he's spent by her side.

She strokes his hair, presses her lips to his neck. "I'm not going anywhere," she says again, her voice barely a whisper.

And he believes her.

Slowly.

It is years after that conversation when Robin finally, haltingly, starts to tell her what happened - no, he corrects, still unwilling to absolve himself: what I did.

They are both older now, and their three children, two girls and a boy, sleep curled together upstairs. Young, still.

In truth, Marian and Robin are young still - not as they once were, but there are many years left in their future. Marian celebrated her thirtieth birthday only last week. And finally, Robin realizes that his entire life could be a very long time to go without being known by anyone, and Marian will understand.

Marian will understand.

He says this like a mantra, practices the words, imagines her expression. Tries to erase the horror in her eyes and replace it with forgiveness. After all, Marian too has killed.

Marian had told him once, a long time ago, that Gisborne wanted to marry her because he wanted forgiveness. He thought that Marian could offer him absolution from his sins.

Robin hates Guy of Gisborne still, with everything in him, but he wonders how different they really are, in the end.

It is late, after the children have gone to sleep, and Robin and Marian sit in front of the fire. This winter's been bitter cold, and they've taken to piling blankets directly in front of the hearth and curling up there, trying to keep the warmth close.

Robin is lying with his head in Marian's lap, hands resting on his stomach, while she mends a hole in Katherine's dress.

"You could leave that for the servants," he'd said earlier, when she had started on it. Katherine was turning out quite as wild as her mother. It was a significant hole.

Marian had shrugged. "I do not mind," she'd said, threading the needle. "It is soothing."

When Robin opens his eyes, he can see her hands moving against the fabric. Her motions quick, precise; her long, slim fingers and scarred, calloused palms.

It's been years since Marian had to wield a sword - since either of them had - but the scars don't fade. Marian will never have the soft, unblemished hands of other ladies of her station. Her hands, like her body, will never be able to hide who she really is: all her years of hard work and generosity, her courage, her love.

Every time Robin looks at her, he knows. No woman has ever been as brave or as beautiful as Marian of Locksley.

After she finishes, she folds the dress neatly and places it on the bench behind her. She starts to massage Robin's head and neck, her fingers pressing against the muscles that years of stress and strife have tightened. Unspeaking, gentle; Marian's hands have always been able to heal him, no matter the ill. Scrapes and falls and arrow wounds, and deeper things, too. She has always had the power to bring Robin back to himself.

"Marian," he says quietly, eyes still closed.

She doesn't stop. "Yes?"

How does he begin, after so many years of silence? "You used to ask me about - about the Holy Land."

The slightest hesitation, then, but she recovers quickly. Her movements smooth and even, her fingertips softening the skin at his brow. "Yes," she says.

"I did not want to share that burden with you." He swallows and her hands follow the movement, down his throat and to his shoulders. King Richard dead three years, and it is only now that Robin can begin to see the man as he was: a great warrior, always, and the author of so much death. In his dreams Robin watches the bodies pile up. A mountain impossible to climb.

And now Richard's brother calls them to war in France, and Robin has not said a word to Marian. What is there to say? He has to go. He cannot ask his people to fight while he stays home, safe and sound.

"We killed so many in the name of God, but we could not find Him anywhere," Robin says. If he is going to say it, he has to say it. "There were men we tortured. I didn't - but I didn't stop them, either. I killed hundreds of men. Hundreds. Early on it was all with my bow, and it was so easy. I can kill a man clean from three hundred yards, so I never had to see their faces."

Marian's hands are so sure, so steady.

"But later on it would always come down to the sword. They were good fighters, and Saladin was a great commander. We'd cut each other to pieces until the sand under our feet was thick with blood. I have no idea how many men I killed."

She speaks then, softly. "Is that what you dream about?"

"Sometimes. I keep waiting for something terrible to happen. It seems impossible that I get to live like this, after everything I did. And every night something happens to take you away from me." His mouth is suddenly dry. "Or the children, or Much and his boy. Locksley is burned to the ground. Gisborne—" Robin shudders at the name. "Gisborne comes back, or—"

Suddenly, they hear a scream from upstairs. Robin swears his heart stops, and he looks at Marian, wide-eyed and listening hard. When the second scream comes, both of them bolt up the stairs to the children's room.

Katherine, Eleanor, and Edward are all awake, but it is Edward, their second child, who is crying. The girls are propping him up between them, Katherine patting his unruly hair and whispering, "Shh, shh."

Marian sits at the edge of the bed. "What's wrong, darling?"

The boy sniffles and shakes his head, brown hair falling into his eyes. Edward has Marian's coloring, rich dark hair and ice-blue eyes - filled with tears, at the moment. "Don't wanna," he says, and Marian gives Robin a look. Eyebrows raised. He's your son.

"Come on," says Robin, holding out his hand. After wiping his hand across his nose, Edward climbs out of the bed and follows Robin downstairs. Marian stays upstairs, and he can hear her talking to the girls, though he cannot make out what she says.

Edward holds his hand as they settle down in front of the fire. Robin forgets, sometimes, in the midst of everything, that he should never have had any of this. He should have died a thousand times over, and instead he is here, the father of a little boy who trusts him, who looks up at him with bright blue eyes like he thinks Robin can solve any problem.

Robin strokes his hair. "What's going on, then?"

Still stubborn, Edward exhales a sigh that seems far too large for his body. "Bad," he says quietly.

"I have bad dreams, too," says Robin, his eyes meeting his son's.

"You do?"

"I do." Robin bites his lip. "I know it's hard to remember, but they can't hurt you. They're not real." If only he could make himself believe this.

"Still scary."

"Yeah," Robin admits. "Still scary." One day, Robin will tell him the rest: that it's all right to be afraid. That Robin's fears have taught him what he truly values, what is worth fighting for. That true courage is fighting through the fear.

One day, Robin will tell him. For now, he will sit here on a pile of blankets, keeping Edward company until he falls back asleep. He remembers his father doing the same for him, so many years ago. Staying up with him all night. Keeping the monsters away.

After the children are tucked back into their bed, Marian comes to sit next to Robin again. She wraps a blanket around their shoulders and leans against him. "Tell me, then," she says softly. "What did Edward do to deserve his nightmares?"

Robin is aghast. "What?"

"You think your nightmares are a punishment," she says, looking ahead into the fire. "You think God sends them to you as a reminder of your sins. What sins has Edward?"

He swallows.

"Your nightmares aren't a punishment, Robin. They are a reminder that you are a man who feels love and fear and remorse. They are a reminder that you are a man. You are not the first, nor the last to wake at night from these hauntings. I have them too. So does Edward. And what of it?" Marian kisses him, and it is fierce and strong and warm. "You are stronger than your past, Robin of Locksley."

He kisses her back, harder, and they fall back together into the blankets, quiet in the firelight. For the first time in their eight years of marriage, he doesn't flinch when her fingers brush over the scar on his torso; he doesn't even notice her scars. What difference does it make that she was torn apart once when she is here now, lying beneath him, perfectly whole? Perfect and whole. All of them.

Her lips on his ear, breathing his name into the night. Her hands pulling him closer, closer.

She could be right about everything, and wouldn't it make all the difference if she was?

And he is learning. He is learning.