"Now do you remember me?" Marian challenged Robin, releasing him from kisses that had been nothing short of forceful.
"I certainly won't ever forget you again," he quipped, grinning devillishly back at her.
She breathed out an exasperated sigh, climbed off his lap, and tried another ploy.
Striding across the room, she raised a hand to indicate a magnificent tapestry picturing a fanciful map of Camelot, painstakingly woven and embroidered by Robin's mother years before.
"Do you see this hanging?"
"Yes."
"I made it. I made all the hangings in this house."
"It would seem you are a woman of multiple talents," he replied, still sporting that devastating grin of his. "So, milady," he suggested, using the term purposefully this time to provoke her, "why don't you come back here and try to kiss me better some more? I promise to be much more fun than wielding an embroidery needle."
"Don't you remember anything about me?" she cried.
Her obvious frustration caused him to drop his wheedling charm and grow serious with her.
"There is one thing I think I recall," he confessed to her.
At once, she ran to him and sat on the bed. "One memory can spark more," she said hopefully. "What do you remember, Robin?"
With sympathetic eyes looking deeply into hers, he told her, "You're scarred." His voice was warm and kind, yet tinged with sorrow and regret. "Across your abdomen. You were wounded and scarred, like me. Who could have done that to you?" he cried, suddenly angry and protective.
Marian didn't immediately respond. She sat silently beside him, her mouth slightly open, staring at him in disbelief.
Finally, her voice low with anger, she managed to say, "That is all you remember? My hideous flaws?"
His temper flared up to meet hers, as if her reaction to his confession had sparked a fire within him. "Do you think I like lying here helpless in this bed not knowing I am?" he cried, accusingly. "Not knowing who you are? Not even knowing my own flesh and blood? Can you even imagine what it feels like to hold your child in your arms, and not recognize her? It's not as if I had a choice what memories I have."
He blinked his eyes several times rapidly. Words, a saying, lay just beneath the darkness in his mind, trying to push their way to the surface. A choice...something about a choice. Something she had taught him. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the words retreated, sinking to the bottom of the sludge that was now his memory.
He looked at the woman, the remarkable woman who was somehow his wife, feeling more and more in love with her for the emotions that had passed between them in this room, and was sorry for his temper.
"Forgive me," he asked her, staring contritely into her eyes. "I did not mean to raise my voice to you. I'm sorry."
She sat beside him still, sad that the formal stranger had returned. She wanted nothing so much as to lie down beside him on the bed and just cling to him, but with him so distant, it didn't seem right.
"Shall I let you get some rest?" she asked, eager now to step away, just so she could breathe.
"I've rested enough," he told her. "It's time I got up and faced my village. I feel there must be a lot to do."