"Alicia!"
The doctor turned around, surprised.
"Guy! You didn't tell me you would come today. Did they take you here after today's courses?"
Gisborne smiled at her, proud.
"No, in fact I put the lessons of the last days into practice. I came alone."
"Really? Did you take the bus?"
"Yes. They gave me a bus pass and they taught me how to use public transport and how to read a map of the city."
"Well, congratulations, now you can move much more freely. Did you have any problems?"
"The other day I took the bus in the wrong direction and I ended up at the castle instead than at home, but it wasn't a big problem, I took the opportunity to go to say hello to Jonathan Archer. Mr. Andrews was there too, he had a small vial with a stick and he used it to get a sample of my saliva. He said that it was necessary for that examination that perhaps will allow him to identify the remains of Isabella."
Alicia held him in a short hug, noticing his emotion in pronouncing those last words. Guy returned the hug, but he changed the subject.
"Do you know that now I also have a real identity card? Obviously the date of birth is wrong and I hope that in real I have a more intelligent expression than in the photo, but apparently now I officially exist, I am a person of this time."
Alicia chuckled.
"Don't worry about the photo, I don't think there is a person in the whole world who's happy with their photo on a identity card. You should see mine, but don't hold your breath, I have no intention of showing it to you." Alicia smiled at him. "I'm happy for you, you're working so hard and you deserve to be happy. Do you have any commitments later?"
"No, I'm done for today. I'll see Miriam on Saturday, but I'm free tonight."
"If you have the patience to wait for the end of my shift, we can have dinner together and then I'll take you home. You came to see Robin, right?"
"Yes. How is he?"
"Better physically, but he is still very wary. I think he doesn't really trust any of us."
"When I told him that we are in the twenty-first century he didn't believe me, he thought I had become crazy. I hope today he's more willing to listen to me."
"You didn't believe me either when I told you what year it was, you had to find yourself in front of a helicopter in flight to be convinced."
Guy recalled the trauma he had suffered that day and he gave a small sigh.
"I wanted to keep him from being as upset as I was."
"In the end you didn't fare so badly, right? You always told me that Robin Hood is full of resources, he'll adapt too."
"I hope so."
"Everything will be fine. Now go to your friend, I have to go back to work."
"See you later, Alicia."

Robin looked at the window, wondering how high his room was from the ground and if he could escape from there, but he was forced to admit that an escape seemed rather unlikely since he couldn't even stand for more than a few moments without help.
He was still considering the possibilities he had, when the door opened.
"Gisborne!" He exclaimed, still incredulous. "So you're really alive. I wasn't sure I hadn't dreamed the other day."
"The day you start dreaming of me, I'll worry, Hood," Guy said, taking possession of the chair next to the bed. "How are you?"
"Too weak to walk, but now that you're here you can help me. Take my clothes, hurry, we have to go back to the forest, the others will be desperate by now."
"Robin... There is no forest. Not here. Not anymore. In eight centuries many things have changed."
"Stop this nonsense, Gisborne, or I'll think you really became crazy."
"Look around you, Hood, you're denying reality. Just look at this room, do you think it looks like one of the rooms of the castle? Look at the ceiling: there is a brighter light than a torch or a lantern, but there is no flame, and I can turn it on or off with a switch." Guy stood up and demonstrated what he had just said by turning the light off and on, then he returned to Robin and stared into his eyes. "And this is the least, you have to see everything else! There are mechanical carriages that move without horses, faster than any vehicle you've seen, and other devices that can fly, so fast that you can get to the other side of the planet in the same time we used to go to York on horseback. Objects that allow you to cook food without using fire and books that instead of being copied one word at a time are produced in thousands of copies, perfectly identical to each other! And anyone can own dozens of them without being rich."
"You're delirious, Gisborne, what you say is just nonsense. And then what could a poor man do with a book?"
"Read it?"
"Guy, most, if not all, of the peasants of Locksley can't read."
"Well, now they do. In this time practically everyone learns to do it since childhood, they all study for many years."
Robin shook his head sadly.
"Gisborne, come here and sit down. I'm glad you're alive, really, but it's clear that you're not well, you're confused and you talk about nonsense."
"No, Robin, I think I've never seen things so clearly, instead."
Robin looked at him, amazed.
"You've changed, Guy. You really changed."
"I know. And I think it's good."
The outlaw continued to watch him for a while.
"Yes, I think so too. You look healthy and even more serene. And I didn't think I'd ever see you wearing clothes that were not leather. Is that a color?"
Guy grinned and lowered his gaze for a moment on the blue T-shirt that he was wearing that day and that could be glimpsed under his black sweater.
"Strange, isn't it?"
Robin looked around, looking at all the details of the room that he had deliberately ignored till now, then he looked at Gisborne again. He was forced to admit to himself that this place wasn't at all like any of the places he knew, and that his friend's words had seemed sincere to him, even if that whole situation was absurd.
Guy seemed to have found the peace he had never had in his life and his appearance had much improved compared to the day of the castle's siege. Then, Gisborne hjad been worn out because of the captivity in the dungeons and the hard life at the camp, and, like them all, in the last period of their fight against Isabella and Prince John, he had neither eaten nor slept enough. Surely none of them had the time or the opportunity to take a bath or to look after their appearance.
Now, instead, Guy had the healthy appearance of those who didn't suffer from hunger or fatigue and he seemed cleaner and more neat than he had ever been, even in his best times at Nottingham.
"Did you say eight centuries? How is it possible?"
Guy shrugged.
"I have no idea, but it's true."
"How do we go back?"
Gisborne stared at him, almost surprised.
"I don't know. When we saved you, it happened suddenly: a moment we were walking in a park, the moment after we were in Sherwood forest."
"We?"
"Me and Alicia, the doctor who's treating you. It was only for a short while, but I saw Archer and the others, do you know? They were gathered in the forest and they were weeping for your death. When we were told that you went away to die alone, we thought that maybe we were still in time, that maybe we were there to save you."
"How? You said that there was no antidote."
"And it's true, but there are ways to counteract the symptoms of poison and to keep you alive until your body disposes of it. Did you know that you can restart a heart that has stopped?"
"Nonsense, you can't awaken a dead man."
"They did it to me when I arrived here, and then Alicia and I did it to you. You weren't breathing when we found you, so we did it for you."
"How?"
"One of us compressed your chest to simulate the heartbeat and the other breathed for you, blowing air in your mouth."
Robin gave him a disgusted look.
"Are you saying that you kissed me, Gisborne?"
Guy grinned.
"Would you have preferred to die, Hood?"
Robin chose not to answer him and he just raised his eyes to the sky.
"Let's admit that what you say is true and that we are eight centuries in the future... We must find a way to go back in our time."
"No!" Guy said, marveling at the vehemence of his own response.
"No? What are you saying, Gisborne? Our companions will be waiting for us."
"Waiting for you, maybe."
"It's not true, you're part of the gang too now, and then there's Archer, he's our brother."
"You know very well that I've never really been one of you, they won't cry too much for my disappearance. And Archer has lived for twenty years without having brothers, I imagine he will adapt without too much trouble to having only one."
Robin looked at him, stunned.
"Don't you want to come back? Do you really want to stay here?"
"If there is a way to return to our time, I will help you to do it, but I won't come with you. There, for me there is only suffering and people's hatred, I have no reason to return."
"And will you let Prince John to continue oppressing people?"
"That was always your cause, Robin. And however…"
Guy stopped and Robin stared at him.
"However, what?"
However, Prince John will ascend the throne all the same because King Richard will be killed during one of his stupid battles.
"Nothing. I don't care who reigns. The only thing I've always wanted is to have a family."
"And here do you have one?"
Guy's thoughts flew to Miriam, but he immediately dismissed them: he couldn't speak of her to Robin yet, he couldn't bear the possibility of losing her so soon.
"No. But I have a house, some friends and sooner or later I will have a job as well. I can live my life in peace, be more free than I have ever been in my life."
"Are these really the words of the man who tried to kill the king because he wanted a huge power?"
Guy looked down.
"You know why I wanted power."
Robin sighed.
"Yes. So are you willing to live in a world so different from what you know? Doesn't it look terrifying?"
"In the beginning it was. I understood practically nothing about what I saw around me, and people's words made no sense, but living here has many advantages. You'll see it too, Hood."
"I'm not going to stay here long."
"Maybe you'll have to. I don't know why we ended up here or how it was possible. It was a sort of a miracle and not even you can force miracles to happen, Hood."
"I'll find a way. I already have a plan. A part of a plan, at least."
"It isn't true, you don't have it."
"I'll find one."
"Good luck then. But if you don't succeed, I think you'll like the Nottingham of this time, you're a celebrity around here."
"Really? Do they remember me after all this time?"
"Yeah. There are books and movies about you, in the shops they sell themed toys and souvenirs, and near the castle there is also a statue that represents you, but it doesn't look like you at all."
Robin looked at him.
"What are you talking about, Gisborne? What would a movie be? And a souvenir? Now you are the one who uses incomprehensible words."
"I will explain it to you. You have no idea how many things I've studied in the last few weeks and how many more I'll still have to learn, but it's worth it, I assure you. Do you know that they invented devices that allow you to talk to people even from a distance? You can hear the voice of a person on the other side of the world as if he were next to you. And it's not magic, they're mechanical items, I used them too."
The outlaw didn't know what to answer him: for the first time he was in a situation where he felt completely lost and without the faintest idea of what to do and, to make things worse, Gisborne instead seemed to be completely at ease, confident like Robin had never seen him in his life.
For a moment he felt angry at him and was tempted to tell him to stop mocking him with that incomprehensible nonsense, but he quickly realized that instead Guy was genuinely interested and enthusiastic about that future world, so far from anything that they always had known.
For once Gisborne, who had always been the one out of place, the boy excluded from the games of the others, the man hated by the peasants and treated like an obedient dog by the sheriff, had adapted to that absurd situation and was happy.
Seeing Gisborne happy was definitely a novelty, Robin thought, and he wasn't quite sure he liked it.
He mentally reproached himself for those thoughts: when Guy had been wounded, Robin had called him a friend, but he couldn't consider him a friend only if he was unhappy and in a situation of inferiority.
That is pity, not friendship.
Yet, inside him, a voice kept reminding him that Gisborne had killed Marian and that he had torn away all his hopes of future happiness. Robin knew he could forgive him all the rest, he could consider him his friend and ally, but he could never forget it, that crime would always remain between them.
"Robin? Are you alright? You suddenly became silent."
The outlaw tried to ward off those gloomy thoughts and he shook his head. Guy was genuinely worried about him, he could read it in his eyes, and that care moved him and filled him with rage at the same time. He didn't want his kindness, he didn't want to see him happy, and above all he didn't want to feel indebted to him.
If you were dead, I would have suffered for you, I would have missed you... Maybe it would have been better. And you shouldn't have saved me: if you hadn't done it, now I would be with her.
"It's nothing. I'm tired."
"Alicia says it's normal, you'll soon recover. When you leave the hospital I will show you this new world, I bet you'll like it."
Robin tried to smile.
"A statue, uh?"
"Yes, and people come from all over the world to see it. Fortunately for them it doesn't look like you at all."