Part 36

The servants found themselves busied with helping Djaq and Marian patch up the minor injuries that the gang has sustained in the fight. Robin was not present having gone to their room. Eventually Marian found him there; she carried a bowl of warm water in her hand, with a small pouch with needle, thread and dressing. He was lying on the bed looking up to the ceiling and he turned when she closed the door behind her with her foot.

With a weary sigh she uttered. "Take off your shirt then."

He gingerly propped himself to a sitting position and did as she asked of him. Marian sat alongside him on the bed and dipped the clean cloth into the water and bathed the area.

"Ouch!" he said. "What? It stings."

"Or course it does." She replied patiently as she stitched up the wound.

He bit back a smile and said. "Do you remember the last time you stitched up my arm?"

She stopped her ministrations and frowned at him thinking hard.

"A word of advice, your charms such as they are stopped working on me at least five years ago." She told him calmly but with an annoyed hint to her tone.

"A challenge?" he asked with a smirk.

"A statement," she clarified.

"Ow!"

"That hurt?" She asked, showing no sign of remorse that she had inflicted the pain. Needing him to feel something of the hurt she had experienced when he had left for the Holy Land.

"Yes!"

"Good. Just tying off."

"Kiss it better?...Argh!"

"Marian?" he said gently. "Marian." Inside he reprimanded himself, perhaps it had been too soon to ask her if she remembered certain things about time they had spent together, good or bad. "Marian?"

Marian shook her head slightly and looked at him and said. "On that occasion you did not deserve for me to kiss anything better, this time…"

"I do?" he added hopefully, his eyes lighting up with the prospect of getting a kiss.

She looked down to her hands with the needle and thread between her forefinger and thumb and added. "And do you remember how you echoed my words of that day in the cave, of the bluntness of the needle, after that man Guy had stabbed me?"

"Yes," he returned with a small smile and a heavy sigh. After a pause he added. "Your arm?"

"Oh it is nothing…… a scratch." She replied brushing it off.

"Still, let me look after all it is only fair you tended to my war wound." Robin insisted firmly.

She looked for a moment as if she would refuse, but turned slightly so that her injured side was closest to him. He pulled back the torn clothing, she had been correct it was only a graze, the blood was congealed and it was already on its way to healing.

"You are not going to bathe it with clean water then?" she enquired, when he drew her dress back over it.

"You were right; it is only a graze which seems to need no medical intervention, even by me." He admitted, relief washing across his face that the injury she has sustained was extremely mild and harmless.

"Still," she mused softly. "You could kiss it better."

They gazed at each other; really there was no need for excuses to share a kiss. But they also knew deep within that this was not about kissing a scratch and a small arrow wound better. It was about the fact they both survived their latest and God willing last mission where they had to put their lives on the line.

Robin moved first and peeled back Marian's dress again to reveal the scratch. He leant down and gently kissed her shoulder and she took in a deep breath as his touch ignited the flame which never seemed to burn out between them. Raising his head he winked at her inviting her to return the favour. She picked up a strip of cloth in her hand before bending down to brush her lips carefully across his wound. Then she pulled back and wrapped the bandage securely over it, to keep it clean, that done she kissed it briefly again.

"There," she whispered. "All better."

His gaze when she met his eyes was intense and he shifted a little closer, pulling her towards him. His hand slid around her neck and his mouth met hers with abounding passion. Within moments he was laying her back onto the comfort of the mattress, where they lost themselves in each other. Neither heard Much yelling through the door that supper had been served, food was the last thing on their minds.