L'EDgendary

by dobanochi

A few years since we last saw any of them, the Peach Creek Boys and the Merry Men run into one another at just the right time, working together to undermine an oppressive city government as well as their burgeoning insecurities. An action-comedy-drama character study about friendship, leadership, self-esteem, and the divide between who we're born as and who we choose to be.

49. Had a Dad

49. "Had a Dad"

And sure, some would argue it was an extremely foolish decision for them to be sitting in the Major Oak after its location had been compromised to law enforcement, and maybe those people would be right to say so. But they didn't care, they were willing to risk it. They knew that the N(C&C)PD probably wouldn't be looking too hard for them today. It was Father's Day, and the overwhelmingly male Force likely wouldn't be in the mood for any strenuous work. (If Alan were here, this would be the part where he'd quip that the cops working today were probably all brainstorming ways to beat their wives and children for giving them unsatisfactory gifts, citing the statistic that an astronomically high proportion of American cops engage in domestic violence.) And besides, after the hit the old tree took the other day, they didn't know how many more opportunities they would have to rest in the shade of her branches. They would take every chance they got.

Little John was fine with taking the day off. The last few days had been hectic enough, and he could use a little more time to process them. Time to ponder how the brouhaha at Double-D's house could have been handled better, time to breathe through his burning desire to track down and physically kill those seven kids who murdered that poor old wolf, time to reflect and be grateful that he himself was still breathing at all. And time to wonder whether he should have been more careful with what he wished for when he yearned for Rob to knock it off with the affectation of being unshakeable and have the guts to be more open about how he sometimes felt bad about himself like everyone else on this planet does, because now Johnny was starting to feel a wee bit alarmed by how frequently the fox seemed to be feeling bad about himself recently. Had Robin always secretly harbored this much self-doubt and worry, or was this a spike after numerous recent discouraging events? Johnny hadn't a clue. But it was all enough to get him wondering whether Robin putting on this air of being endlessly self-confident - even in the sole presence of his closest friend, whom he should have been able to trust with the times he didn't feel so self-confident - was what Robin needed to do to get him and everyone else in this town to believe he was a strong and capable leader in this fight… it killed Little John to even think it, but maybe Robin was right the first time to strategically play himself up to be somebody who was unshatterable, because the fox hadn't been the most inspiring figure recently, and quite honestly, Rob's sudden lapse of faith in himself was starting to rub off on Johnny.

And unbeknownst to one another, the fox sitting in the opposite tree was thinking all these same thoughts as the bear. Yeah, Robin thought he was right the first time when he thought that Johnny was fundamentally correct in saying that a mature, healthy friendship should involve them being open about what's really on their minds… but that he himself was also fundamentally correct in thinking that the middle of a fight for their lives wasn't the best time to do that. Of course good friends help each other when they're feeling weak, but they were in a spot where they'd best keep showing one another that they were staying strong.

But nobody can stay strong for seven straight years, and after this past week, Robin had been broken alright. Therefore, amid his many other worries, he was worried he'd already shared too many of his many worries with his friend. Much of it wasn't even intentional; sometimes certain moments make certain information slip out. Far past the point of merely keeping his buddy abreast of what was going through his head, Robin was pretty sure he'd crossed the line into the territory of oversharing.

In some ways, it reminded him about the biggest previous instance of Robin absolutely spilling his guts to Johnny, that being four years back when Rob confessed that he was dreadfully worried that Marian had grown tired of waiting for him and had moved on with her life. In both instances, Little John had sort of goaded him into talking about it and by the end of each Robin did have a distinct feeling of catharsis, but back then it had been a conversation about one specific topic that Little John had teased out of him with playful jokes, he'd had direct and useful words of encouragement, and it had always been clear that the discussion was for Robin's benefit; this time, however, it had all been forced out like pus from a cyst after a series of overwhelming misfortunes, and although Johnny was totally playing his part by saying "you can do it, buddy" and shit like that, it all honestly came across as lip service in light of the fact that this was all catalyzed by stupid Little John being insecure about being insecure about things and begging Robin to come be insecure about things with him, so any sense of catharsis was lost when Robin realized that nothing had actually gotten better by talking it out. In truth, Robin blamed his friend for a good bit of their present awkwardness.

...Except wait, no, come to think of it, Robin hadn't bought Johnny's good advice four summers ago either until Tuck materialized out of thin air with the news that Marian was magically in town and was going to be at the archery contest. Okay, fine, so maybe Robin really was bad at listening to his friend. But regardless, he was now afraid that he'd given Little John too much information and fundamentally changed the way Johnny saw him as a person, and if Robin did indeed give his closest friend reason to lose faith in his ability to keep fighting the fight he'd started, that would be one thing Robin conclusively could not blame on the bear.

Because much like the bear, the fox was perfectly content to take the day off. And he'd be content to take the next day off, and any and every day after that; although he hadn't lost the ability to keep fighting the fight he'd started, he'd absolutely lost the drive and desire. You would never guess from him sitting in that tree, legs crossed and arms behind his head looking as cool as James Dean (because of course he did), but when he'd cried his eyes out the day before confessing to Father Tuck that he regretted most of the last decade of his life, he'd meant every single word of it. And he still did. But he could never let you nor I nor Little John know that, or the game would be over immediately and everyone would lose. Hell, he'd sooner tell Johnny about how Will met his fate than tell him he was ready to throw in the towel; think about it, what's easier to admit? "I once made one very big mistake," or "I've continuously made one very long mistake and the last seven years of our lives are that mistake"? Not to suggest that telling his friend about what happened to his poor brother was something he was planning on doing soon - or ever - but if he had to choose one or another to confess with a gun to his head, he'd sing a song of criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter, because at least that mistake had an ending.

But you know what? Maybe he was regretting his choice in lifestyle yesterday, and maybe he was regretting it today too, and maybe he'd still regret it tomorrow as well. But maybe instead he'd be feeling better about it again tomorrow; he just didn't know yet. Or maybe the next day he'd feel up and at 'em again, or perhaps the day after that. You just don't know. He could have some good days and get his groove back, or he could have terrible days and double down on his epiphany of lament. Ya just didn't know, man. So he'd chill out with his friend and take a day or twelve to feel all the things he was feeling and to leave the door open for any new, more-welcome feelings to come in. Hey, he'd already wasted seven years of his life; at this point, what was the harm in burning a few more days?

And you could also make the argument that he needed the day off to recover from a strange medical condition. Robin had woken up that morning with a strange lump in his throat - nothing physically detectable, but rather the psychosomatic kind you get when you're very nervous or upset. But he wasn't shaking like a leaf or about to start bawling, so he didn't know what that was all about. It wasn't stopping him from breathing, speaking, or swallowing, so he could make himself suck it up, but damn if it wasn't bugging the shit out of him.

"Ah, I must have myself a slash again," Robin said with an almost dreamy tone as he wiggled out of his comfortable seated position and shimmied down the tree. He really did have to go for the umpteenth time that day; the two of them had drank like alcoholic fish again the night before to (try to) forget their woes and put the merry back in Merry Men.

"By all means," was all the bear said as the fox went to go use the loo. When Robin got back to the van in the junkyard last night, Johnny was already there; he told Robin that he'd delivered "Billy's" money to Double-D to make up for the obscene amount of damage they'd caused in yesterday's brawl, and fully expected Rob to at least allude to where he'd walked off to by himself. But instead, the fox just thanked him for his moral diligence and proposed they get straight into some serious swigging and swallowing. And so they did, and Little John told himself that Robin had every right to go off and do his own thing, but he just wished he wasn't so goddamn secretive about it. Eh, then again, Johnny had done much the same thing when he went to bitch about Robin to Otto, so maybe they were even.

Off among the trees, Robin was searching through the satellite saplings whose trunks the Merry Men had hid other stuff in, Robin looking just in case there was anything important or interesting they might want later that they'd forgotten about.

Johnny was playing bongos on his belly when he heard Robin climbing back up.

"...Oh, don't stop that wonderful music!" Robin teased from below. He then made a weird straining sound, as if his climbing was labored. Johnny bent around and saw why: the fox was climbing one-handed while somehow managing to carry something with his broken arm (pfft, showoff).

"Where'd you find that old thing!?" Little John asked, a smile creeping across his snout.

"In the trunk of Madeline," replied Robin, referring to the tree by the name they'd given it. "And her friends Margot and Marisol send us their regards; poor trees have been lonely with us away so much these last few days!"

"Aw, those poor girls," said Johnny. "And they can't be too happy after hearing what happened to Little Miss Major over here…" Then the bear looked off to the side and winced at his inward thoughts. "I… I think I remember your brother telling me that he read somewhere that… plants can kinda talk? Like trees and flowers and grass and stuff, communicating in high-pitched frequencies. He said he heard that plants scream when you cut them, so… for all we know, the girls might actually be terrified!"

Robin, stopped in his tracks to stare at his friend, was also looking terrified. "...That is the most horrifying thing that I've ever heard in my entire life. Please don't ever say any of that again."

"Hey, blame Will for telling me! But back to the subject at hand, why didn't you ask me to grab that thing for you?"

"Oh, it wasn't too heavy!" the fox insisted as he got back into his seat.

"I ain't saying it's heavy, dude, I'm saying it's cumbersome, at least for you since it's at least, what, two-thirds of your height?"

Robin chuckled as he handed the instrument over. "I get it, Johnny. You're a great big bear and I'm a tiny little fox and this world just isn't the right size for either one of us! Oh, must you rub it in?"

And Little John accepted his not-very-little homemade banjo. "Oh, cry me a river, Mr. Shaquille O'Neal of Foxes!" he joked. "You ain't been on both sides of the size chart like I have!"

"Oh, but haven't I?" Robin smirked. "Have I not told you how back home, nothing was the right size for me in my fox-sized village?"

The bear's smile started fading. "...You haven't, actually."

Then Robin's smile faded. "...Really?"

"I mean, you mentioned it every so often, but you never really… elaborated." Johnny looked bummed out now. "You said things like 'oh, yeah, my house was too small for me,' and… that's it."

Robin looked around awkwardly. "I see… Well, in my defense, I know how your childhood went in terms of, erm, size-consciousness, so I suppose I've always been afraid to bring it up unless it sounded like me… well, rubbing it in!" He had to smile at the callback.

"Alright, yeah, that's fair, that's fair, ya got me there…" Little John mumbled, trailing off as he inspected his customized piece.

"...You still remember how to play her?"

Johnny smiled again as he scoffed playfully. "'Remember'? Pfft, did I ever know? I was just strummin' and messin' around on her, Rob!" The bear turned his attention to the banjo as he turned it over to check her out from all angles. "How ya doin', Alice? You miss me, too?"

"Aha!" Robin said, pointing. "You keep your secrets, too, don't you, Johnny? You never told me you named her Alice!"

"That's because I just named her Alice just now!" Johnny beamed, stating his case rather matter-of-factly.

"...I see," was all the fox said, his ears slumping a little.

"I dunno why, but when I was a kid, I always thought I'd grow up to have a beautiful wife named Alice," Johnny explained, still talking to the instrument. "I dunno if the wife part is ever gonna happen, but I can still have my Alice!"

Robin didn't know what to say, so he just chuckled and smiled, happy that his friend was happy. There were a couple things Robin would freely admit he admired and envied about Little John, and that was how the bear had absolutely no qualms about discussing things about himself, no matter how depressing or unflattering. Granted, they both knew that this was a product of Johnny's deep-seated nihilism and an attitude of fuck it, who cares if the world knows about all the ways my life sucks?, but regardless, Robin could agree that it took great strength to be okay with appearing weak - but Robin also believed it often took still more strength to appear so weak that he wasn't even strong enough to let himself appear weak, and that's how he justified his bashfulness to speak lowly of himself in the name of appearing like the strong, inspiring, supermammalian hero Nottingham needed to look up to and believe in.

"Play us a song, wouldn't you, Johnny?"

Johnny gave Robin a goofy look. "'Us'? I've got an audience of one, dude, what is that? The royal 'we'?"

Robin tutted with a smile and shook his head, eyes closed. "No, Little John… play a song for your enjoyment as well as mine."

And Johnny looked pensive for a moment as he pondered what he wanted to play. "Hm… alright then. Gimme a sec to… lemme feel out the strings first."

"Take your time, we're in no hurry."

Little John had no formal musical training and only knew how to play by ear, so he messed around with the strings and played some notes at random to refresh his memory of what sounds came from where. "Alright, everybody… you're listening to One-Oh-Five-Three, WJET-FM The Jet, Nottingham's Classic Rock Station! We got a request from Robin in Sherwood Forest asking us to play some Americana to catch up for all the culture he's somehow missed out on for thirteen years -"

"Oh, hush!" Robin teased.

" - so to Robin in Sherwood, here's some John Cougar Mellencamp!" And Johnny got to strumming. The notes admittedly didn't sound quite right at first coming from a banjo, but when he got to the lyrics, the opening instrumental sounded spot-on in retrospect: "A li'l ditty… about Robbbin and Maaaaa- wait, hold on… A li'l ditty… about Maaari and Ro-ob! Two British li'l kids growin' up, iiin the- whaddya call the part of England you're from again?"

"Sheffield."

Little John's eyes rolled out of his head. "No, you dipshit!" he guffawed. "Like, the region you and Marian are from! What's that part called."

Robin smiled awkwardly. "Well, there's not really a convenient answer for that, Johnny! We grew up around the Yorkshire-Midlands border, I was from Yorkshire, she was from Nottinghamshire -"

"Oh, for the love of God, man!" Johnny threw his arms up, laughing. "Fuck it, your lives don't make a good song… they'd make a damn fine movie, but not a song!"

"Ah, I'd like to think they would make a good story one day," Robin said wistfully to the branches.

"Straight fairytale material right there, you lucky dog, you…" Then Little John realized something. "Wait, where'd you say she was from?"

"Nottinghamshire."

Johnny looked dumbfounded. "Out of all the places in England she could have been from, she's from the other Nottingham!?"

"No, not the city! She's a small-town girl, she's from a village called Worksop. Nottinghamshire is the county; saying she's from Nottingham is like saying someone from Albany's from New York City!"

"Still, you'd think this would be a coincidence worth bringing up at least once, don't you think?" It was a question asked with a smile, but Robin knew Johnny was at least a little annoyed again.

The fox shrugged suavely. "It seemed such an obvious thing to bring up that I would have sworn I already had somewhere!"

And the bear just shook his head with an exhausted smile. He searched for tunes with his ear again, inspired by some key words Robin had used. "...Juuust a smaaall-towwwn giiirl… liiiviin' iiin a looooonely wooooor-ooooorld- please, God, tell me you know this song."

Robin just smiled and nodded, singing the next bar with Johnny:

"She took the miiidniiight traaaaaiiiiin goooiiin' aaaaa-nyyyyy-wherrrrre…" They were having fun.

Little John started the next first solo again: "Just a ciiityyy boyyy… booorn and raiiised in Souuuuuth Deeetroooooi-oooooit…!"

Robin invited himself to chime in: "He took the miiidniiight-"

"Buuut if you looooook at a maaaaap, therrrrre ain't NOOOOO, SUUUUUCH, PLAAAAAAACE…!" Little John seemed to be playfully feigning anger as he strummed.

"What was that?"

"South Detroit. No such place," said the bear. "You start in downtown Detroit and head straight south, you immediately hit a river and cross into Canada. Little known fact! Steve Perry sure didn't know, but I do and so did your brother."

Robin nodded, still smiling though he wished Little John would stop invoking his brother's memory.

"It's a shame Geography was never an actual class when I was in school, because it probably woulda been my best chance at getting an A. I liked maps, man. I liked the idea of getting out of my own shithole small town and going out to see what the rest of the world had to offer me. Of course… reality set in, and I found out travelling was gonna cost money I was never gonna have. And me and Will bonded over how fascinated we were by the world, but… heh… imagine how alarmed I was when he told me that those uppity Europeans - and Robin, you're exempt from this, heh heh - apparently y'all really do think we're a bunch of rednecks who don't wanna see the world because they think Americans are all a bunch of overly-patriotic retards… and yeah, no shit, those rednecks exist, I grew up with a bunch of them, but for the most part… no motherfuckers, we can't travel because we're POOR!"

"You needn't explain it to me, Johnny," Robin insisted. "I actually found myself in that spot myself when I was tour-guiding in Washington. On multiple occasions, international tourists would figure out I was English and talk to me joking about how they were hesitant to see a country whose people wouldn't bother to see theirs… but little did they know, I wasn't even making enough money to go visit home again!"

Little John looked horrified. "Wait, you couldn't!?"

"No sir." Robin looked like he was forcing his smile at this point. "I've crossed the pond once in my life and haven't had the chance to go back."

Johnny just tutted his tongue and shook his head. "You shoulda told those tourists gushing over the British guy. Maybe then they woulda fuckin' tipped you!"

"Oh -!" Robin chuckled. "Don't get me started on US tipping culture! I felt myself turning into an American quickly when I was working that job, getting angry at stingy customers and relying on tips that never came…" Robin sighed and thought about changing the subject to something lighter. "Another interesting thing about Will and noticing geography mistakes, though… there was a song by an English group - if memory serves, from Actual Nottingham no less - there was a song that was popular when I was a lad, about Al Capone in Prohibition Chicago, singing about a shootout with police on the east side of Chicago, and I didn't find out until decades later - from Will - that apparently nobody cared to tell these geezers that Chicago didn't have an east side!"

Johnny snorted laughing. "Fuckin' idiots." But instead of expressing curiosity about what the song was called or who these ignoramuses were, he instead said, "... I'm learnin' a lot about you today."

And again, Robin smiled and remembered his training about how to not be awkward in moments like this. "Well, I'm glad you're finding my mundane past life so interesting."

Johnny still had his eyes fixed on the banjo. "We've got a request from Johnny in Sherwood, he says he has a faint Southern accent and his last name means small, could we play him someone else with a faint Southern accent whose last name also means small? Sure we can, Johnny!" He played himself in with a down-tempo melody. "...She's a gooooood giiiiirl, loooooves herrr maaamaaaaa… loves Jeeeeesuuuuus, and Amerrricaaa, tooooo…"

"She was an American girl, alright!" the Englishman said, giving gentle applause.

The Tennessean didn't take it well. "Jesus Christ, Robin!" Johnny howled laughing. "This isn't 'American Girl' I'm playing!"

"I'm sorry, Johnny!" Robin said, nervously laughing as well. "I've never been the biggest music buff!"

"Well, that's what I'm here to fix!" He turned back to his instrument. "... It's a looooong daaaaay, livin' in Reseeeeeda, move wessssst dowwwwwn, Ventuuuraaa Boulevaaaaard… I don't liiiiive iiiiin, Southern Caaalifooooornia, so I dooooon't knowwwww, where any a' these places aaaaare!"

The friends shared a laugh at that.

"More map jokes," said the bear.

"Keep going, I'm enjoying this," said the fox.

"Oh, yes, m'lord!" Little John goofed as he brainstormed another one. "...He said playyyyy usssss a sooooong, you're the banjo bear! Playyyyy usssss a sooooong toniiiiiiiight! 'Cuz we're aaaaall iiiiin the mooooooood for a melllodyyyyy, and youuuu've got us feeeeeeeelin' alright!"

Robin held up his fingers and waved them like a conductor's wand.

"Aaand the baaanjo, it souuuuunds like a caaarnivaaaaal! And the miiiiicrophooone smellllllls like aaaaaaale! And some jaaack's shootin' smaaack in the mennn's rooooooom, and his naaaaame is Alaaaaan A. Daaaaaaale!"

It's a good thing the woods were empty that day, because you could hear the two of them laughing from a mile away.

"Oh, we're goin' to hell for making fun of Alan's heroin addiction, aren't we?" chuckled Johnny.

"Ah, but remember, Johnny old boy: Alan wasn't addicted," countered Robin. "As he put it, that's why it was so dangerous for him: because he could have it whenever he wanted, because he wasn't addicted! ...Kind of like with you and cigarettes!"

Little John laughed through his nose. "And you and alcohol!"

"Exactly! He simply chose to take a disproportionate cut of the money we stole for the poor to spend on narcotics so he could go shoot up with his other friends!"

Johnny nodded, deep in thought. "Yeah… the self-centered sum-bitch… Wait! How could I forget!" He got to playing again, and although he stumbled a bit as he modified the lyrics on the fly, it came out pretty well: "Now Robbb in the wooooods is a frieeend of miiine, he getttts me myyy foooooood for freeeeeeeee, aaand he's quiiick with a joooke or to liiight up yer smoooke, buuut there's sooome place that heee'd raaaaather be! He says John, III belieeeeeve this is kiiillin' meeeee, aaas the smiiiiile runs awayyyyy from his faaaaace! Well I'm suuuuure that I couuuuuld beeeee a mooovie staaaar, if IIIII could get ouuutta this plaaaaace!"

...And the fox tried to keep a friendly smile and not panic upon hearing the bear's rendition. Like… you couldn't get more poignant with the lyrics, could you? Yeah, Robin thought this forest and this city were killing him, and he'd really like to go off and be a movie star now. And Robin really didn't want Johnny to know that, lest he give up on him for giving up on himself. It was enough to make Robin wonder… did Little John… know? Did he somehow hear from Tuck that Robin had admitted to wanting out of this? Or, worse… did Robin inadvertently give it away himself just by his tone and body language? He sure hoped he hadn't.

"Oh, laaaaa, de-de-daaaaa, de-de-daaaaa, de-de da-da-da ahhh…" Johnny trailed off with his song, looking very content. "And I do believe you do got the chops for it, brother." There Johnny went again trying to be supportive and technically doing everything right, but it just wasn't working.

"Thank you, Johnny," was all Robin thought to say.

"Y'know, I would never a' known that that guy played one of the dogs in that Sidney Oliver Twist movie had your cartoon-obsessed brother not told me! I mean, that movie came out when I was, what, twenty? You know I wasn't very into watching kid's cartoons at that age!"

Good lord, Johnny, stop! First suggesting that Robin was thinking about quitting, then bringing up his brother again? In the span of twenty seconds? Johnny had to know something. He must have. It seemed like a logical conclusion at this point to assume he'd figured something out. And a chance to talk to Tuck seemed unlikely, so it must have been something Robin had let slip, some subconscious hints that Johnny picked up on as only a friend you've lived with for seven years can do. This was getting worrying, so Robin changed the subject.

"Heh… but now you've got me thinking…" the fox mused, "...with a voice and sense of fun like yours, Johnny, you could conceivably get discovered in public somewhere and make it into films long before I do!"

The bear kept smiling through a wince. "You really think that, Mr. Fox Who Everyone Thinks of Like Casanova?"

Robin playfully scoffed and made a brushing-away motion with his paws. "Oh, it's a personality I was taught and nothing you couldn't learn, too! And besides, Johnny, you're a lot better-looking than you may think you are! You don't have one of those faces that a lot of bears have that's twice as wide as it is high, so immediately you have that going for you. Whereas I've been told by respected professional casting directors that my proportions are far too odd for any role where the actor being a ridiculously tall fox isn't inextricably important for the character."

"...This is also new information to me."

"Well, it happened. Entertainment is a cutthroat, superficial business, and they won't hesitate to tell you that you're funny-looking."

"You're not funny-looking, Rob, you look amazing! I'd kill to be, like… the bear equivalent of a handsome fuck like you! And what the fuck do they mean you're too tall? Hey, I grew up around size-obsessed people, so maybe my perspective is skewed, but in the world I know, you can never be too tall!"

Robin shook his head with a coy grin. "Sorry, Johnny, but your perspective is skewed. I'm past the point of looking attractively tall and into the realm of freakishness."

Little John rolled his eyes. "Then at least pose for Playgirl or something, dude! You could flood the storm sewers in this town from all the moisture you make materialize in women's panties!"

Robin giggled to himself. To protect Little John's self-esteem, that would be another secret Robin would have to keep.

But Johnny wasn't thinking about that. "Then again, come to think of it… my grandpa kinda did that exact thing."

"What, he posed for porn!?"

"Huh? Oh, nonononono! He got discovered having fun and they put him in movies!"

Robin looked intrigued. "I think you've mentioned that before. Sounds like a fun chap!"

But Johnny looked annoyed. "Eh, I guess? But he also… basically abandoned my dad and that, y'know, caused a chain of events leading to me being a fuck-up -"

"You're not a fuck-up, Johnny." (The fact that he needed to tell Johnny this may have been a contributing factor to why Robin found it hard to heed his advice and see him as someone worth following - hence why Robin always tried to hide his insecurities so the reverse didn't happen.) "But I'm curious… how did that happen, exactly?"

Little John shrugged. "I dunno, I dunno much about the guy."

"I'd love to hear as much as you do know."

Johnny's face scrunched up as he fiddled with his banjo, pondering what he did and did not know about his paternal line. Hey, he might as well demonstrate to Robin how to share some tough information without feeling ashamed for doing so. "Well… since you asked so nicely.. "

-IllI-

Take I-40 east out of the city, well past the airport. You're gonna want Exit 229B where the cloverleaf will send you north on Golden Bear Gateway - and if you're curious, no, Jack Nicklaus wasn't from this area, but the town is named after an old manor home in Ireland whose land has since been bought and redeveloped into a golf course designed by the Golden Bear himself. Keep going north past the new Mount Juliet High School and hang a right at Route 70, Lebanon Road, by the Shell station. Okay, now this is where things get complicated: you're gonna wanna look for Cooks Road, but there's a Cooks Road and a Cooks Lane and they're both tiny thoroughfares which together form a sort of semicircle that begins and ends at Route 70. Cooks Road will come first, and it'll be on your left; don't worry too much if you miss it, though, because if you do, you can always just turn around in the parking lot of the United Methodist church his family attended. From that semicircle, Cooks Road will continue north. You're gonna follow this for a while. There'll be a hard left curve, then a moderate right, then a gentle left, and then you'll hit a crossroads. Take a right; you're almost there. Keep going past the small plastics factory on your left, and it'll be on your right; it's old and it's small (though not as small as it was originally before its ceilings were raised a good four extra feet), and shares a driveway with a small farm plot that's owned by somebody else. If you drive past the bridge over the creek where his brother and his brother's friends used to go swimming without inviting him, you've gone too far.

Or you can be boring and just take Interstate 40 to Highway 109 and save yourself a good four or five minutes, but then you wouldn't be taking the scenic route. Or you can gamble on taking the most direct route geographically, through the heart of town on Mt. Juliet Road, past his old middle school which was destroyed and rebuilt after that tornado right before the pandemic, and past the new middle school in the building that used to house his old high school before it moved to the new building on Golden Bear, but if it's rush hour and you get all the red lights, don't say I didn't warn ya. But one way or another, you'll find it eventually. The tiny red brick structure sitting on a slope. This little house was the Little house.

Some people have surnames based on an ancestor's occupation; others have them rooted in a forebear's hometown. Still others have names that so perfectly match a characteristic of their species that you'd swear they were puns… and then you do the etomological digging and discover they actually are. So how then do a clan of great big brown bears wind up with the last name "Little"?

You might think this was a nickname given to medieval ancestors ironically which simply stuck through the generations - and you'd be right in the case of most of the families of bears, moose, bulls, elephants, and other large mammals who bear this very common cross-species surname. But in the case of the Littles of Mount Juliet, Tennessee, it was a bit more complicated.

Little John actually didn't know this either when he told Robin that Father's Day, but in the intervening years, he's been able to crack the code after finding some fourth cousins via the internet. Turns out their paternal line held a weird quirk amongst the men: sons of the Little family would frequently be very, very undersized for much of their early life before finally hitting puberty at an incredibly late age. Like, think of the latest late bloomer you know; now imagine them not blooming for still another five years. Apparently Johnny wasn't the only one who didn't hit his growth spurt until he was in his twenties. When the Little men did hit their growth spurts, they would frequently be well above average size for a male brown bear - but their legacy as the little guy will have already been cemented (as well as their Napoleon complex), hence the name sticking. And as far as Johnny's genealogy could suss out, the only common factor for instances where a Little male wouldn't suffer delayed development was when a significant amount of genes entered the mix from subspecies who weren't typical European brown bears or Native American grizzlies.

A long time before the Little family settled in Mount Juliet, the Little lineage found itself in rural Indiana, where Baltimore Harrison Little was born in the first decade of the 1900s, and he would soon be known as Hank. He lived in Indiana with his grandmother while his parents were travelling circus performers; apparently the performance bug was born into him.

Not too much else is known about the guy other than at some point his nuclear family was reunited and settled in Nashville, and that the stunted-looking cub apparently started getting into music. Young Hank started out as a drummer, but somewhere along the line, his stature got high, his voice got low, and his personality got big.

But whom among us only has one hobby? As much as he loved music, he didn't feel too compelled to make a career out of it - you'd hate to ruin your passion by turning it into a chore, y'know? But he had been a budding young man when the Great War was happening in Europe, and hearing stories of the heroics of the flyboys dogfighting in their primitive airplanes made him yearn for a life in the sky to do things as badass as that.

We now enter into what Little John actually knew about his grandfather from the scant information his own father shared with him. In the age of Lindbergh and Earhart, Hank might not have been pulling off renowned feats of aviation, but he was still flying every chance he got. The United States wouldn't have its own designated Air Force for another few decades (there was a branch of the Army that was an Air Force prototype, but they didn't want to let Hank in at first when he was eighteen because he was undersized, then after his late-onset puberty, because he was too lackadaisical and undisciplined), so Hank spent the Twenties and Thirties transporting postage and cargo across the western seaboard after scraping enough money together to buy a plane and relocate to the Los Angeles area - his plane later got repossessed, but the new owner let him keep flying it as her employee, so it all worked out. And as further proof that bears have good noses, whether he was at home in California between flights or overnighting halfway across the world, he always could sniff out a good party. For him, the Great Depression really was pretty great, and while he would still give his "real" name as Hank, those who knew him found out his government name was Baltimore and started giving him a hipster-y nickname to match the age of swing and jazz: Baloo.

And with Golden Age Hollywood in his backyard, you better believe the professional party animal known as Baloo found himself at some pretty happenin' fêtes. Was he invited? Not at first, but why should that stop him? He had an intrinsic need to let loose and he wasn't gonna let nothing or nobody stop him; he'd sneak in, disguise himself, or in some cases even barge past bouncers and guards and make his presence known to these celebrity types. Get bent, Beastie Boys, this guy really fought for his right to party. (At this point in the recollection, Robin piped up and remarked that even he didn't think he was brave enough to crash a Hollywood party for the sake of crashing a Hollywood party; maybe if he were in disguise and it was part of some important mission to do something greater like Adam Bell did in the cartoon, but doing so as himself just to hang out with movie stars as an end goal took a level of devil-may-care self-confidence Robin didn't claim to have and didn't necessarily even want. Johnny agreed that he probably wouldn't either.)

And for much the same reasons that Robin and Little John might not even want to be that ridiculously carefree, all those Hollywood types found Hank's antics to be incredibly boorish and rude - for a good long while. But then he kept doing it, and eventually, charmed by how this guy seemed to be a self-appointed messiah of fun, Tinseltown found itself falling in love with the bear in the pilot's cap. And not much longer after that, Hank found himself as close personal friends with hundreds in the industry, many of whom wanted to put him in pictures. He didn't want to abandon a life in the sky, but the idea of being on the silver screen just seemed like too much fun, and you know by now that this bear chiefly lived for fun. So he agreed to be in a few things here and there; as far as we can tell, his film debut came in 1933 when he was the titular character of a musical comedy short called Live a Little!, a piece loaded with raunchy imagery and double-entendres which just barely predated the Hayes Code. He was nowhere near a superstar or an A-lister, but he had his name and face out there.

So far this guy sounds like a riot, right? Oh, absolutely. But surely you can agree, Dear Reader, that a bear so obsessed with partying to the point that he lets his vehicle payments go delinquent wouldn't seem the most… interested in being a responsible adult.

Some have suggested that this was a product of his childhood being spent assuming that he'd always be smaller than other bears (before he wasn't), but Hank Little famously had a thing for larger women. Apparently he and Louis Primate bonded over this shared interest a long time before they co-starred in Sidney's The Tome of the Tropical Forest. So out of all the young actresses smitten with the fun-loving silver-brown bear, nobody was surprised when Big Baloo had his eye on a polar bear girl even bigger than him.

She was a promising young talent from Norway named Inger Johansen; they got married in Tijuana and had a son, Baltimore Harrison Little, Jr., in 1935. And they didn't do much more after that; turns out marriages don't last long when the guy only marries the girl for fetish fuel. Of course, when it came time for gossipy celebrities to ask both parties what had happened between them, Hank's charisma won the entirety of LA onto his side, and Inger soon realized she wasn't going to work in that town ever again.

Harry never did tell his sons the fine details of Hank's and Inger's brief relationship, but it almost seemed immaterial. Hank was still on the hook for alimony, so he coughed up the money and asked her to leave him alone lest she kill his good vibes.

But then Ol' Baloo came into some money - a lot of money. He'd met a rabbit comedian named Jack Bunny who was looking for a sidekick for his radio show, and between his endlessly entertaining attitude and his golden pipes perfectly suited for the airwaves, the bear seemed like too perfect of a choice and Bunny wouldn't take no for an answer. The show would run for several decades and become perhaps the most famous of the radio era; Hank Little was now officially rich and famous.

And with all this new money, he was able to buy Inger and Hank, Jr., a house - in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. The biggest bummer in Baloo's life was now out of sight and out of mind.

("My oh my, doesn't that sound familiar?" "Whaddya mean?" "You know, Johnny, a rich man using his money to put his ex and his child away - I… I never told you my biological father did that to me and me mum, did I?" "Nope." "Never?" "You mentioned he was rich and a dick, but never that he did that." "...Fucking hell.")

The radio show ran well into the TV era (Jack Bunny did eventually make the switch to television, but Hank Little didn't come with him; whether this was because Hank found TV work too much of a hassle, or because he... honestly wasn't that easy on the eyes, is unknown.) And as Hank made a killing playing the rabbit's younger booze-loving party-animal pal, Hank, Jr., never really knew a time in his childhood when he and his mom wanted for money.

Nor did he ever really know a time when his father was around. Not that Hank was never around, but it was certainly an infrequent event. Now that Ol' Baloo had plenty of play money, he bought his own aircraft and flew it wherever the hell he pleased, no longer beholden to shipping routes, and every so often he would find himself in the neighborhood of Tennessee and suffer himself to make a pit stop in Nashville. When he did, it would always mostly consist of a tense conversation with Inger; there would always be at least a little interaction with Hank, Jr., but it was never the main event, and while the father was never unfriendly towards his son, he never really seemed all too interested in him either.

For all intents and purposes, the only connection Hank, Jr., had to his father was his name - which is to say he didn't even have the connection of physically resembling the guy. He took a lot after his polar bear mother; for one thing, while even Hank, Sr., had a grayish hue to him thanks to a lot of Native American silvertip grizzly blood, Junior was simply straight up gray. Furthermore, the cub was born a particularly large one, and stayed on the upper echelons of the growth chart for the rest of his life - and since he had never had extensive interaction with his father or the rest of the Little side of the family, nobody ever got around to telling him why him being a large child stood in defiance of the Little Family Curse.

Johnny's father never did share too many details about his own childhood, but he did divulge that Inger never did find a stable relationship with another man to help her raise her cub. It was just the two of them against the world. And the two of them didn't particularly have the greatest relationship, either. Mr. Little never described his mother as having been particularly mean or abusive, but certainly… emotionally distant. She never came out and outright said this, but as an adult, her son began to theorize that she had trouble loving him as much as she wanted to because he was a living reminder of when she'd thrown away both her chance at fame and at ever having a happy family - Hank, Jr., as he himself speculated, was the single entity that had prevented her from ever finding any kind of personal fulfillment.

But by the time Baltimore Harrison Little, Jr., had grown to be a behemoth of a man, he'd shed the last connection he had to his father; the bear would much prefer you called him Harry, and when the guy stands more than nine and a half feet tall and is known to be able to lift a literal ton, you're gonna call him what he wants to be called.

Putting his bulk and brute strength to good use, Harry found himself working in construction, putting up new houses in and around the rapidly-growing city. We still don't know too much about his personal life in his twenties, but Little John and his brother are both fairly certain that the guy was pretty tight with his co-workers. That was one thing he'd inherited from his father: Harry was a very fun guy when he wanted to be. Still, he was a guy's guy, and the twins don't think their father had many meaningful relationships with women in his early adulthood (possibly complicated by his strained relationship with his mother).

But somewhere along the line at a big-mammals' bar in Old Hickory, Harry caught the eye of one Philomena McMahan - or rather, he caught her ear. What first got Phil's attention was the other key thing Harry got from his father: a beautifully brassy and bassy voice that carried even over the loud sounds and deep timbres of a bar full of bears, bulls, and bison. Then she saw him, a big, buff mountain of a man who looked like he could carry the world on his back - and just might do that if it helped the people he cared about.

It was still the mid-1960s, and Philomena was from a fairly conservative family who allowed her to go to college but still would have preferred her to settle down and find a man; when she'd recently had to quit Vanderbilt due to money issues, she didn't want to be forced into accepting the role of a housewife… but she might have if she found the right guy. And Dear Reader, if the stereotype is that straight women of most every species are suckers for tall and muscular guys, it was doubly so for bear sows and they didn't even try to hide it. A fearlessly independent woman, Phil made the first move, and the story goes that Harry gave some answer to the effect of "if you want me that badly, it would be rude of me to deny you." Whether you find that line charming or cheesy (or so cheesy it was charming), the fact remains: Miz McMahan was smitten.

And when she found out that she was pregnant with twins (thanks to some newfangled "ultrasound" technology), Philomena was still feeling good about having married him. Harry had opened up to her about his struggles with his own father and seemed very excited to be the best dad he could be; Hank may have been rich and famous (hell, he was having a late-career resurgence by starring in a Sidney movie coming out later that year), but Harry knew one thing he could outshine his father on was being a better family man. True, those same primitive ultrasounds seemed to suggest one of the cubs was noticeably smaller than the other, and that had Harry worried about how much he could help his son when he knew how size-conscious their people's species were, but the parents believed that they could make it work as a family as long as they had each other.

The cubs were born on a Wednesday, a quarter past noon on October 18th, 1967. Immediately it was clear that these twins were fraternal rather than identical. One must have taken after Harry; he was such a deep shade of graphite gray that he almost had a bluish tint to him, but he certainly wasn't brown like his mom, so that one got the distinction of being christened Baltimore Harrison Little III (at this point, Harry actually wanted to keep his father's name going - to prove that future generations were superior to their forefathers).

That gray one was the big one, but it was the little brownie who got all the attention out of the gate. He wasn't horrifically undersized or anything, but the gulf in birth weights between Big Blue Baltimore and his twin was… odd, to say the least. You'd never guess that the smaller one was a quarter polar bear, and you especially wouldn't believe that he'd been sired by the nine-foot-seven guy standing at the bedside. Tests were run but, no, nothing was medically wrong with him, he was just… small. Little, you could even say. This one was named John Edmund, after Harry's mother's last name, Johansen, as well as his uncle, Inger's brother who had moved to the States after the war and who was the closest thing Harry had to a close relative. Knowing how rare it was for Harry to have a family member who cared about him, Phil was fine handing the naming reins over to him, under the condition that she get to name the next one.

And for a time, it looked like there would be a next one, but the couple were waiting for the twins to grow up a bit before trying for a third. Things were going pretty well in the Little house, a quiet home on the rural outskirts of town that Harry had bought knowing it was far too small for him but also knowing he could get his friends to upsize it for pennies on the dollar. And when the boys of that house were toddlers, things seemed peaceful. Even in an era and area that was heavily conservative and expected fathers to be manly before they were loving, great big Harry had no qualms about being cutesy and playing with his cubs in their crib. It was tragically before either Little John or Baltimore could remember, but Phil swore until the day that Harry kicked them out that he had once been a great father before everything went wrong.

Where everything went wrong was debatable, but it could be said that things started looking grim when the cubs were about three or four, old enough to go out into the world and play with the other kids. Here was the most obvious problem: the smaller twin wasn't catching up. If anything, he was falling further behind. Considering the company bears kept were usually other large mammals with their "bigger is indisputably better" mentality, this was an issue. Harry and Phil would take their sons to parks or let them run around on the lawn after church to interact with the other kids… and those other kids pounced on Johnny almost immediately. Not even just bears or other big animals like that, little dog or wolf or cheetah or buck boys would push him down for the novelty of belittling a grizzly bear. Harry made a concerted effort to teach preschool-age Johnny some self-defense techniques, but they just weren't working; Little John simply didn't have the physical strength or coordination to deflect his attackers. Once in a while, the mean kids' parents would admonish their children where Harry and Philomena could hear them, but when those parents said things like "Bobby! Don't push that bear down, he's younger than you!" when in fact "Bobby" was younger than Johnny, hearing those parents apologize for their kids' actions didn't make them feel much better.

They kept taking Johnny to the pediatrician, multiple pediatricians, who still couldn't find anything clinically wrong with him; Little John had just spun the Wheel of Genetic Fortune and landed on Bankrupt. And he didn't have any developmental issues upstairs, either; the kid wasn't a genius, but neither was Baltimore, and Johnny wasn't any dumber than his brother. It just seemed like Johnny was destined to be a dwarf among giants, and Harry (who still knew nothing of his family's genetic quirk that he and his other son had been exempted from thanks to polar bear genes and phenotypes) found it increasingly taxing to not let his pride waver as a result.

But then this test of his presented an infinitely tougher challenge that the twins' father had never seen coming: Harry's co-workers started making fun of him for his son's small size. And they wouldn't stop.

"Good thing ya got the other'n, because you ain't gettin' yer money's worth with Johnny!" "Shit, Harry, I guess that kid's a write-off; if you want grandkids, you'd best keep Baltimore healthy." "Harry, what's wrong with your sperm that ya put out a kid that tiny?" The bears and bulls and bison and horses and moose and hippos and elephants and rhinos, these size-obsessed meatheads in the construction crew, would probably all say they were just playfully teasing their friend Harry, but by the time the twins were in kindergarten, these jokes were starting to come up literally every single time Harry mentioned his sons. At first, he was afraid to ask them to stop, thinking that would be seriously a bitch move; then he started demanding they stop lest they suffer the wrath of a big angry bear, and his co-workers, unshaken (many being roughly in the neighborhood of his size anyway, if not larger), scoffed and told him to learn how to take a joke like a man, as asking them to stop was seriously a bitch move. Johnny's refusal to grow big and strong was now a legitimate personal problem for his father.

And none of their wisecracks hurt as much as the ones that asked, "Harry, are you SURE that's your son?" Because for a while there, he wasn't. God knows the other cub with his oddly glaucous fur hardly looked like him either. There were indeed a few times when Harry even did interrogate Philomena about the possibility that the boys weren't his, but she always rebutted that he had no evidence of her having another man in her life around the time of conception and Harry always backed off. But soon enough, it would become clear that these two boys were indeed from the Little bloodline: young Baltimore had inherited his grandfather's chronic inability to take things seriously.

The blue one wasn't mischievous or destructive so much as he was just dangerously neglectful and absentminded. It was clear from an early age that he was destined to be a slacker, yearning for a hedonistic lifestyle and wanting for little else. He had to be forced to brush his teeth or wash his paws or take a bath long past the age most kids would start seeing the importance in doing such things. When the kids started school and began receiving homework, he seemed to fundamentally misunderstand why he had to do something he didn't find interesting. They had a lot of trouble getting the cub to keep his clothes on, Balty protesting that they were "unnatural" (this aversion to clothing never did go away, but at least as Baltimore got older he'd eventually stop stripping at the grocer's or getting naked in department stores). Perhaps the most egregious instance of how Baltimore just couldn't bring himself to give a shit about important things was once when he was five, playing alone in the living room while the rest of his family was outside; he was apparently pantomiming a brawl pretending he was a superhero when he bumped a table and knocked off the TV, shattering the screen all over the floor. When this happened, he didn't scream, he didn't cry, he didn't panic - he just walked away. When his family discovered it an hour later and interrogated him about it, he didn't deny it or try to blame it on Little Johnny; he just didn't get what the big deal was. Nor did he understand much more about why he needed to be grounded for this when nobody would be enjoying themselves when he was grounded. Let's just say Johnny wasn't the only one taken to a psychiatrist to make sure he wasn't mentally handicapped.

Oh, and lest we forget: whenever the other kids beat Johnny up, Baltimore would always join them, an otherwise-friendly smile invariably plastered on his face. He had always thought it was merely play-fighting and never understood why his brother wasn't having an absolute ball. The blue-gray cub was proving to be just like his grandfather: he wanted to live for fun, and if he wasn't having fun, he just wasn't living.

The situation with Johnny's stunted growth was disheartening enough for Harry, and it did make him feel bad about himself as a father, but it hadn't yet been something that would, in and of itself, make Harry angry. The boys on the building team roasting the shit out of him for it would infuriate him of course, but looking at Little John seem to get smaller and smaller every day compared to his brother didn't make Harry feel hostility towards his brown-furred son, it just made Harry feel depressed.

But you know what made him want to rip the pipes out of the goddamn walls, though? When his other son started displaying behavioral issues that reminded Harry of his father. Harry could have been strong and tried his best to protect his dwarfish son from this cruel world, but his end of the deal was supposed to be that Baltimore would grow into the big, strong man of a son he wanted, the one he could bond with bear-to-bear and have to become his protégé. Not to suggest he'd love Little John any less, but Balty was gonna be the one Harry could mold in his own image. So imagine his disappointment when the son he was hoping would become his legacy instead starts taking the image of his own neglectful father.

And the guys at work didn't make it any easier. They'd quip that Harry had two sons, a midget and a retard. Harry didn't want to be somebody who cared what other people thought - heaven knows his father's success came largely from his drive to unapologetically be himself - but he had to see these people every day and they were tangibly treating him differently as a consequence of how they saw him as a man. And on a dangerous construction site, you don't want to work without the feeling that your co-workers have your back; they still had his back, but it seemed at a certain point almost out of pity for how much his family sucked, and as they'd have his back, they'd still laugh at his face. This, we believe, was the genesis of Harry's anger issues.

And then, a new challenger appeared: hard narcotics.

It began when the boys had just started first grade, a few weeks before their seventh birthdays. Harry and his company were working on housing for small mammals, homes with five-foot ceilings not unlike the one Robin grew up in. A buck had the genius thought to mention this would be the perfect size for Harry's one son, if not a little too large. Harry did his best to ignore him, but apparently the deer thought it was a brilliant joke and wouldn't stop repeating it - until he modified it and said no, Johnny would need a bear-sized house because Baltimore would inevitably be living with him because there was no way that fuck-up was ever gonna be able to hold down a job.

At this point, other workers were telling the buck to knock it off; it was getting annoying and it was distracting from work. They say that ignoring a bully or heckler will get them to grow bored and tire of their antics, but this deer was a paragon of the virtue of persistence: he was gonna get a reaction out of Harry one way or another.

This conflict ended with Harry taking a circular saw and lopping off a hunk of the deer's antler. The buck got a reaction, alright.

Luckily a foreman saw the whole thing and vouched to the boss that there hadn't seemed to be any way of getting the fuck to shut the buck up shy of physical confrontation… but this foreman couldn't deny that Harry hadn't even tried to diffuse the situation with words before resorting to violence, and furthermore the foreman himself was on the hook for not intervening sooner. The boss did get the point that the deer was cruising for a bruising, but… really, Harry? A circular saw, are you fucking insane? The deer was discouraged from pressing criminal charges, but Harry was gonna have to sit out of work for a few months without pay. This was the conservative South, so there was no worker's union to get him a paycheck in the interim, but at least he'd have a job to come back to come the new year. Still, money found itself tight that winter, and to get some money back, Harry and Phil sold off part of their lot of land as farmland, hence the weird modern property footprint with a barn in their backyard that they don't own.

It was also during this rough period that Harry hit one of his kids for the first time; it was Baltimore. Interestingly, both of the boys were misbehaving, and even more depressingly, it was during a rare moment of the brothers both legitimately having fun together. In an effort to save money on the water bill, Harry and Philomena were having the cubs not only switch from showers to baths but also bathe together. If the twins were old enough to clean themselves without parental supervision, they were old enough to understand why they had to clean themselves together. This particular night, however, it quickly got messy. First it was a breath-holding competition that got water everywhere when they hurriedly lifted their heads out of the water, then it was a splash fight, and then (in one of the exceedingly few instances of young Little John getting a kick out of being tiny) Baltimore was straight-up holding his diminutive brother and dunking him in and out of the water before shifting to dropping him in to do mini cannonballs. The fact that they knew how to operate the faucet to replenish the water they'd displaced was only encouraging them.

The cubs were laughing their asses off and having the time of their lives when the door burst open. Harry - already at his wit's end after a tense conversation about money with Philomena - had heard all the hootin' and hollerin' and splish-splash splashing going on in the bathroom and knew he had to investigate. He was able to assess the situation in the soaked bathroom in the split second before he made the mistake of shifting his weight and slipping in the enormous puddle on the floor, bashing his head in the wall and leaving a mild but noticeable dent. As their mom rushed in to see what had just caused the loud bang, the boys asked their dad if he was okay, and Baltimore - the one who wasn't afraid of consequences - stepped out of the tub to check on him. Harry proceeded to smack Balty damn near back into the bathtub, much to Johnny's horror and Phil's protest. And Harry locked eyes with Little John, seriously debating giving him a whupping too, but ultimately deciding he was too small to be able to handle corporal punishment.

Sometime after Christmas, Harry returned to work, where those smaller than him were afraid of him and those larger than him hated him. One elephant who dwarfed Harry in size loudly said in front of everybody that first day back that it was fucked up enough that they were letting him still work there, but that a madman like Harry really shouldn't be raising children. The work environment didn't get any less tense than that, and Harry started working angry - and you do not want to be under the spell of extreme emotions when operating heavy machinery. Perhaps you can see where we're going with this.

If tall people really do have an advantage in society from our animalistic brains being in awe of their stature, they get their karma with back and knee problems. More height means a lot more pressure on the structures that keep you upright. Being even bigger than most big bears, Harry had already had a history of frequent back aches, so he was pushing his luck when he was angrily moving some steel beams. There isn't even much of a story behind it, he just had his mind clouded with furious thoughts when he made the fateful decision to lift with his back. Legend has it they heard him screaming all the way in Chattanooga.

He was off work again on disability, but nothing hard had been diagnosed yet. Nevertheless, he was in a state of near-constant pain that, as you can imagine, made him really live up to the image of a grumpy old bear. To soothe the pain somewhat, he turned to the bottle - multiple bottles, actually. His go-to liquor was Tennessee's own Jack Daniel's, but he never did meet a beer he didn't like, being especially fond of the brew those Clydesdales in St. Louis made, and he was in the South so he totally knew a guy or two that made their own moonshine.

He also started getting less bashful about beating his children. Johnny still remembered the first time he got it: he'd tripped down a few stairs and started crying, complaining that it hurt. He wasn't actually injured, just banged up, so Harry, his own body screaming in agony, decided to show his son what real pain felt like.

Around this time, in a desperate attempt to get her husband to mellow out, Philomena actually asked her husband if he wanted to try for another cub; if he didn't like the first two, maybe he'd like to try his luck on another. No, Harry said, seeing how the first two turned out, he didn't like his chances.

The twins were in the third grade when Harry went to a doctor to specifically tell them that work wasn't getting any easier and the pain still hadn't gone away after almost two years. His back pain was officially diagnosed as chronic and he was prescribed OxyContin for his troubles.

He was also fired from his job on the basis that he now officially had a disability that directly impeded him from doing his duties. But no matter; he could go on disability and get some money from the government, boosted by the fact that he had three dependents on his taxes. Harry never held a real job again; he just hung around the house and waited for the pills to do their trick.

Philomena would wind up taking a job as a preschool teacher to get the family some more money; by all accounts, she started off as a pretty sweet lady who could sometimes get angry if a kid really misbehaved, but who over the years became progressively harsher to the point where some parents tried to say she shouldn't be allowed to teach four- and five-year-olds (their efforts failed - thankfully, as Phil didn't have the permits to teach older kids). But Philomena was aware that she was taking her frustrations with her deteriorating home life out on her students, and she hated herself for that… but she just couldn't stop herself.

Hey, at least those kids weren't home alone with Harry like Johnny and Baltimore often were. He would go in waves of hitting them twice as hard for the littlest shit when he was stone-cold sober to being too doped up to lift a finger at what they did. And he was doped up often because he was clearly taking too many of his pills too often, and everybody could tell, but Harry channelled some of his father's charm and got his physician to turn a blind eye and keep refilling the orders earlier and earlier every time.

And Harry did indeed have a few close calls with death from taking too many pills, especially when he dared to mix them with alcohol, which is a big medicinal no-no. It wasn't too frequent, but Johnny and Baltimore had to call an ambulance for their father a couple times each, to the point that Little John distinctly remembers once when they were in middle school when they saw their father slipping in and out of consciousness and Balty looked down at Johnny and simply said "It's your turn to call."

But the pills just couldn't kill Harry. He was just too big and strong for them - no, seriously, any one of those overdoses would have killed a smaller mammal, but because he weighed so much, Harry barely survived them all. Even if he were the fully-grown size of his father or his sons, Harry would have been a goner.

No, he hung in there, a task made easier when he eventually (mostly) quit drinking when the boys were in high school (his wife forced him to go to AA and Harry obliged because he was bored more than anything else). So instead of dying, he kept chugging along in a life where he sat on the couch, watched M*A*S*H, and ran out the clock on the rest of his life, contributing nothing to his family besides making them feel small, stupid, angry, sad, and miserable - and sometimes he did some light handiwork around the house, to be fair. He at least claimed to still love Philomena, but he sure had a funny way of showing it, calling her Mom as his progressive shiftlessness made him even more infantile and never doing anything to make her feel like a beloved wife - and not to mention how every time he got into a conflict with his sons and she'd defend them, he'd explicitly tell her that he demanded she side with him, as, quote, "You married me, you didn't marry them!"

What else needs to be said about the rest of Johnny's memory of his father? Nothing much; the guy just got worse. How did he get worse? Well, just imagine someone in his position getting worse; whatever you imagined him devolving into, he probably did. The years went on, the boys grew up, and Harry just got increasingly intolerant of their antics. Little John seemed to be mocking him by being a high schooler who still looked like a child half his age, and when Johnny came home from school one day after a very confusing Sex Ed class and reluctantly asked what an erection was like since he'd never experienced one (Johnny had tried asking his brother first, but Baltimore just couldn't stop laughing that Little John had never even gotten a hard-on yet), a strung-out Harry just threw his arms up and yelled that Johnny would never be an adult. As for Balty, he soon discovered the legend of his grandfather, adopting his old jazzy nickname Baloo and trying to bring his energy and persona to the 1980s; Harry found this to be a bunch of poppycock and did everything to tarnish his son's attempts at emulating his father, even smashing a couple old, rare, out-of-print albums of Hank's that Baloo had somehow acquired and burning a letter he found his son trying to write his father (for what it's worth, Baloo wasn't even sure he had his grandfather's address right, so that may have been a moot point). It even got to the point that Little Johnny found himself rooting for his twin brother to get even bigger quicker, as the brothers had agreed that once Baloo was big enough to knock their dad out, he'd do it and they'd finally stand up to him; alas, half-polar-bear Harry was an outlier and even Big Baloo never stood a chance of ever being big enough to take on their father mano a mano.

Is it evil to wish death upon an evil man? Or not even an evil man, but at least a man who doesn't even attempt to make the world a better place and actively makes it a little worse every day? A man who's clearly given up on himself and everyone he once cared about? Someone who has no interest in getting better? If you do think Little John - and Baloo, and Philomena - are evil for silently spending all those years wishing Harry would just overdose for good one day and stop wasting their time, then so be it, that's within your rights. But none of the three of them would care. For they all had a secret theory: Harry wanted to die, too. He hated everything that had become of his life and didn't enjoy it anymore. He resented having one son who would never be a hard-working and honorable man, another son who would never even be a man, and a wife who routinely sold him out to favor those two losers over him. He wanted out. But he was too weak to do it; he was too weak to admit that he'd failed to be a better man than his own father.

One of the worst ODs Harry suffered occurred when the twins were sixteen, right around the time Little John was starting to wonder just how true the stuff they preached in church was. Johnny and Baloo got home from school to find their dad comatose again; Phil had been at work and nobody had been home, and it was almost already too late. After discussing it for a few minutes, the brothers called an ambulance. When Harry had been stabilized in the hospital, a doctor revealed to him and Philomena (who later told their children) that there had been a few minutes there during his transit to the hospital that Harry had been medically dead before they revived him. Harry wasn't surprised; he told his family that while he was unconscious, he felt a strange feeling of… peace. He'd seen a great white light as he felt himself being… cradled by some benevolent force that was greater than he was, assuring him that he would be alright. For the first time, this big bear felt small and vulnerable - and he couldn't have felt more comfortable.

His family just nodded along, wondering how to process that. They weren't all quite as religious as him.

Now, Little John wouldn't describe himself as an "atheist" - mostly because he doesn't care enough about the God question to have a strong feeling about it one way or another, and c'mon, he's from a part of the country where atheist is a four-letter word. But one thing's for sure: if Harry really was held tight in the arms of an angel that day, and there really was no scientific explanation for what Harry had felt besides mercy from the agent of a loving God, then on that day Johnny decided that if God were to let a man like his father into heaven, Johnny would have no problem taking the elevator down when it was his time to go.

Eventually, when the twins graduated high school, Harry kicked them out of the house days later, citing they were adults and he and Phil shouldn't have to support them anymore - not that they could afford to anyway. The cubs didn't have any sort of plan, but they both knew where they weren't wanted and took off; Baloo offered to stick with Johnny, but Little John wanted to be away from his brother for the first time in his life. The first few months in Nottingham were rough as he stayed in dangerous environs with sketchy characters, but eventually he got his feet somewhat steady as he found a group of strangers to be his first permanent roommates (they thought the idea of having a clinically-diagnosed midget as a roommate was cool). Still full of resentment toward his home life, he consciously avoided contacting his brother or his mother for a while, and then just sort of never got around to doing it. So when he gave Robin this rundown, he hadn't yet heard the news that the miserable old fuck finally croaked back in 2001 at the age of sixty-six; when he did discover this, he was flabbergasted at how the guy even made it that long. Took him long enough.

But whatever happened to the bear who started it all, Hank Little, Sr.? Johnny actually did know a little about him being what Harry had told him, from what he'd read online on the rare occasion the Merry Men would find themselves in the library; long story short, Hank lived happily ever after. He made it all the way to ninety-one in 1995, finishing up with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And apparently sometime after divorcing Inger, Hank grew up. He married another actress and started a family, this time sticking with it and having two daughters he loved, and when the studio his A-list wife was contracted to demanded she put her work before her family, she walked out of the lot and never came back; thus was how much she believed in her life with him.

Johnny also found something alluding to an interview Hank did sometime around when The Tome of the Tropical Forest came out in 1967; the actual interview was lost, but this source summarized it well enough. Now, modern reanalysis of Tome agrees that it's actually a rather conservative movie; the plot of a sloth bear and a black jaguar stumbling upon a recently-orphaned English deer boy in the Indian jungle and helping find him a new colony of Brits to adopt him despite his protests to go back and live with the fun bear's family has a very "know your place" feel to it, and Hank's character's song "That's All Ya' Need" really does seem to encourage the listener to become content with making do with what they have rather than striving for more (not to mention the way that Louis Primate's character was clearly jealous of the English imperialists and their advanced technology, clearly seeming to regard the colonizers as superior to his own people). But there's also a debate about who the main character is supposed to be; of course on paper it's the deer, as he is in the original Kitling novel, and Hank's character was only supposed to appear in one scene before the producers fell in love with him and gave him a much more prominent role. But give him a more prominent role they did, and now many would argue he's the main character. Not just because the sloth bear (who's basically Hank Little in an ink suit) was by far the film's most popular character, but because his character has arguably the best arc. The colonist buck kid doesn't want to go back and live with strangers of his own nationality over Hank Little's fun-loving slacker who made him feel better after losing his parents, and only changes his mind when he gets the hots for a doe girl he happens upon; Hank's bear, meanwhile, also wants to adopt the deer boy as his cub, but at the panther's urging, he eventually comes to understand the importance of the kid growing up with people like him and agrees to find him some - in other words, he learns to be a responsible adult. Ergo, his character has the most important story, and the kid is merely a vehicle for it.

And Hank espoused that theory. Apparently in that 1967 interview, Hank mentioned that his character's arc reminded him a lot of himself when he married his second wife and learned to be a family man to his wife and daughters, a lesson he was glad to have learned because he couldn't have been happier with them. One has to wonder if he was thinking about Inger and little Hank, Jr., as he said that.

-IllI-

Johnny wasn't openly weeping or anything as he wrapped his story up, but even in the scant light seeping through the branches, anyone could see that his eyes were glassed over as he stared somewhere to Robin's left.

The fox was speechless. Johnny had historically been a lot more open about his past, so Robin already knew a lot of that, but hearing the full context in one cohesive narrative… man, that was something else. "My God, Johnny, I'm… sorry you had to go through all that…" It seemed like the right thing to say.

And Little John chuckled and scoffed. "Oh, don't be sorry for me!" It sounded like he too now had a lump in his throat. "Pfft… be sorry for him! He's the one whose life fell apart!" He shook his head, still not returning eye contact with Robin save for a few quick glances. "He wanted to love me… he wanted to love us… but he was just too goddamn weak! Heh, heh… stupid dumb son of a bitch…"

"He does indeed sound like a pitiful man."

"Yeah… and I don't know how far I could ever get in life knowing I come from a pitiful guy like him -"

"Johnny, you're already twice the man your father was. And I know you're just going to keep getting better." Robin had to admit, Little John wasn't nearly as self-pitying as his father seemed to be. Not by a long shot.

The bear was still staring off into space, quiet for a moment, before he opened up his arms and gestured for the fox to hop over to his branch. "Alright. Bro hug. We're doing this," he commanded. "Right now. Let's go."

Robin couldn't say no to that. He stood from his branch and carefully made his way over the gap between the trees; he'd hate to ruin the moment by falling and breaking another limb. He made it on to Johnny's branch - if it was sturdy enough to support a grizzly bear, he trusted it - and made his way toward the smaller branch right next to Little John's. The only way to get there from here was to physically walk or climb over Johnny's belly and chest, but they'd been in that scenario hundreds of times before and Little John was used to it.

"Aw, get in here, little guy!" the bear said, pulling the fox down into an embrace when he'd reached his ribcage. Robin let Johnny hug him like a plush toy and returned it as best he could.

And for a moment, they were silent again.

"...Thanks for giving me a place that finally feels like home," Johnny finally said. "So this is what it feels like. Gotta say, I'm digging this whole home, 'sense of belonging and being cared about' thing."

"Well, it would never have been a home had you not said yes to my mad little plan," replied Robin. "And thank you for finally making me feel at home in this strange land."

"Hey, glad to have ya." Johnny took a few more deep breaths as he processed his past. "...He did love me… until he was too goddamn weak to love himself…" He gave Robin some pats on the back to let him know he was good to conclude the hug whenever his friend was ready.

"Which is why it alarms me when you speak so lowly of yourself, old boy," answered Robin as he shimmied over into the adjacent branch. And also because it's often counterproductive when you do, but we don't need to discuss that right now. Honestly, moments like these really did get Robin thinking that Little John truly did overcome so much more than he had, and that on paper, Johnny should deserve to be the foremost hero here - but also that this wasn't a storybook, this was reality, and the horrific things that people like Johnny have to overcome often render them too broken to be a hero.

"Heh… happy fuckin' Father's Day!" Little John bellowed, then seemed lost in thought for a moment before grabbing his banjo again and playing around with it. "This is WJET The Jet; it's not 'Bad, Bad Leroy Brown', but he does have a name! Ahem… Like the piiine trees liiining the wiiinding roooad… I gooot a naaaaame… I gooot a naaaaame… like the… um… yadda, yadda, I carry it with me like my daddy did, but I'm livin' the dream that he kept hid, that's the important part, highway, highway, movin' ahead so life won't pass me by. Fuck it, sorry Jim, I'm just not feeling it right now." He looked kind of annoyed as he put the banjo back down on the empty branch to his right, but after a moment, a chipper smile materialized on his face as he clapped his paws together. "Alright! Your turn!"

"My turn?"

"To share your story."

"What story?"

"It's Father's Day, dumbass! I just told you all about my dad, now you fill in the blanks with yours. I know there's a Robert who I'm pretty sure is the shitty biological one, but then there's a… an Oliver? Do I have that right? Is he the cool stepdad?"

"Oh, Johnny," Robin chuckled coyly, "I'm not that good a storyteller!"

"Says the guy who so thoroughly convinced a woman that you were a grieving mother that she dropped twenty grand on us on the spot."

"Oh, you did most of the storytelling there, Johnny! What I did was acting! And improvising! Trying to compile real events into a linear, cohesive story on the fly with no practice is an entirely different animal!"

"I've seen you tell real-life stories about your badass real-life adventures and people always love them. They find them, and I quote, 'charming.'"

"Yeah, that's always in relaxed social situations where there's no pressure for me to get all the details actually, factually right - and where there's an understanding that I probably won't get all the details actually, factually right! But now you've just given me a story where it sounds like everything was one hundred percent accurate with no stone left unturned and… Johnny, I'd feel terrible if you told me all that and I gave you something in return riddled with inadvertent half-truths and misremembered plot points just because that's the casual way I'm used to telling stories."

Little John just rolled his eyes, still smirking in amusement. "Well for one, fuck you, you're good at everything you try and you make the rest of us feel worse by comparison for it, and two, ya ain't gonna get better unless you try, now are ya!?"

The fox mulled it over for a second. "I suppose I could, er… I guess I could tell you in more detail why my biological father is no one I'm proud to call a father -"

"Yeah, especially after you mentioned he bought your mom a house to put the two of you away! You gotta elaborate on that! And what about Oliver? What made him cool?"

"Oh, well… after you just told me everything about why your dad sucked, Johnny, I'd hate to seem like I'm rubbing it in with how I lucked into a decent stepfather."

"Oh, pshaw, I can handle it! Besides, I wanna know, what is a good father like? I feel like that might be important information to know on the off chance I ever have a kid one day! Or even just to inform someone else who might have one."

Robin couldn't disagree with that. "If we should both be so lucky…" Strangely, he'd almost forgotten that weird lump in his throat until this juncture of the conversation seemed to bring it back to the forefront of his mind. "I must warn you, I haven't rehearsed this, so I'll be stumbling over my words -"

"That's perfectly alright. If anything, it's better that way because you'll be talking like a real person and not a robot programmed to always speak eloquently a hundred percent of the time."

The Englishman took a deep breath through his nose as he pondered where he ought to start.

-IllI-

Between you and I, Dear Reader, much of what Robin told Little John that day would have been review to us, things we've already discussed regarding Robin's relationship with his biological father and namesake. But there was still plenty in there that was news to me and surely will be to you, plenty that Robin had never told anybody before, not even Marian, and plenty still that not even Robin himself was one hundred percent sure of, such as what exactly was going through the head of the young housekeeper from Manchester when she fell for the tall, wealthy tod from Sheffield.

When Brianna accepted the role, she later told her beloved son, the thought had actually crossed her mind that there was some outside chance that this would be like the beginning of a Victorian romance novel. A young Englishwoman goes out into the world to seek her fortune, accepts a position as the maid of a very eligible bachelor, and falls in love with her new employer, just as Jane Austen intended. But it was more of a funny, fanciful thought that there was a slim, non-zero possibility of it actually happening, fully aware that in all likelihood her boss would either be a right arsehole or be completely disinterested and keep as distant as possible. So imagine her surprise when it turned out she was right the first time.

And people think Robin is charming - they ain't met Robert Scarlett. Not unlike his illegitimate son, his great stature had always caught eyes in vulpine society, so when everyone is looking at you, you'd better learn yourself some class and charisma. So while much like Robin you could argue his magnetic personality was probably more learned than intuitive, even more so than with Robin people would swear this guy was born to be the smoothest sucker around. And not to mention… let's just say that if there were "ladies' magazines" full of male models in 1960s Great Britain, he probably could have made his son's photoshoot look completely unimpressive by comparison. The guy made women's hearts melt, and Brianna had absolutely no reason to believe Robert wasn't the perfect man.

The fact that he was loaded didn't hurt, either. He made his backstory very clear: he did indeed come from some money, but he built on top of that into what was several times more than what his father had started him out with. He accomplished this by originally using his father's connections to get into the coal board, but from there he worked his way up the ladder, then hopped over to steel shortly before he met Brianna. This was the story he told everyone and he had the receipts to prove it, but the way he spoke, you'd believe every word anyway. You'd even believe him when he'd tell you that the Scarlett line had once been nobles with their own earldom (Huntingdon, if Robin recalled correctly?) before some ancestor proved to not be a particularly good sneak of a fox and got the family disinherited, and you'd be rooting for him when he told you that it was his mission to get his lineage back into the nobility. With all these things going for him, Brianna had to wonder what Mister Long, Red, and Handsome wanted with a petite little lady like her.

His reasoning was simple: he thought she was pretty. He made no claims to immediately be struck by her as a person, but he said plainly that he thought she looked marvelous and should like to get to know her better. Brianna was small, but she wasn't a little girl; she knew better than to pass up an opportunity like this.

At first, she was a bit intimidated by him, but not by anything malicious he was doing. Just the sheer size and scope of the man was a little much for her; he was a foot and a half taller than her and had more muscle and a deeper voice than any fox should; she would have wondered if he was actually from some other species had she not detected a distinct vulpine musk coming off of him - and God, did she love it. At one point she even asked him plainly why a tod as large as himself was interested in a dainty little vixen like her; he replied that vixens his own size were hard to find, but furthermore there were many times in his youth when the other fox kits would mock him for being a giant freak - except, notably, the particularly small foxes, and especially the girls, who seemed to have a level of empathy about physically not fitting in that the normal-sized specimens didn't seem to get. My oh my, how can a backstory tug at her heartstrings while still flattering her so?

They had fun together. He was a tad older than her, but it was a bona fide case of young love. If there was a place in England, Scotland, or Wales where a vivacious couple could have a good time, they went there; dinner, dancing, theatre, or sometimes just a day spent by the sea. It seemed like every weekend he was whisking her away to somewhere increasingly farther away and more exotic than the last: first London, then Paris, then Barcelona, then Rome, then Athens. It actually got to the point that Brianna had to ask Robert to go easy on the constant excursions because it was leaving her without time to run her own errands, let alone the ones he was paying her to do for him. And speaking of her employment, her work days didn't even feel like work as he encouraged her to take it easy with the cleaning and upkeep; even if she didn't finish her day's work, the house would still be there tomorrow. And my, what a big house it was amid the wealthy southwest outskirts of the city; a shame he was so lonely living there by himself, as the house sure could use a few more occupants, ahem.

She was afraid she was being foolish for believing that this fairytale romance could ever possibly be real; but she was downright terrified of being too skeptical and letting true love slip away if it was indeed real. So when he proposed to her on Valentine's Day, 1973, and she was tasked with taking a risk either way, she took the route that she thought would beget less regret if things should go wrong. And so strong was Robert's power of persuasion that she also said yes despite him not actually having an engagement ring to give her, him claiming that their love was so strong that they were beyond the need for material objects to prove it to others, her buying every word of it. He also convinced her to say yes to consummating their marriage on the spot so as to not delay the nine-month process that was starting a family.

Around summertime, Brianna started getting worried. Robert was dragging his feet with the wedding; she wanted to have it done a comfortable distance before the kit popped out, but Robert was insisting on being a perfectionist so as to give his love the perfect wedding she deserved, frequently musing about how even the simplest weddings often took years to plan, and nine months simply wasn't enough time. Brianna even suggested that they at least go get legally recognized as a married couple at a courthouse and then just have the fancy ceremony, y'know, whenever, but Robert said that simply would not do.

And the showings of affection trailed off as well. Robert said that a pregnant woman shouldn't be stressing her body by imbibing at parties or constantly travelling or dancing the night away - which, okay, fair point, but he was still having her do his cooking and cleaning while he was at the office (and paying her for the privilege of doing so). And it wasn't like they couldn't still do easy activities like, you know, go to a show or something, she argued; so fine, they went to a show. A small-scale semi-professional production of A Midsummer Night's Dream up in Leeds; Robert knew a guy who could get them in for free. This same mysterious guy Robert knew also let the two of them meet the cast after the performance; swell fellows they were. Brianna got along particularly well with the bloke who played Nick Bottom; another tod, his name was Oliver, seemed a friendly chap. You had to love how excited this guy was for even having performed such a relatively minor role.

Oh, and did I completely forget to mention that she never even formally moved in with him? Yikes, my bad. But yeah, in retrospect, that was another red flag. So anyways, Brianna was sitting at home one night (which was not at Robert's house), feeling her kit kicking as an October rainstorm drizzled outside, when she got the call.

Robert sounded distraught and ashamed, and he had good reason to. He'd been unfaithful and been with another vixen… aaand that was a week or two ago and now she'd missed her period. Sooooo yeah, sorry Brianna, wedding's off, Robert had to marry this woman instead.

I trust you can imagine, Dear Reader, the flurry of emotions going through the mind of a woman whose life had just been destroyed in the span of a few sentences; the fear, the sorrow, the confusion, the anger. But the anger eventually stood head and shoulders above the others when Robert dared to explain his decision: he had to leave her for this woman because she came from money.

Brianna initially interpreted this as him being greedy and marrying her for her family's cash. Not so, Robert insisted: he'd meant that because her family was rich and powerful, to choose Brianna over her would cause a scandal of unspeakable proportions, resulting in Robert probably losing his job and any prospects of getting a similarly prestigious and well-paying one, and ultimately end with he, Brianna, Susan, and both women's children being miserable. What would be the best for everyone, Robert posited, would be if he went along with this woman to keep his money and status and then just provided for Brianna and her baby under the table.

She didn't know if he was genuinely destroyed by his own actions or if he was an actual, clinical sociopath who was damned good at faking it, but Robert genuinely didn't sound like he was at peace with this turn of events any more than Brianna was. He told her that he knew he'd cocked up as bad as he possibly could have, and he hated himself for it, and while he freely admitted that he was too much of a bloody idiot to show it… he swore he still loved her, and he wanted to see that kit grow up to be healthy and happy.

Whether or not Brianna believed his apology and his vow of love would fluctuate regularly over the years, and would often depend on her mood.

As Brianna spent the next month fretting about her future, she fretted still about what kind of negative effect all that stress could be having on her unborn child. Said child was due to introduce himself on the Sixteenth, but apparently he was just as anxious to meet his mother as she was to meet him, so he came a-knocking a bit early. And when he did arrive in this world after hardly twenty minutes of labor at nine-oh-one in the morning on the Eighth of November, all the doctors and nurses had to wonder whether the immense infant had been in a rush to get out because he'd been cramped in there.

Not to say the child was record-breakingly gigantic (at least not yet, he wasn't), but he was most assuredly in the upper percentiles of length and birth weight for a fox kit. Nothing too shocking considering the size of his father, but Brianna couldn't lie, that worried her. And as she was checking that he had all his fingers and toes, she couldn't help but notice that, barring a few individual white or black fur follicles you could count on two hands, his tail was completely red with no discoloration like nearly every other fox's extremities would have. Same with his arms, same with his legs, same with his ears. Take the milky-white splash of fur going down his frontside out of the equation, and the lad was a solid scarlet straight up and down - just like his father.

Part of the agreement she'd made with Robert - which she had virtually no say in and only agreed to when she came around on the idea that they'd all be screwed if Susan's family screwed Robert - was that she'd have to play dumb about who the child's father was. If she so chose, to preserve her integrity as a woman and not give the impression that she slept around with so many men that she'd lost track, she could go as far as to say she knew exactly who the father was but that he was a bastard who'd abandoned her or even a dangerous man she'd needed to get away from, and now she just didn't want to talk about it; Robert didn't care as long as she didn't say the name and gave no hints as to his identity.

But one look at this lad and if you knew Robert Scarlett, you'd know immediately who the boy's father was. Part of the deal was not to betray any hints, but the boy himself was an enormous hint, and Scarlett was giving her vague, ominous warnings about what would happen if his identity was compromised, so Brianna knew immediately she'd have no option but to tell people that no, there were so many options of men she'd been with that she couldn't even guess which tod sired her kit. It would be tough, but she would do it for her son; that's the kind of woman she strove to be.

And speaking of names, what on earth was she going to name this child? They'd had a name picked out, but she couldn't use it now because it would have made everything too obvious… wouldn't it? Well, then again, it was an extremely common pair of names, few knew Robert's middle name anyway and Brianna had already had a nickname ready to go for the first name. And with no other names in her head and the nurses interrogating her to pick something already (man, bedside manner really sucked until, like, the last few decades, didn't it?), Brianna went for it. The lad's birth certificate would read Robert Edward Hood, son of Brianna Colleen Hood and Father Unknown.

And Brianna was fine with the name. For one thing, Robert never forbade her from giving him that name anyway, and if anything it might serve as a nice little passive-aggressive reminder to him of the child he was forced ("forced") to abandon as a consequence of his own stupid actions. And furthermore, Brianna still believed that although it ended badly, the love she'd shared with Robert Scarlett was real while it lasted, and sad as it was to say, as a single mother with few prospects, she didn't know if she'd ever love anyone else the way she'd loved him.

Of course, though not in quite the same way, there was one man she would love more than Robert Scarlett, a man she would love far more than she could ever love anyone else in the world; that was the handsome young man she held in her arms for the first time that foggy November day. Anything she needed to do to keep her son safe, she would do it without question, no matter what kind of an evil man he may have come from. Oh, and if anybody were to ask, little Robert Edward wasn't red like a fox from the Scarlett clan, he was red like a lovely little bird singing beautifully in the trees. And he would be called Robin.

(And now, Dear Reader, a brief interlude as Little John grabbed his banjo and sang the lines "And he shall be Robbbbb-iiiiin! Robbbb-iii-iiiiin! Heeeeeee shaaaaaaall beeeee Robbbbbbb-iiiiiiin!" while playing to the tune of an early 1970s song by an Englishman also named John, the namesake fox chuckling lightly as the bear performed for him.)

If it sounded weird referring to the newborn baby as a young man, please do recall just how cartoonishly quickly the boy came to take the size and shape of a man. Well, there was some good news: Robert Scarlett eased off greatly on how strictly he expected Brianna to keep his identity as Robin's father a secret once he realized there was basically no secret to keep; soon enough, to anybody who knew the three of them, it was just an open secret better left unsaid.

Like Oliver Chase, the actor from the play up in Leeds. He was one of those people who could see the subtext of the situation from space. And why wouldn't he have? He and Brianna had kept in touch and he quickly became her closest confidante about how ridiculous her life was becoming. When she needed to complain to someone about how it was difficult enough raising a boy through his Terrible Twos but an absolutely ridiculous task when the bloody toddler was already bigger and taller than her, Oliver was always there to lend an ear, never admonishing her for bemoaning her plight, and always ready with a compliment about how strong a woman she was for not having given up yet. He was exactly the friend Brianna needed when she needed it, and she could never thank him enough. If anything, she might have found herself needing to push her luck and ask for still more out of him.

One day Brianna mentioned that Robert had offered, again, to hire a nanny for her in order to lighten the load a little, and while it was nice (and arguably morally obligatory) of him to offer, it seemed ludicrous to her that he seemed to think that one of these days she'd say yes. She didn't want a strange woman in her house raising her son for her, the boy growing more attached to the nanny than to his own mum; she just wanted to raise her son with an equal partner. Because what this really boiled down to was that Brianna just wanted a happy family; she wanted a happy marriage to a happy husband with happy children just like she'd always dreamed of having. Because don't get her wrong, as frustrating as it could be when Robin legitimately suffocated her with his hugs, or came into her room at the crack of dawn and jumped on her bed with enough force to shake her out and onto the floor, or required her to slap an adult-sized nappy on him every time they went out in public because neither of them were comfortable with him using a public men's toilet alone at his age nor a public women's toilet with her at his size, Brianna was still grateful to have at least one happy, healthy, handsome son. But it just didn't feel right to have one without the rest, and the idea that she would never get a loving husband and a stable family when it seemed like a personal failure as a woman not to get those things… it just ate away at her soul.

Oliver was exactly the right bloke to tell this to. One of the chief things they bonded over was their shared desire to one day have a happy family and their shared worry that it just wasn't in the cards for either of them. He was actually a decent bit older and had just turned forty-two that spring, and as he put it, he didn't think the present state of the world would allow for his perfect idea of an ideal family, so despite his usually upbeat demeanor, he was arguably more worried about it than she was - hey, at least she had a kid. This was most assuredly something they had in common.

At this point, the solution here might seem obvious to us. One problem, though: Brianna and Oliver simply weren't into each other like that. And it wasn't that he was too old for her or she was too young for him or that anybody was too ugly or had an unattractive personality, it was just… you know, they just weren't each other's type. And there was nothing wrong with that, but the fact remained that from the moment they met, neither of them could confess to even a moment of physical or romantic attraction to the other - platonic attraction, absolutely, but they knew they'd be happier married to other people. Just a preference thing, no offense intended or taken.

But just to say… Brianna would never claim that Oliver was as endlessly and effortlessly charming as a guy like Robert; if anything, Oliver could be kind of a dork sometimes - perhaps charmingly dorky if you could be charmed by such a thing, but dorky nonetheless. And yet he just had such a good attitude. Oliver was so friendly and kind and optimistic and self-assured - he was not merely nice, but actively good. Big strong Robert gave the vibe of being a protector in the face of danger, but Oliver was the kind of guy who you could just tell he sought to go out and do good in the world and prevent that danger from ever happening in the first place; Ollie might not look like a sexy badass as he was doing it, but he'd do it, and if you were a mature woman, you'd respect him for it anyway, no matter how dorky he looked. Oliver clearly tried to be an active force for good - you couldn't describe Robert Scarlett that way. And Brianna had to admit, as much as Robert was the more attractive option on the outside, if she was to make a level-headed decision as a mother about who she wanted to be a role model for her son, she'd pick Oliver, every single day of the week. And realizing that was what gave Brianna the courage to go ahead and pitch her mad idea to him anyway.

He thought it was a brilliant plan.

Oh, hush, Robert, it does not take an entire year to plan a decent wedding. True, it was a small, quiet affair (Brianna had begrudgingly attended Robert and Susan's wedding, quietly taking a place in the back the whole time, so Robert submitted himself to do the same at Brianna and Oliver's), and many in attendance knew what was up about this being a marriage for appearances, but all in all, it was a wonderful day. And after exchanging rings, the first thing Oliver did when he had a moment alone with their three-and-a-half year old ring boy - now eye-level with Oliver, if not a tiny bit taller, and as per his most recent of many frequent visits to the pediatrician's, at least a few good pounds heavier - and told the child that he could continue referring to him as Oliver if he so chose, but there was no need to keep addressing him as Mr. Chase, and if he felt comfortable with it, Robin was welcome to start calling him Dad.

And four decades spent worrying that he'd never have a son seemed to have been made worth it when he saw that little giant smile upon realizing he finally had a father.

You and I, Dear Reader, already know much about how Robert Scarlett treated Robin and his parents going forward: he roped his illegitimate son back in when he wanted to and sent him away when he was done with him, all the while not even once admitting to the boy or to anybody else that he was Robin's father. He came close once, though: somewhere along the line, some TV production company caught wind that there was a basketball-player-tall seven-year-old fox kit kicking around somewhere near Sheffield and wanted to include him in a documentary on physically extraordinary children. Robert was actually willing to out himself not for the monetary stipend to go to the families (so he said) but rather to lay claim to a child who these television people seemed convinced would wind up in the Guinness Book one day; now that seemed like a prestigious title worth a scandal.

But then the situation quickly diffused when Brianna and Oliver simply said no; they were not going to exploit their child and destroy his sense of privacy forever like that. And just to add to the reasons for saying no, Brianna told Robert plainly: Robin already knew he was his son and didn't want to be officially recognized as such because Robin was afraid of him. She demanded to know why Robert was always so stern and cold when she, Robin, and Oliver were around, especially if he supposedly, quote, "still loved her." And he had an answer: he did still love her, and acted like he was always angry because he was always angry, at himself, for messing everything up. She told him flatly that that was no good excuse for putting the fear of God in that sweet not-so-little little boy, but she privately did wonder whether that was a valid explanation.

But how was Oliver handling parenthood? Admittedly, he was a bit slow out of the gate, playing himself up as being very much the third member of the family, as opposed to him being 1C to Brianna and Robin's 1A and 1B. He felt like an auxiliary member not wanting to pretend to be on an equal field with a woman and her son. When Robin was up all night with excruciating growing pains or was nervous about going to the dentist or was trying to express his mixed feelings of fear, anger, and sadness after another rough encounter with The Tall Man, Oliver would always be there, but always seemed to be playing Brianna's backup as a parent, never saying or doing anything unless he was one hundred percent sure that it needed to be said or done.

One day Brianna simply asked him if he was afraid to participate in their family, and he said kind of, but he mostly just didn't want to seem like he was overstepping his boundaries - after all, he wasn't the boy's father. But as Brianna reminded him, being the boy's father was exactly what Oliver was there to do. Robin desperately needed a positive male role model in his life, and Brianna trusted him to be that role model for her son. (And also, for God's sake, Oliver, it's also coming across like you're not interested in putting in equal work into marriage and parenthood and blimey O'Riley, Oliver, the kid is almost eight years old and four feet tall, we can't keep putting him in diapers every time we have to go into the city for a few hours, somebody needs to teach him how to navigate a public men's room by himself and his mother cannot be the one to do that, so for his sake please get over your discomfort with taking this gigantic child to the toilet, Oliver.) And Oliver couldn't argue with that. In some ways, it presented the perfect challenge: the sheer act of taking it upon himself to be Robin's role model would itself determine whether he was worthy of being such a role model.

Once he figured out what he was doing, Oliver excelled at fatherhood with flying colors. Whenever Robin turned to his parents for help or for comfort - fully expecting his mum to take the reins - Oliver would start speaking up and giving clear, direct statements of advice, encouragement, and love. Soon enough, Robin began seeing Oliver as an equal to his mother and started turning to his dad for solo advice as much as he did to his mum. And whenever Robin had tough feelings about his biological father, he turned to his mother to ask why the man was such an arsehole - and then to his stepfather to ask, man to man, how he should feel about the way Robert Scarlett made him feel.

Perhaps that was the biggest thing Oliver did: he taught Robin how to be a man, and he taught him well. Oliver himself wasn't interested in any of that hypermasculinity bullshit, so he made sure Robin didn't acquire any of it. He made sure Robin knew the importance of being positive and optimistic, using Scarlett as an example of what negativity could breed. Oliver ensured he instilled the importance of striving to do good into Robin, using Robert again as an example of someone who likely wasn't trying to be evil but was still a bad person as a consequence of not trying hard enough to be good. And he made sure Robin not only harbored self-confidence but how to build his self-confidence; while other parents might just tell their kids to believe in themselves and hope it sticks, Oliver made a point to show Robin how to find his strengths and weaknesses and the mindset he needed to improve upon both, so that he would never be one of those men who tore others down because they were insecure in themselves or because they cared too much about what others thought - kind of like Robert getting progressively angrier every year at the sight of a weird old theatre guy doing a better job or raising Robin than he was doing raising his own kits and everybody knowing it. Robin may have grown into a man dead-set on becoming a modern Adam Bell, but he would never deny that the only reason he wanted to be that kind of man was because Oliver put him in the headspace he needed to strive for such a lofty goal; the only reason Robin never got around to taking Oliver's last name was because he didn't want to feel like he was slighting his mother (and "Robin Hood-Chase" sounded to him like the name of a dead-end residential street somewhere out in the country.)

There really isn't too much more that needs to be said about Oliver once he figured out how to be a lad's dad. He's like the opposite of his fellow 1935 baby, Harry Little: if you can imagine a guy being a good father, that's probably something Oliver did. And he did it all for another man's son as a great favor to a friend; that's just the kind of guy Oliver was, doing something hard because it was the right thing to do, even when he was putting his own dreams on hold for it.

Oliver wasn't perfect. He wasn't really gainfully employed for much of Robin's early life, working a lot of janitorial jobs in addition to sporadic acting roles before Robert opened up his first-world sweatshop for South Asian immigrants to manufacture Peak Apparel clothing and installed Oliver as a shift manager; when he and Brianna the nurse had their epiphany that Robert was strategically overworking them, Oliver was perhaps a little too quick to suggest they quit their jobs. He was liable to not take his own advice every so often; he was clearly annoyed by the long-standing rumors that he and Brianna didn't even consummate their marriage, and his "think critically about why you did something wrong and improve upon it" model didn't help him improve his timid and skittish driving skills very much, probably accidentally instilling Robin with a bunch of bad habits that made the younger tod not be a much better motorist himself. In complete and utter defiance of his species's genetics, Oliver was a morning person and a rather obnoxious one at that; you can count on one hand the number of times Robin told him "you're not my father" in actual unironic frustration, and they all had to do with Oliver trying to get Robin to get out of bed at 7 or 8 in the morning on days when there was absolutely no necessary reason to wake up early. Ollie completely failed at teaching Robin how to fistfight; Oliver hadn't been very good at it himself on top of being a lover rather than a fighter and wanting to raise the Little Giant to be the same, only ever trying to teach him in case he ever ran afoul of a larger mammal closer to his own size, so consequently quickly abandoning the idea when it didn't immediately click (hence fisticuffs for Robin being like playing soccer-football, something he functionally knows how to do but isn't particularly great at actually doing, most of the fistfighting he knows today being what he learned from his friends in the States - still not enough to save him when he got hounded by guards at the archery contest or when his coyote friend got sick of his perceived arrogance). He was pretty useless at teaching Robin about the birds and the bees, owing to his own dearth of experience with the fairer sex; thankfully he'd turned Robin into the kind of guy who women would approach first, and one female significantly did, so maybe it all worked out. And dear God did that guy snore; he must have had sleep apnea or something, let's just say a lack of romantic attraction wasn't the only reason for Oliver and Brianna having separate bedrooms.

And let's not forget how Oliver turned into a drill sergeant when Robin and Marian told him they wanted to be professional actors. The teenagers called him a Shakespeare Nazi; he made them read nearly the entire works of the Bard, even the obscure historical stuff nobody cared about like the Henry plays or God forbid King John. As he put it, if they wanted to be English actors, they either had to know their classicals or watch enough trashy American TV until they lost their accents. And as for contemporaries? Well listen here, lads, there's this newfangled thing called method acting, y'see? And as opposed to classical acting which was all about overselling emotions and expecting the audience to applaud you for how well you could portray them, method acting was all about portraying realistic characters first and foremost, ergo subdued, natural emotions brought upon by putting yourself in your character's headspace. Hence very bizarre activities like giving minute-long speeches about how they thought a given character in their favourite shows and movies would brush their teeth or eat beans on toast - the duo would eventually have to do very similar exercises at NYU, but that didn't retrospectively make them any less bizarre or embarrassing. Every four weeks, the same cycle on Saturdays: contemporary monologue, classical partner scene, classical monologue, contemporary partner scene, for months. And just to make sure that their scene work wasn't all stuff about couples like male/female scenes tend to be, Robin would sometimes play a girl and Marian would sometimes play a guy. Oliver had turned into a hardass quite quickly, but he swore it was because theatre was his passion and if his two youths he deeply cared about wanted to make this their life, then Oliver felt obligated to give them every advantage he could in this cutthroat industry; Robin believed him when he said this was why he'd become so strict about acting, and because Robin trusted him, Marian trusted him, too.

Oliver was proud of everything he did to raise Robin - pride well earned, many would agree. But as much as he loved Robin and Brianna, the fact remained that he still wasn't in the place he wanted to be in. He was fifty-seven when Robin and Marian finished their domestic schooling and prepared to leave for America, and as he saw this chapter of his life drawing to a close, he knew he couldn't wait around much longer to get what he himself wanted out of his life while he still had one.

Brianna understood completely and didn't fight it. The tough part was going to be telling their son. Did he know? If so, how much did he know? Well, there was only one way to find out, and Oliver trusted he'd raised Robin into a man who'd take it well.

"Robin?" Oliver asked one August day as he knocked on his stepson's door, holding a bow and a quiver full of arrows. "Care to join me for one last bout of archery?"

Robin would have taken any excuse to take a break from packing up all his stuff for his big move, but you know he was especially a sucker for archery. Doubly so if he got to do it with somebody he loved.

They put their bows in the boot of Oliver's car and Oliver helped his towering son squeeze into the back seat; Robin was physically too large to sit in the front seat of his dad's fox-sized vehicle, so his only options were to sit sideways on the back row of seats with his back hunched over or lay sideways on the back row of seats with his legs scrunched up (he usually picked the latter); in a few days' time, he would never experience such a phenomenon of geometric incongruity again.

The foxes drove (very slowly) out to a public archery range outside of town in the mountains; it was early afternoon on a Tuesday, so they were the only ones there. Oliver helped Robin out of the car and got the bows out of the back while his son got the feeling back in his legs. He handed him a bow that was nearly two feet taller than Oliver himself and still a few inches taller than Robin. The stepfather had tried using the five-footer before just to see if he could, but he couldn't even pull the string back on the thing; from his perspective, it was made for a giant with the strength of Atlas. Not to worry, Oliver had his own three-foot bow, and each had different sets of arrows suited to the sizes of their bows.

If anyone had been there, they surely would have been confused by the pairing. You had Oliver, who was physically mathematically exactly the average height for a male red fox in England, and then there was Robin, who was fairly certain by now that he was one of the tallest living red foxes on the planet… and yet, in further proof of his gifted genetics, suffered no other major physical abnormalities as other giants often do and looked very proportional for his great stature. Seeing them from far away, whether Oliver looked short and squat to you or Robin looked gangly and stretched depended entirely on which one of them your eyes focused on first and which you saw second - and let's face it, you always noticed Robin first.

The sight would likely only get more head-scratching as the two tods got to shooting their arrows. With a twenty-inch gulf in height discrepancy, you'd think the smaller one, only going up to where the other fox's stomach approached his chest, shooting the arrows decently but still hitting all over the board, was some sort of youth compared to the taller one, confident in pose and form, nailing every shot perfectly. And yet the shorter one looked markedly older than the larger one, who looked so fresh-faced and mirthful despite appearing so much more physically robust and speaking with a much deeper voice, and right when you're about to correctly conclude that the small one is actually the normal-sized one and the big one is actually a giant, the small one confuses you further by looking up at the big one like a pupil to a pedagogue and asks, "Can you help me with my aim?"

Oliver had had very rudimentary experience with archery, but he voluntarily elected to relearn from scratch so that Robin could teach him. It was an idea he'd come up with a few years ago for another activity to bond with his stepson over - and if anything, an opportunity to teach Robin how to effectively teach others. Unlike a lot of other men, Oliver wasn't too proud to learn from the son he'd raised; he was too strong to be hurt by that.

Robin crouched down to get on his dad's level; they already knew they looked like Robin was the father and Oliver was the son, so they leaned into it. "Let's see what you're doing," said the young instructor.

The father fox set up an arrow, pulled back, held it, and released. It wasn't a bad shot, but it did miss the bullseye to the left.

"I'm accommodating for the weight of the arrow, just like you said," insisted Oliver.

Robin put a thumb and forefinger to his chin. "I think you're holding it back too long. Nobody's perfectly steady, Oliver, and the longer you hold it, the more it's going to drift. Try it again and this time, don't let yourself keep it held back for more than a second!"

"I'm not so certain one second is enough for me to get my aim right," said the smaller one.

"But it's just like you always said, Dad!" said the larger one, putting a paw on Oliver's shoulder. "Not everything you do with confidence will succeed, but you'll only succeed at things you do confidently!"

The father nodded and chuckled as he grabbed another arrow from his quiver. "Yeah… yeah, I did say that."

"Right-o! Now imagine you're fighting in the Crusades and you don't have the luxury of time! The moment you think you have your shot, let her rip!"

The student did as assigned and lined up his arrow, pulling back.

Robin counted off: "One Piccadilly-"

Swish!

Thunk.

Not a bullseye but much, much closer. Slightly low and to the left, probably near the inner border of the first ring outside the center.

Oliver looked pleased with himself. Robin wanted to celebrate, but he had a question on his mind.

"...Did you do that deliberately?" the son asked with a wince and a smile.

Oliver gave him a funny look. "Do what deliberately?"

"Miss on purpose so I could give you instructions to fix your form!"

Oliver shook his head. "I would never do that to you, Robin. My success is your handiwork, and I would never deprive you of the fruits of your labor by pretending to be worse than I am at what you've taught me." To this day, we still don't know whether he was faking it or not, and now we likely never will. "You're a brilliant archery teacher, Robin. If you're ever struggling for money between roles - and I'll tell you that unless you're madly lucky in your career, you most certainly will at some point - I highly, highly encourage you to sell archery lessons. I can't imagine it's that competitive of a market in the States."

His son stood upright and smiled down upon him, looking like he couldn't have received a higher honor. "I'll remember that!"

(A brief pause as Robin does something akin to a Homer Simpson-esque "D'oh!" upon realizing he'd completely forgotten this gem of advice that he seriously could have used in his civilian life.)

Oliver looked around at the empty range, pondering how to take advantage of their privacy. "You mentioned pretending we were crusaders; you know, you have made me quite good at shooting while standing still, but what about a real heat-of-battle situation? Can you make a running shot?"

"A running shot? Surely I can!"

Oliver gestured with his bow. "Would you please teach me before you go?"

"Oh, of course I will!" Robin beamed. He thought through his lesson as he walked over to a position off to the side of their shooting lane. "Though… I honestly don't know whether there's that much to teach, for me it was always a matter of practice." He took off trotting perpendicular to the target, raised his bow and took his shot when he thought he was at the right angle. Perhaps this goes without saying, but he hit his spot perfectly. "I'd say just… just like getting accustomed to the weight and feel of the bow and the arrows and the tension of the string and the strength of the wind, you just need to feel it out until you get some muscle memory! Why not give it a try?"

"But what I don't understand is how you can keep your eye on the target while running at full speed," said the inquisitive student, who despite his skepticism still took his place where the master had started. "What does one have to do to keep from tripping and falling over something? You never see old Adam Bell catch his foot on something and stumble in a film, but you'd think he would eventually!"

Robin pondered that one, not having a quick answer. "Er… well, I suppose it's just a matter of coordination, innit? I mean… how do footballers keep control of the ball while moving forward and sizing up the defenders? They need to trust their feet and keep their eyes moving! Or like, erm… honestly, it's kind of like driving!"

Oliver gave his stepson a sardonic smile that the lad knew would be coming. "Robin, love, you've just compared this skill to a skill you know I'm not very skilled at doing!"

Robin chuckled. "Well I'm not that skilled at playing football! They always made me play keeper since I was the big bloke. I could be talking shit with my comparisons and not even know it me'self!"

Oliver nodded, raised his bow, took off running and shot his shot. The arrow sailed wide left.

"I knew I probably wouldn't make it," he said, "but I'm closer to it than I was two minutes ago."

"Right you are!" cheered Robin, swinging a crooked arm up across his chest. "Hrm… maybe try starting off at a walking speed and slowly make your way up to a sprint?"

"Splendid idea!" Oliver took his spot again, readied his bow as he walked leisurely across the lane, raising his weapon as he neared.

"Remember, don't hold it too long or you'll worry yourself!" Robin urged encouragingly. "One Piccadilly -"

His dad released the arrow. It missed low and actually stuck in the wooden legs of the target stand.

"...Now if you meant to hit that, that would have been a brilliant shot!" said Robin.

"Indeed it would have been," his father concurred. "I must confess, I don't think this is an art I can master in a day… but I'll keep practicing while you're away. It won't be quite as fun without you, but I'll keep at it… Ah! And there's a question! How the bloody hell can you shoot if you're running right to left? I can understand when your shooting arm is going across your body, but… what, do you scrunch your arm up behind you? Do you have to twist your spine?"

Robin shook his head, still smiling brightly. "And that, love, is why mastery of archery includes being able to shoot ambidextrously!" Robin switched his bow to his right paw as he took a spot near where he'd ended his first run, then took off jogging in the opposite direction as before and did his thing. The arrow hit the first ring outside the center circle, dead center above it; the only reason he didn't hit the bullseye is because it was already crowded with his previous arrows. "It'll take time and patience, Dad, but I know you can do it!"

Oliver nodded wisely as he went to retrieve their spent arrows. "And I'll practice as much as I need to to match you one day, Robin!" he said, wagging a finger at his son. "One day when you come home, we'll have a go at it! And I'd never want to beat you, son, but one day I'll match you!"

Robin just waved it off playfully. "As long as I know you learned it from me, I'd be honored to lose to you at archery, Oliver!"

Oliver just kept nodding, wondering where he ought to take this conversation. "You're beginning to understand how it feels to be a father, Robin. Any decent parent wants the child they raised to be better than themselves." And as he walked back to the shooting line, he figured that was as good a transition as any. "Robin, you're a smart lad…" Oliver said as he lined up for another shot. Swish, thunk! "...how old were you when you realized Mr. Scarlett was your father?"

Robin looked a wee bit embarrassed by the question. "Er… around the time when I'd begun to realize he was one of the few foxes still taller than me as I got bigger… so, er, four or five? Heh heh… er, it helped to figure it out that we kept seeing him even though he clearly wasn't a friend of either of yours."

"Oh, I think he still has feelings for your mother," Oliver said flatly as he let off another shot; close, but no cigar.

His son scoffed. "Do you really believe that!?"

Oliver simply nodded. "I do. But I think that he also has poor judgment in his choices, which is where the situation with you and all your half-siblings comes from." He took a deep breath and let out a sigh. "And I do still think your mother does - sporadically - harbor some feelings for him as well."

Oliver turned to glance up at his towering ward, and was met with a look of disgust.

"Oh, no, Mum would never have feelings for a man like that!" Robin protested. "For a man her son hates! Not to mention how much she'd be betraying you!"

Oliver actually found that reaction a bit surprising. He made another shot; a decent hit. "This leads me to my next question… where along the line did you figure out that your mum and I weren't romantically into one another?"

He looked up again, and this time his Little Giant's face looked dreadfully confused.

"What on earth do you mean!?"

Oliver knew his son was intelligent, but the lad was still young and innocent, and as much as he was hoping this wouldn't be a surprise to him, Oliver understood that there was a possibility that this would never have even crossed his mind. He turned away from Robin to take another shot, in part because he was struggling to look the boy in the eye.

"I mean how, as much as your mother and I love one another, it's always merely been as friends, very good friends. I was not who she wanted in a husband, nor was she the person I'd dreamt I'd marry. She only asked me to marry her to help raise you, Robin - to make sure someone she trusted would have custody of you and not that arsehole, your father - and because I already loved the both of you so much… and because I also desperately wanted a happy family… I said yes."

One last look at Robin, and now the poor lad looked horrified.

"...since when?" was all his son could say.

"I'm sorry?"

"Since when have you two not loved each other?"

Oliver stayed calm. "As I said, Robin: I have loved your mother since before you were born, but always as a friend. I married her as a favor to a friend, and there was a mutual understanding that we weren't one another's soulmates."

Unfortunately, Robin was taking the news even worse than his stepfather had anticipated. "Why are… why are you telling me this!?" He was quickly becoming panicked.

Oliver made sure his eyes were locked on his son's. "Because I need you to understand that - once you're settled in your adult life in America - your mother and I have agreed to divorce."

"NO!" Robin suddenly yelped as he dropped his precious bow, getting on his knees and putting his paws on his father's shoulders to better look him in the eye. "No, you can't! You can't break up with Mum! I… you two still love one another, I know you do!"

Oliver blinked very slowly. "I'll certainly still keep in contact with her, but I'll be moving out at my next convenience, likely sometime in autumn."

Robin wasn't budging. "Dad! ...If… if there's something wrong between you and Mum, you can tell me! I can talk to her about it! I-I can talk to the both of you together!" At this point, he was shaking his smaller stepfather's shoulders as he spoke, his voice on the verge of breaking. "I-I can help you work it out! I don't want you two to break apart! I know you two still love each other! I can see it in the way you… in the way you are whenever she's around! You're clearly a couple in love!"

Oliver had to break eye contact. "I suppose I was too good of an actor, then," he confessed. "But unfortunately it didn't fool anybody else. All the other adults in our life knew this was a sham marriage since the day it was announced."

Robin let go of his father and stood up, looking around the area for answers that weren't there as he held his spinning head. "No… no, you're talking shit! I… I… I need to sit down…" And so he made his way over to a small wooden bench and sat down, grasping his head with his elbows on his knees for a moment before looking up at his father: "Please tell me you're joking!"

Oliver walked over slowly, morosely shaking his head, clearly taking no joy in this moment either. "You're not a little kid anymore who needs to have things sugarcoated, Robin, and I respect you too much as a young man to lie to you."

And his son buried his face in his hands and wept. Oliver let him go for the better part of a minute before putting a paw on his son's shoulders, which his son promptly smacked away with an arm much stronger than his father's.

"Don't touch me!" Robin growled through a broken face, giving Oliver a pair of evil eyes you never want to see from a fox that big. "I-I don't want to see you right now!"

And Robin cried his eyes out for another five or six minutes, all the while Oliver stood there and let him, watching dutifully that his son would be okay and trying not to lose his own composure.

Eventually Robin would run out of tears to cry, and lifted his head to shamefully regard the man he called his father. "I'm sorry… I know you'll still be fine, but hearing you say that… it's like you told me you were terminally ill or something, like you were about to die… like our family was about to die… I… I'm sorry, I shouldn't be crying like a child over this -"

"Robin, you have nothing to apologize for," said his dad, rather sternly. "Don't be like Robert, thinking a man can't cry; that attitude will eat you up inside until it kills you." He sat down next to his son and put an arm around him; Robin did not protest. "And our family isn't dying. We may be physically apart, but - silly as it sounds to say, it's true - we'll always be together at heart. Always, Robin."

Robin nodded, eyes trained on the ground. "...So it's my fault, then."

"What? Oh, blimey, no! Robin, how ever did you get that idea!?"

"Just as you said," answered the heartbroken tod, "you two only got together and stayed together for me, and now that I'm moving out, you're both getting out of a marriage neither of you ever wanted to be in as soon as you can! Our family can't be dying because apparently our family was never real!"

"Robin. Robin, calm down," Oliver urged. "Listen to me… Look at me, Robin."

It took a lot of strength he wasn't feeling he had, but he looked his dad in the eye.

"Robin… when I said yes to being your stepfather… it was perhaps the best decision I've ever made in my life. Because I did want a family, Robin - and children. Truly I did, Robin, and you and your mum let me have that. Our family was real, Robin, it is real, and it always will be. So before you leave, Robin, I want to say…" Oliver grabbed one of Robin's paws and held it in both of his, giving his Little Giant a pleading look. "...thank you. Thank you for letting me be your father… and thank you for being my son. I couldn't have asked for a better one, Robin."

After a proclamation like that, Robin couldn't help but smile. "And thank you, Dad… for being my father… and for letting me be your son."

"It's been the pleasure of a lifetime, Robin," said Oliver, a smile creeping across his face once more. "I may have been unlucky in love, but I've been unfairly lucky in getting to say I raised you."

Robin turned away and looked at the grass again, still processing things. "I… I have to say, though… I still don't understand why you two have to break up now. If none of this mattered, then… why stop it now?"

"Because your mother and I both still want to find that special someone who we couldn't be for each other," said Oliver. "Your mum? Oh, she has plenty of time ahead of her. But me? I'm nearly sixty, Robin; I should still have a few good decades left in me, but I certainly mustn't be twatting about and wasting time at my age." Oliver put an arm around Robin again. "We'll still be your mother and father and we'll still love you with all our hearts, but we don't need to be together to do that. Not anymore."

Robin just nodded. There wasn't much more he felt the need to say. His eyes wandered across the empty range as he let his heart make peace with this.

"And I think your mum and I have done a spectacular job of raising you… if I do say so myself," Oliver continued. "You're going to do great things in this life, Robin. I'm certain of it."

Robin found himself chuckling softly. "Yeah… like playing a great person in a movie instead of actually being one!"

"Pah! Bugger off with that nonsense!" Oliver spat, seeming actually offended. "To be an artist is a heroic pursuit, Robin. To strive to make works that make people happy? To insist on creating things that you think need to be made, telling stories you think need to be told with messages you think need to be heard? All while - let us be honest here - all while struggling to support yourself as punishment for your good deed? That's a noble endeavor, wouldn't you agree!?"

Robin just nodded thoughtfully; he did have to agree.

"And even if you decide to do something else with your life - and I'd never fault you if you did, there are plenty of reasons not to want to go into entertainment, you'd have to be mad to be dead-set on this - even if you wind up living a rather mundane life, you'll still do great things. I know you will. Maybe the whole world won't sing your name, but if we raised you right, you'll still be a hero to somebody. Everyday heroes exist, Robin."

But of course Robin already knew that; he was looking right at one.

Oliver took a deep breath and looked around the area. "What a beautiful day… I don't know too much about the climate in New York, but from what I hear, a lot of America is far too hot in the summer and far too cold in the winter. Appreciate a nice mild day like this while you can."

Robin nodded along. After all the years he'd come to spend stateside, he could look back on that day and agree that he'd grown up in a relatively dark and gloomy country, but that just made the sunny days in England more beautiful when they did come.

His father stood from the bench and turned to him. "Feeling better?"

"...Yeah… I think I am," Robin murmured, smiling coyly. He took another moment to soak in the day before he stood up himself. "By the way, Dad… I appreciate you taking up archery. I'm glad we've been able to have days like these. These have been fun."

"The pleasure is mine, Robin. Thank you for being an excellent teacher. My only regret is that I didn't think to take it up sooner. But with any luck…" Oliver made a point to stand right in front of Robin and look straight up at him; he wanted to make the man he'd raised feel admired. "...maybe now when you pick up a bow and arrow going forward, you'll think of the time we spent with archery instead of what you spent with Robert."

Robin just looked down at Oliver, smiling until his cheeks ached. Little did Oliver know that Robin already associated archery with the time spent with his real father rather than that spent with his biological father.

"Hm, someone leave this here?" asked a high-pitched but distinctly male voice; a quick look over showed that a pair of hare or rabbit gentlemen had entered the range without either pair noticing the other. These long-eared men were examining the gigantic bow Robin had dropped on the ground earlier, one picking up the item and assessing its weight.

"Oh, excuse me!" Oliver piped up as he stepped forward toward the strangers. "That actually belongs to my son!" he explained, gesturing to his Little Giant behind him.

You should have seen the terrified looks on the bunnies' faces when they saw the enormous fox in their midst - and the confused looks that followed when they realized the smaller fox had just called the fox twice his size his son.

And Robin couldn't help but smile as he returned their gaze; he was just so proud to hear Oliver call him his son.

And for the sake of running with the joke and further confusing these judgmental-looking bunnies, Robin went over to Oliver, spun him around, picked him up under the armpits and lifted his dad up to eye level to suck him into a hug, not unlike a father would do to his young son, a hug which Oliver gladly returned. And toward the end of making these strangers question their sanity, la pièce de résistance:

"I love you, Dad," said Robin; yes, it may have been cliché, but he wanted to make sure he told his hero that one more time, just in case this would be the last time he had the chance.

"I love you, too, son," replied Oliver, for much the same reasons. And for what may have been the last time in his life, he gave his Little Giant a nuzzle on the muzzle, and they both chuckled as they saw the bigoted bunnies take themselves to the far end of the range.

By that Christmas, Oliver had announced to Brianna, Robin, and his close family and friends that he was in a relationship with someone new, another fox about his own age; they had actually met while Oliver was still married to Brianna and Robin was still in Loxley, but the two of them decided it was finally safe to confess their secret love to those closest to them. Robin, who was told the news over the phone, was shocked and at least a little bit confused, but he was very happy for Oliver finally finding someone he truly wanted to be with as a romantic partner. And Brianna was also happy for him, but word eventually did get around to Robert Scarlett and his circle, many of whom found it scandalous that the man who raised Robert's illegitimate son was in such a relationship, but Oliver didn't care. After two decades of putting his own happiness on hold for the sake of helping Brianna be the best mother she could be so that Robin could be the best man he could be, it seemed like the universe was rewarding him for a job well done by giving Oliver what so few of us are fortunate enough to find: a true soulmate. He had found someone he could love in a way he couldn't love Brianna or Robin, someone he adored and who likewise adored him. The two of them were very happy together, happier than either one of them ever thought they would get the chance to be. At long last, Oliver had finally found the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. His name was Jeremy.

-IllI-

"...Hm… so that's what a good father is like… Hey, Rob?"

"...Yes, Johnny?"

"Thanks for sharing that with me."

"Of course, Johnny."

"...I think Ol' Ollie would be proud of you. And your mother, too; she sounds like a sweet lady."

"...I appreciate that, Johnny. Truly I do."

"Don't mention it, brother."

And as they sat there staring at the sun setting through the branches, they thought that was going to be the end of it. And for a while, it may have been. But then Johnny heard something.

"...Rob, what's wrong?"

Robin sniffled again. "Oh, nothing, Johnny."

"H-hey, man, I'm sorry if talking about this brought up bad memories-"

"No-! ...N-no, Johnny, I…" Sniff. "I'm not thinking about my father… not anymore."

"...Are you thinking about Will again?"

"No, no, not Will… not Will…" And it really wasn't Will. While that guilt was in his head, it had taken a backseat after that conversation; it wasn't the past that Robin was currently contemplating.

"...Well, what's up, man?"

It was his future. And Robin didn't want to talk about it, but after all he'd revealed already, he knew he couldn't stop now. "I… I try not to think too many selfish thoughts… I know we're only mortals and we're bound to think selfish thoughts, but I try not to…"

Robin glanced at his friend to see if he was listening, and was comforted to see him nodding in understanding. Little John didn't know whether to say something or to not interrupt, so he just nodded and kept listening.

Robin went back to staring into space. "...And I was just thinking that… even if I never made it to Hollywood and Marian never made it to Broadway… I think we both would have still been happy as long as we still had each other…"

Now Johnny was torn about whether or not this was an appropriate time to hang his arm around the fox and give his buddy a friendly side-hug; he thought Robin might not want a man's touch when he was thinking about the woman of his dreams, but then he heard him make that voiceless cough of one with a lump forming in their throat, and John decided to go for it anyway.

Robin did not seem to be offended; he was too concerned about being able to tell Johnny what was on his mind without telling him what was really on his mind. After all these years, Little John had earned the right to be privy to a little of Robin's worries - but Robin didn't want to share so many that Johnny might start worrying about him.

"...And I remember that… even during the fiasco at the archery contest… everybody running around swashbuckling with medieval weapons..." - and he let a faint chuckle escape his nose - "...the day I proposed to her… even amid all the chaos, we were planning our life together… our wedding… our honeymoon… and our children-"

And on the first syllable of children they both heard the first hints of his voice breaking. Little John just closed his eyes and nodded slowly, just in case Robin looked at him again. Little did he know that Robin was staring adamantly straight ahead, too afraid to turn to his friend and struggle to make out his face though his blurred, watery vision.

For a time, his voice sounded mostly calm again. "We wanted a family… I told her I wanted six children, she said she wanted a dozen, at least, and I - heh - I still can't tell whether she was joking about that number… but we wanted a family. A big family, a small family, we had our preferences but we'd take any… I just loved her so much that I wanted there to be more people in this world who would remind me of her and who would love her, too… and I'm sure she felt the same way about me…"

"Well… if I may say…" Johnny interjected as delicately as he could, "I for one would definitely prefer to live in a world with a dozen more people like you." He wished with all of his heart that that was comforting and not the wrong thing to say, but then he opened his eyes again when he realized that his friend had dug his head into his chest.

"But now it's never going to happen!" Robin simply didn't have the strength to maintain his composure anymore. His voice squeaked as he wept. "I had the one thing in life that could ever make me happy and I threw it away… I threw it away - and for what!? For… for everybody in this town to just… take us for granted and assume we're going to fix everything without their help!? To take our gifts and never take our side!? To-! Oh, Jesus, Johnny… how long can we help people who can't even help themselves!? How long can we help people who're just going to turn around and say that they think we aren't helping!? How long can we... how long can we… how long can we fight for people who want us to fight for them but who'll never fight with us?"

And Robin knew right then that he blew it. He'd crossed the line from allowing himself to look flawed just like anybody else, to simply looking weak. Or at least that's how he would have put it. One way or another, this was not a case of Robin being too macho to share his feelings with a male friend, he was far too smart for that ridiculous conceptualization of masculinity; no, this was a case of Robin being afraid to share unflattering details about himself with someone who he specifically needed to trust and believe in him. Even Tuck had agreed that spilling his guts to this extent was likely an unwise decision.

Sure enough, Little John couldn't believe what he was hearing. From the part where Robin insinuated that neither the friend he was currently seeking consolation from nor anybody else in his current life brought him genuine happiness by being in it, to the part where he said some very unflattering things about the poor of Nottingham that Little John couldn't figure out whether they were supposed to refer to the entire group or just a specific subset of idiots and ingrates, Johnny could already tell that this was going to be something that Robin would ask him to politely forget as soon as he was feeling better, eventually coming around to say that in his distraught state of mind he surely didn't mean the rash things he said and he certainly didn't mean them like that. But Little John knew from experience that dramatic things uttered through bitter tears are often much truer than the speaker would ever care to admit. Nevertheless, he still felt the need to say something comforting, and this is the best he could come up with:

"Not everybody can be like you and me, Rob. That's what makes us special."

"And I know I'm being selfish… So many people can barely survive and here I am crying like a child because I'll never be able to… to wake up next to my wife and walk downstairs to see my children opening up presents on Christmas morning-!"

Each syllable of those last four words was pitched higher than the last and dissolved into further wails and sobs at the end, and as Robin hit that high note, it must have shattered Johnny's glass heart, because he found himself welling up, too.

"Rob, you're the most selfless person I've ever met… and the closest thing to a personal hero I'll ever have," said Little John. "Don't give up now."

Robin was still whimpering as he allowed himself to put his arm around the bear's stomach to feel less alone in the world. And please don't you give up on me after me saying all these things, he found himself thinking, but the floodgates had been opened and they would not be shut quite so easily. "I- I need this to have been worth it, Johnny… I- I need this to all be worth it. I can't… I can't afford to have gambled everything just to lose! I- W-Will had dreams! A-and now we know they're never going to come true! What the fuck makes me so special that I think I'll be any more fortunate!?"

Indeed, Robin had to wonder: did a man who had made such a horrible mistake as he had with his brother - and who had been too cowardly to admit it - even deserve to have his dreams come true? Did he even deserve as much as to be able to call himself the son of a great man like Oliver? Robin had already received so much good fortune in life that he didn't deserve; surely he couldn't expect to receive any more.

Little John put his other arm around his little friend to confirm to him that he was never alone. "Please don't give up on me now, Rob. You're all I've got left… and some would say you're all I've ever had."

And without saying a word, Robin's head slid further down Little John's chest until his snout was buried in the crook where his chest met his protruding belly. And Robin wept further, Little John not daring to say a word. And they stayed like that for a moment, and once again Johnny thought the conversation was over. But then Robin mumbled something directly into Little John's stomach.

"Mmfmfmfmfmmmf, Mmfmfmfmfmfmfmmmf…"

"What'd you say?" Little John asked, trying not to sound too alarmed. He grabbed Robin by the shoulder and forced his friend's face away from his gut.

"Hm?"

"You said something, Rob?"

"Huh… oh. No, nothing, nothing, I, er, erm…"

Robin stared into space, looking disoriented, clearly having no intentions of finishing that sentence. At least the tears had stopped flowing and his voice wasn't cracked.

"...Rob?"

"Yes, Johnny?"

"...You okay, or…?"

"...I'll be fine, Johnny. Thank you."

"Can I help you be fine faster?"

"I appreciate it, Johnny, but I can't rely upon you too much. I might not always have you around to help me." Especially now that I've given you a valid reason to lose faith in my ability to stay strong and keep fighting - and if I was too weak to even pretend to be strong, you'd likely be right to do so. If that's not enough to make you abandon me, then surely you would if you ever found out about me and my brother.

Little John took a deep breath and told himself not to read too much into Robin's statement. "Well, you know I love ya, brother."

"You too, my brother." Robin still wasn't actually looking at him. He took his own deep breath and started wiggling, and Little John understood to relinquish the fraternal embrace. "May I ask a question of you, if you don't mind?"

"Hey, go for it."

"...Do you want children, Johnny?"

Little John shook his head just a little, betraying his discomfort with that question. "Oh- Rob, don't worry, man, it's never gonna happen for me, either." And he wasn't just avoiding the question to make his friend feel better, he really did see it as such a non-option that he thought that erasing the question was a more honest answer than yes or no. "...Shit, that's not what I meant by either-"

"But do you want them?"

"Rob, seriously, I'm not playing coy, I… I seriously just can't see that ever happening for me, so I don't even think about whether I'd even prefer to or not."

And who knows what Little John would have done if he had found out what Robin thought when he heard Johnny say that. But when Robin understood that he wasn't going to get a straight answer out of his friend, as he stared off into the forest and nodded pensively, a thought struck him, almost like he was remembering something he'd forgotten: oh yeah, Johnny's a loser. The only reason he'd ever accepted Robin's invite to join his mission was because he was a loser with nothing going for him in his life, and although Robin had helped him become much less of a loser, Johnny was still a loser deep down and still thought loser-y thoughts like how he was fatalistic about his prospects of not dying alone. When Johnny confessed that he didn't know if he'd ever find another friend of as high quality as Robin, Robin could sympathize because while his own childhood wasn't nearly as lonely, it still wanted for the strong fraternal bonds that movies and television had led him to believe young boys were expected to have with each other while they went out on mischievous adventures; but as shitty as Robin felt thinking it, hearing Johnny say 'yeah I don't even have the option of reproducing because no woman on earth would want to be with me' ...honestly, that didn't strike Robin as sympathetic, that just struck him as pathetic. Really, Johnny? You can't even politely lie and pretend you think you're worthy of a romantic partner?

And quite frankly, part of it was Robin taking it personally: had he completely failed at helping Johnny build his self-esteem to the point where he could even imagine himself living happily ever after? Evidently he had. But you know what? Fuck it, at a certain point it wasn't his job to help Johnny stop being such a sad-sack about himself, and if he was refusing to help himself get better, well… Robin felt terrible thinking this immediately after Johnny had shown him comfort in ways that few others would, but to be completely honest, he found himself thinking that he needed a new best friend. He was by no means thinking about telling Johnny to fuck off forever, but Robin needed someone better in his life, someone who could actually relate to him on things a normal person would relate to, like potential parenthood, or at least having an opinion on just whether or not the idea of parenthood seemed like it could be fulfilling, or having self-esteem, or having goals, or dreams. He craved having someone he could talk to who understood what it was like to be a go-getter, not somebody who'd spent three decades meandering through life wherever the world would allow him to be before someone came along and taught him to take control of his existence - and arguably still didn't completely grasp the lesson. Much like how Oliver loved Brianna but had needed a partner he could love in ways he couldn't love Brianna, Robin still loved this guy but felt himself needing someone he could be friends with in ways he couldn't be friends with Little John.

You may have noticed, Dear Reader, that Robin never did recant his statement from the day prior that he believed a man cannot be considered heroic if he's too afraid to even ask a woman out on a date. There's a reason for that. Robin still believed it; he just knew better now than to say it out loud. Hey, maybe that's why Johnny's well-intentioned advice didn't seem to work on Robin: perhaps on a subconscious level, the fox didn't think the bear was someone worth listening to.

And he wasn't proud of having these thoughts that could justifiably be read as a betrayal of trust to someone who trusted him more than he trusted anybody else, but you know what, gun to his head, Robin couldn't say he was proud of being Johnny's friend right now, either. And Robin was trying so hard to try to tell himself to be like Oliver and not like Robert, to be someone who wasn't selfish in their relationships of any kind, but Robin didn't know if he was as strong as Oliver, while he did know that he was his father's son; maybe this is what Robert was getting at all those times he had said that - barring unnaturally selfless people like Oliver, who Robert regarded to be genuinely insane - someone who doesn't put their own happiness first is no good to anybody.

Hell, maybe he should tell Johnny right then and there how he really felt. And toss in what happened with his brother while he was at it. Give both of them a reason never to speak to each other again; give them each a chance to meet new people who they'd mesh together with better. Let Robin find other driven and interesting people and let Johnny find other losers with no aspirations in life beyond not being perpetually miserable. It might be harsh, but it might have been healthier for the both of them. And Robin might have done it if they weren't in a spot where they were reliant upon one another for their survival.

But Robin didn't say any of this as he sat in the tree; as he would put it, he was too socially smart to say such awkward things out loud, even if Johnny wasn't. One has to wonder whether - despite the mental anguish consuming him - Robin knew exactly what he was saying when he didn't include Johnny on the shortlist of people who made him happy.

Robin started to get himself out of his seated position. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take a walk around the forest alone for a bit. Just to clear my head." And to go visit somebody who he might be able to talk to about this, though that person might be frustrated with Robin for not doing as they'd instructed him. But it would be a long walk during which Robin expected to be alone with his thoughts, pondering whether or not he could ever realistically have been friends with Little John if they had met as civilians.

"Absolutely," said Johnny, completely unaware of Robin's internal soliloquy. "Just be sure to take your piece with you, it could be dangerous out there. And for the love of God, Rob, don't hurt yourself."

"Oh, I would never, Johnny," Robin said as he grabbed his bow and quiver off the shelf and started climbing down the tree, that strange lump in his throat as tight as ever. "As much as we both know plenty of people who wish I would."

"Fuck those people."

"Indeed." Robin shimmied his way to the ground. "I'll be taking off now," he called up. "Defend the tree for me!"

"Always!" Little John replied loyally, and he watched as Robin disappeared into the woods.

He wasn't able to hear much of what Robin had mumbled into his stomach, but he was able to pick up some clues. He knew for a fact that it wasn't just frustrated grumbling or non-verbal whinnying, and he'd heard the guy speak enough that he could tell where the vowel sounds would have logically been with his accent. And where his ears failed him, he could feel in his literal gut the length and cadence of each syllable Robin spoke into his shirt. Little John could have sworn - and he hoped he was wrong - but he could have sworn that he knew exactly what Robin had confessed in confidence to his fur and flesh. And if he was right, Robin may have been right to fear oversharing with him; Johnny was starting to regret asking his friend to be more open, because his friend was beginning to worry him.

"This was a mistake, all of this was a mistake."