While the gang was in the forest planning out a rescue with the hints Allan brought them, Marian was sitting in her room, using her first moments of peace that day to think about how to see Robin. She had been otherwise occupied all day making small dropoffs of food and then dining with Gisbourne whose lately more pleasant attitude had been completely wiped away with the nearness of Hood's execution. Marian hoped her aversion to Guy that day was not apparent to him. The last thing she needed was to be on anyone's bad side.
Using her feminine wiles and a few well-placed hits to the head, she got past the guards and into the dungeon. With a bribe to the jailer, she was allowed in Robin's cell.
"Marian! Marian, you shouldn't be here!" Robin bolted up from the place he had been sitting the whole time since the Sheriff's visit.
"You shouldn't be here either, Robin. You being next in the docket to have your head chopped off doesn't bode well for the people of Nottingham, now does it?"
"Marian, please don't. I know—" he broke off and lowered his head.
Marian's face softened. "I'm sorry."
After a few moments, she added, "I don't know why it's so easy for me to be mad at you and yet—" she paused and looked away slightly, " yet it's so hard for me to tell you—"
Her voice was strained, she wasn't sure how to finish what she was saying so she went silent.
Robin slipped his fingers between hers. "Hard to tell me what?"
"How much I need you!" The words burst out of her.
He held her as she sobbed, her face buried in his chest. It was the hardest he had seen her cry. After a moment, she started laughing lightly and looked up at him.
"Oh Robin, you're such a fool sometimes. It's so frustrating!"
He smiled as she continued, more serious, "But I can't live without you."
At that Robin kissed her.
A few timeless moments later, he said quietly, "I'm sorry."
Marian looked at him questioningly.
"I've seen much treasure in my time as a well-intentioned thief," he started. She rolled her eyes.
"Well, I have," he continued. "But Marian, you are the most valuable, the most priceless, the most irreplaceable treasure in all of England and for some reason I forgot that. Marian, please, please, you must forgive me. I will never again put anyone or anything before you."
"Oh Robin, but some things are more important. The King is more impor—"
"No, Marian, no, nothing is more important."
She was inclined to argue with him, to belittle herself, to remind him of that bigger picture, that greater cause that he was always working for, but this time she let herself be wrapped in the selfishness of his love. To be so valued, she decided, was not a bad thing. It was a wonderful thing, the most wonderful of all. In the frosty dampness of the castle dungeon, Marian was the happiest she had been since that day when Robin asked her to marry him.
Almost reading her mind, Robin seized on that memory and stated seriously, "If I survive this latest gauntlet of the Sheriff's, we are going to have a wedding, whether or not the King is home safe or not."
Marian was going to playfully object, but instead she just kissed him.