Robin had just strung his arrow, pointing at a target Marian had nailed to a tree some fifty yards away, when he heard her voice behind him.
"Is it true?"
He didn't say anything. He pulled back and loosed the arrow, watching it miss the target completely. It landed on the ground somewhere, soundlessly.
"Not a very good shot," Marian said, an edge to her voice. "That's how men get killed in the Holy Land."
Robin swallowed and turned to her. Her arms crossed over her chest, looking past him to wherever his arrow had landed. Any softness he was accustomed to seeing in her eyes was absent, and she seemed to have aged five years in the day since he'd last seen her. "I don't have a choice," he said.
"Everything is a choice," she said sharply. "Send someone else in your stead."
He balked at that. "Send someone else to fight and die in my place? Ask them to leave their family behind?"
Marian glared at him, her anger cutting through the thick summer air. "You're leaving me behind."
"It wouldn't be honorable," he argued.
It took a moment, and then her response was dangerously quiet, spoken through gritted teeth: "There is no honor in being dead."
Robin stepped closer to her, trying to forget about his missed shot. "I'm good, Marian. No one else can shoot like me. I can make a difference."
Her eyes flashed. "Yes, and I'm better with a sword than you are, but you don't see me running off to die in the desert."
"You're a girl."
"And you're an idiot," she snapped. "Tell me, Robin, what happens to Locksley in your absence? The villagers, the manor, the fields? You have no family left alive. Will you let your people starve? Let your family's house fall into disrepair?"
Robin brushed this off. "The king will appoint a caretaker."
"Fine," said Marian, turning away. "I hope he's handsome. Maybe I'll marry him after you're dead."
This was going even worse than he'd expected. "Marian—"
"And you can have this back," she said, her voice flat. She pulled the ring - his ring - from her finger and held it out to him in her palm.
He felt like someone had stabbed him. While she stared at him unrelenting, he came towards her. He reached out and closed her fingers over the ring, and his own hands over hers. "Marian, please-"
Robin knew it sounded like begging.
"You're leaving," she said, her voice perfectly even.
He knew this Marian - he hated this Marian. The one who could turn off her emotions, who could look at him so dispassionately after everything they'd been through together. He'd never learned how to do that.
Which was why he sounded so desperate when he said, low and sorry: "Wait for me."
"You'll be gone for years," she said. "I won't even know if you're dead. Do you really expect me to spend the next - what - four years, five? - pining over you? This is a mad war, and you're mad to go."
Robin took one more step towards her, so they were toe to toe in the dirt outside of Knighton Hall. "Nothing has changed," he said. "I love you. I want to get married, just - it's going to take a little longer. I want to be with you. Please."
Her gaze drifted to the ground, and the ground was where she directed her next words. "You just want glory more."
That stopped him. Probably because it was true, or close enough to true. "Marian," he said, but nothing else. He had nothing else to say.
"Don't."
He didn't.
"You do what you want, as always," she said, and he could hear the emotion creeping in around the edges, but her facade was so good. "Go off to war. Prove that you're a big man, if that's what you need to do. But don't expect me to wait for you, and don't expect me to mourn when Much comes back to tell us that you've—"
And that was where she finally broke. Her tirade got caught on a sob, and she brought her hand up to her mouth to smother the sound. Her blue eyes bright in the darkening evening.
It wrecked him. God, maybe she was right. Robin personally knew a half-dozen men who would kill to be betrothed to Marian of Knighton, and he was giving that up? For what?
But he knew. It was glory, but not the way Marian meant it. It wasn't about him showing off with a bow, getting close to the king. It was about the glory of God; the glory of fighting for King Richard and England and Sherwood itself. His father had always said that war made men, and Robin was ready. He was a noble, and he'd trained his whole life for this.
Surely.
"I'm not going to die," he said quietly. Fighting the urge to reach out and hold her. He'd never been good at watching her cry.
She laughed, the sound bitter and thick with tears. "You're not special, Robin of Locksley. You don't walk on water. I know you think you're invincible but—"
"I'm not going to die."
Something in his tone changed her mind, and Marian shifted in an instant. She brushed the tears from her face and nodded. Stoic once again. "And I'm not going to wait."
She couldn't be serious. Marian complained about everyone. For a while her father had encouraged suitors from around the shire, and Marian had laughed them all off. She'd declared them all useless, until finally her father gave up and admitted to himself that it was probably going to be Robin, after all.
Of course she'd wait.
Right?
It was late enough that almost everyone else was in for the night, and the heavy air and fireflies conspired to make Robin brave. He wouldn't ask her - he wouldn't beg her; that's what it would be - but.
"Let's just say I come back alive," he said. "And you're still unmarried. Would you have me then?"
"I suppose we'll find out." Her voice was entirely passionless.
Well, that was a problem he knew how to fix.
Robin crossed the space between them - slow, cautious, the way he'd be with a deer in the forest. He didn't spook her. Not even when he reached out and pulled her toward him.
Not even when he kissed her.
He wanted to remember the way she tasted for the rest of his life - no matter how short it might be. Marian tasted like home. Long summers shooting apples out of trees in the orchard; winters curling up before the fire and wondering how long the harvest would last, how thin their soup would be in March. May, with flowers in her hair. Robin was no pagan, he would fight and die for the cross, but he worshipped her on those warm, sticky days of spring. When her hair tumbled down with ribbons all through it, and little beads of sweat gathered at her hairline as they danced.
Marian was all entwined there, in his history, and Robin knew he'd never be able to unravel her.
She was the better part of his heart, and she always would be. No matter what happened.
He thought he should tell her this - knew he should - but something stopped him. Robin had never been good at sincerity. Jokes were easy. He'd been a clever boy and he'd grown into a clever man, but he had never learned to speak the truth. At least not to her.
So as his mouth moved over hers, his hand cupped the back of her head just a little more fiercely, wrapping the hair at the nape of her neck around his fingers. Like he could keep her there with him until he had to leave. Like he could say everything he needed to without ever saying a word.
And Marian pressed into him, just as urgent, her heartbeat just as fast, and maybe she'd forgive him after all, maybe—
And then she cried out, pulling sharply away. She looked lost for a moment, like she wasn't sure where she was, or what had happened.
He said her name.
He said her name and moved toward her once again, and Marian stepped away shaking her head.
The ring was still in her hand, wrapped tight in her clenched fist. She held it out before her, rolling it between her long fingers. Looking back up at him, back at the ring in her hand. Her mouth tightened. The flash in her eyes told Robin everything he needed to know.
In a burst of anger, Marian wrenched her arm back and threw the ring hard, so it skittered across the dirt to land at Robin's feet.
He watched her, jaw dropped, as she pulled herself back together. Composed her face, turned around. Walked away.
And he watched her go.
And in the morning he left, and for five long years he remembered Marian's rage, felt it like the sting after a slap. He remembered her threats and her tears, and how she didn't look back as she left him in the dust outside her house.
But mostly, Robin remembered that in the midst of all her anger, she had still kissed him back.
She'd still kissed him back.