Alright, I got seven reviews... after I said I wasn't going to write any more because no one was reviewing...

I will continue, but I am not sitting here just writing for writing's sake, I'm writing because I have a story to tell. And in order to tell a story, there are two parties involved: the speaker, and the listeners. If no one's listening, then I'm basically just doing it to hear myself talk, which isn't what I'm doing.

I'm not going to say that I need five reviews or whatever before I continue, like some authors do. But I do want one.

I want one to know someone is still reading, at a minimum. Just to know I'm not talking to myself. I would absolutely love more than one, that would make me so very happy, but if I'm just talking to myself I will not update because there is no point. Does that make sense?

So from here on out, I will not post a new chapter until I get at least one review on it. Just SOMETHING from SOMEONE.

Alright?

Will didn't keep that mind set for long, though. Robin's actions over the next hour and a half would prove to him in his mind that he had made the right decision.

When she returned, the guards and noblewoman were still unconscious. Will was stunned; she had turned into someone completely different. He had been berating himself for thinking she could ever be a boy, but seeing her now made him realize why he had been fooled so easily.

It was as though he was looking at a male relative of Robin rather than Robin herself, and he wasn't entirely sure how it had happened. Her hair was messier now, and a few streaks of dirt went across her face to disguise the girlishly perfect skin. Her body was concealed again, probably with the same thick padding that had saved her life a few days ago, and her posture was different. He wasn't sure if it was a subconscious thing due to her being disguised as a boy, or if she was a far better actor than he had thought, but her shoulders hunched in a less-girlish way, her head was back against her neck to give her less of a defined, heart-shaped face and an extra swipe of dirt on her forehead disguised feminine eyebrows.

She was still by no means manly, but he never would have thought her a girl unless he knew otherwise.

She was quiet and subdued when she appeared through the trees, not quite melting as a full ranger melted but still slinking through the trees in a way that made her more difficult to see than any mere farmer in a bright red cloak would appear.

"How far of a walk was the village?" she asked. Her voice was still high and clear and feminine, but he remembered her speaking in a lower tone when she had been disguised before and he knew she would be able to do it again. "Twenty minutes, was it?"

"Only ten minutes if we ride," Little John said. Will heard a disconcerted snort from one of the horses concealed in the trees, who was probably not too happy at the prospect of having Little John atop his back once more. Will covered a flash of a grin behind his hand, which everyone but Gilan missed, who smirked as well.

Robin whistled, and the others did whatever they did to beckon their own creatures. Will patted Tug on his neck while the dog milled around his ankles, snorting at Max every now and again. He whispered into Tug's ear and then swung up onto his back, situating himself in the familiar saddle.

As they rode, Will kept the box of gold in his lap, which clanked softly whenever he shifted beneath it. He rode near the back while Little John rode in the front with Halt. Will shucked his Ranger's cloak, knowing it would do them no good to be recognized as rangers, and the others followed suit. Robin, who already had her red cloak on over her Ranger's cloak (to give her more bulk, Will assumed), didn't bother to take it out from underneath her red cloak.

In the short ride to the village, they stretched out in a straggling line along the road, with Will ending up riding beside Robin in the back of the column.

"You know," Will said, seizing hold of this opportunity. "I really don't know much about you. Everything 'Sandy' told me was a lie, wasn't it?"

Robin glanced over at him and had the courtesy to look shame-faced. "Most of it," she said, quiet. "But if I told you the real story, I risked you noticing who I was and all. I thought I was in for sure when we ran into Little John, but he hadn't seen me since I went to live in the Ward so he didn't much know what I looked like now... you might have figured it out, still, if you had a night to think it through."

Will took a moment to mull this over. "Well, then," he began. "Perhaps we should get to know each other better, then?"

She offered him a smile, which let some of her femininity show through. "That could work."

"Alright, Robin Hood," Will said. "Have you ever actually hunted before?"

"No," she answered quickly. "Never. I enjoy spending time with animals, not killing them. I eat meat, of course, I am not so picky as to turn down whatever food I was offered, but the act of killing an animal makes me uncomfortable. I know it's supposed to be a part of life and all, and that's fine, I just don't... I don't really want to take part in it."

Will of course could fill in the blanks with what she said, and he found himself understanding more of what she didn't say than he would have if she had tried to explain herself. She spent so much time with them alone in the woods, drawing them, that they really became her companionship, her friends almost.

He knew how lonely it could be to be a Ward.

"Then where did you learn to shoot?" he asked. "It seemed like you had shot before, even if you weren't practiced."

"I didn't." She shook her head. "Whenever I was grounded for going out into the woods, I would sit in my room and I would look out my window. Out my window was where the archers practiced, so when I was very bored I had no option aside from drawing them, unless I wanted to draw something from my imagination or the bricks of my room, so I drew them a lot. I studied them, their movements, their positions... for years, really. I suppose studying archers for years, and watching them until it's ingrained in your mind equates to your first archery lesson or two."

He was surprised at how open she was being, how very honest.

"If you're to ask about all the Ranger things, then I should explain my movements? I can move quietly because I spent years in my childhood sneaking up on animals to draw them, because trees and other still things got ever so boring, and you didn't see much of deer or rabbits in the castle, so I didn't know what they looked like well enough to draw them. So I had to be very still, and very quiet. It was one of those trips that I found Max...

"And Max taught me a lot, too. He would stalk animals and jump out at them, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how he moved so silently through the trees. It turns out, it's because he was barefoot. When you're barefoot your feet are more flexible and you don't need to break sticks or anything when you move. It was a good trick to have under my belt."

"Alright," Will said, nodding. It made more sense when she put those reasons behind it, although he realized he ought to have been able to be certain of both without her telling him. "A more pressing question: how did you trick us so easily?"

"People see what they expect to," Robin replied. She looked at him with those peculiar eyes and he saw a flash of the fiery girl he knew in her eyes. "Which isn't always what was in front of them. You had no reason to suspect different of me, did you, Ranger?"

"I suppose," Will replied. He felt somewhat abashed, because it was his job to suspect different of people and to see what others don't. He had just never thought that some random boy they ran into would be a girl, although you would have thought that meeting the Princess would have changed his mind... "What about the horse? He was remarkably well trained, you know."

"Oh," she said, glancing back at her gelding. "I didn't train him, he was Joshua's. I stole him because I needed a ride if I was ever going to make it out of that fief, and preferably a scary escort if I was going to avoid ending up dead in a ditch somewhere.

"He was trained for farm life, to pull a heavy plow, to answer to a whistle when he was on the other side of a field, to tolerate sheep dogs, and so forth."

"I see," Will said. Everything that had been so impressive about her collectively dissolved under close inspection, and he was struck by how small, delicate and very human she seemed, even in her boy costume. All she really was, was a girl who wanted to draw.

Of course, that wasn't entirely true. Over the next hour, he came to realize that she never would have been as happy as she thought as an artist. She would have been empty, unfulfilled, and a little bit sad.

They didn't talk much else, then. Will knew he had more questions, but none seemed to bubble up to the surface of his mind, so instead they made small talk about what the fief back home was like in the spring time, or what she thought of the Baron.

The farm houses came into view eventually, but they didn't stop there. The farmers were not the ones who were suffering the most right now; the farmers gave up a large portion of their income in taxes, yes, but they kept a portion of their food and didn't go hungry. The ones they worried about were in the poorer parts of town, who worked as shop keepers or blacksmiths, those who had no personal food source and only had money, that the Baron was sucking away bit by bit.

They made it to a part of town where the cobbles were broken and had slime in the cracks, and where the streets stank of raw sewage. Some of the roofs were lopsided and bending under the weight of water rot and the few children playing in the streets were skinny and covered in dirt. Most of them weren't playing, though. They were inside their houses, staring out at the motley assortment of folks in nicer clothes riding horses down their street.

The folks in nicer clothes never came to this part of town.

Not for anything good, anyway.

Robin got off of Nudge and reached up to Will. Will jumped off of Tug with the case in his lap and he opened it carefully, so that none of the onlookers would see what was inside. Robin reached in and removed ten coins, carefully counted, and dropped eight into her pocket. She looked around, faltering, then set out to the first residence in this part of town.

When she knocked, a woman answered. The woman was old with lack of sleep and poverty, not with years, but the lines creased her face all the same. She was bent as though the weight of the world had finally brought her shoulders down and a sort of sadness was in her eyes, as well as suspicion. A small child clung to her skirts who looked painfully thin, although Will's trained eyes knew that the child was getting more to eat than the woman was.

"We haven't got any money for taxes, they aren't due for another two weeks! Get yer money lovin' hands off my doorstep," the woman said, angry and distrusting of the person who seemed like a boy in a rich man's cloak, as nicely dyed as it was.

"I am not here for taxes," Robin said, somewhat taken aback at the woman's reaction. The woman squinted at Robin, suddenly uncertain.

"What are you here for? Ya can't arrest me, I paid my taxes, I'm a law abiding citizen. I'm a mother, too..." the woman trailed off, looking unhappily at the men on the street.

"I am not here to arrest you, Miss..." Robin trailed off, inviting the woman to share her name.

"I'd rather not say if I ain't being arrested," the woman said.

"I am here to help," Robin said, her voice smooth, low and calm. "The man in that castle is robbing you. I am Robin Hood, and I have robbed him back. I want you to have some of your money back. I know it isn't much, but I hope more will follow." Robin reached for the woman's hand and placed two gold coins in her palm.

The woman paused, her face not entirely sure what expression it wanted to take on. When she decided, she looked up at Robin with nothing but pure gratitude on her face. She hugged the child in her skirts closer to her.

"Thank you, Robin 'Ood. Bless you," the woman said. Tears were in her eyes. Robin might not know just how much the gold coins were worth, but Will knew that in this part of town you were lucky to make one of those coins in a week, and the family would be able to survive for a month off of those coins. It really threw into perspective just how much the Baron was taking from them by trying to get ten coins out of them every month, when they made four or five on average.

The woman whispered to her child, and Will, being the closest, heard what she said. "Darling, Mama's going to buy you those new shoes you wanted... Yes, they will be a size big so you can grow into them..." Will glanced down at the child's feet, and saw that they were completely bare and caked in mud. The child was wearing completely thread-worn Sunday clothes that ended several inches above his ankles, and mud said that he had been wearing them for days.

"Thank you very much," the woman said, and closed the door behind her. Robin turned and looked back at the others, a huge smile on her face.

That was when Will realized that she wouldn't have been happy as just an artist, and he realized she really was supposed to be a Ranger.

She was supposed to make a difference.