[Episode OOM -- "Childhood" 2.03 (3)]

[queenofmay]

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Part VI

~*~

Locksley Manor would always evoke too many memories, a heaviness that settled into her chest like a weight even as she tried to push through it. Stabling her own horse in a stall she'd used across half her life, next to horses who had been there a shorter number of years. Places where she had once run and play, as beloved, but disobedient child. Places where she had walked and talked and laughed, once.

Even Thornton, who kept the house as long as she'd known of it, whom she only nodded to, with a quiet thanks, when he let her in the door, not truly answering the deeper question of concern in his eyes than the small question of what brought her here so late. Who had told her she could find the Lord of Locksley in the main room, handing her off to a guard to lead her.

Three years of saying that and it didn't give in the slightest. Three years she heard it, in one fashion of another. Guy of Gisborne, Lord of Locksley, in Robin's stead. As a punishment that might never end. But they weren't all Robin's memories either. There was the room where Guy announced their engagement. There was the staircase where Guy had both dragged her to see his wealth, and stabbed her, in the hopes of killing the Nightwatchman. And there was Guy standing half-dressed.




That was not a memory.

Marian blinked, her head tilting, out of breath.

Having turned from handing the guard her cloak, she found a sight she hadn't expected in any of her plans. Guy of Gisborne being fitted with what must have been the Damascus Steel armor Robin had been talking about. Silver pieces strapped across the front of his legs, over black trousers, that a man was on his knees sizing for him. While he, himself, was putting another piece on across the length of an upper arm.

Over nothing but his skin. There was no shirt. It would have been proper to step back. To ask the guard for an announcement of her presence. But her feet took her forward. Not backward. Compelled. By curiosity, she would tell herself. It was like nothing she'd seen. The armor. Pieces of it scattered on the table near him, gleaming bright with the light from firelight behind them.

Wasn't is supposed to be entirely a ruse when he looked up, at the sounds of her boots, catching her staring -- the way she took a surprise breath in, as her eyes hit the floor suddenly, cheeks flushing as she said, "Forgive me."

Comments

[landlesslord]

"Marian, it's late."

Guy had steeled himself on seeing her enter the room, somehow, after everything, she still held some mysterious power over him. A power he could not allow her to wield successfully.

"Why so urgent?"

[queenofmay]

"I wish to speak to you."

Marian raised her eyes, back up to him. Her chest tightly uncomfortable as she discovered the impossibility of not knowing quite where to set her gaze. Apologetic would not have her chin up, eyes on his entirely. And to drop her gaze below his chin, even slightly, was to set it on the guard at his feet. Which presented another point.

She'd have to say these words. She'd said she would. She was sure Vasey would likely ask about, given his pointed opinion of her chances. But that didn't mean she had to bear anyone else hearing it. She left her focus on the guard there. "About a personal matter."

[landlesslord]

A personal matter? That he was supposed to drop his current concerns for and attend to so late in the day? The sooner it was dealt with though, the sooner he could turn his attention back to checking his armour.

He removed the arm-piece he'd just started to fasten and handed it to the servant, who was quickly dismissed.

Marian then. He crossed the room, moving away from the warmth of the fire and closer to her. "Yeah? What is it?"

What could not wait until the next day?

[queenofmay]

He stepped off the raise he'd been standing on and walked toward her. With no pretense toward covering himself. Leaving her eyes to pivot up and down several times, as she tried to martial what to say along with what to do with that, before he stopped right in front of her barely the length og two feet away.

"There is bad blood between us." She started, softly, appealing, between looking up and down, and right back up, again. Headed toward the words she would hate to say. But would. Every single one of them. For a child's life.

[landlesslord]

Bad blood? He was past that. He had been angry before, yes, but now? If he was to continue and achieve what he wanted?

"You overestimate yourself. I had feelings for you, I made no bones about that, but now..." After she had shown him the price of those feelings? He shook his head slightly. "I feel nothing."

Though still, it was not so easy to be faced with the memory of that rejection.

"I have larger concerns. Ambitions."

[queenofmay]

Marian tried not to be pinioned by his words. Knowing what he said was true, if deeply uncomfortable, and not an excuse or salve for everything else he'd done. Then or now. "Well, is there no hope of a reconciliation?"

This was one of the hitches of believable lying. Finding some small shred to focus your belief in, no matter how outlandish. He had done, and likely would do terrible things. And yet, this morning he had spared children. Enough to aggregate Vasey.

She tried to hold only that thought as she beseeched him, "I know you are a man capable of compassion."

Even when he looked away, she carried forward. Raising a hand, "I offer..."

But her voice had failed, her throat gone dry, at the image of her hand, between them, so very little space from his chest. And, with all of her balance gone, her voice turned out so much breathier and torn, as she forced herself to start it again. "I offer friendship." 

Seeing suddenly the moment from days ago. 

Completely blown away by the thought, no matter how garish and utterly inappropriate and unrelated, that if she touched his chest again. His heart would be beating. His skin would be warm. That even now she could see the raise of his chest, just breathing in and out. 

[landlesslord]

Reconciliation? It was almost painful to hear her talk of it. Almost. But like he had said, he felt nothing.

And yet...

Friendship? It struck him once again that he was alone - partly through choice, partly necessity, but mostly through circumstance.

It is difficult not to take her outstretched hand in his own.

[queenofmay]

His hand curved around hers, thumb tucking over her knuckles, and Marian's breath caught again. His hands were warm, and the world continued to stutter through her. Again. Again it came, already known, but so sudden and so overwhelming against the warm of his fingers.

Sir Guy of Gisborne is dead.

Not yet. Not here. But there. With no heart beat, and no breath, and not this kind of warmth. Dead. And she doesn't know how, or when, or where. Just trivial details. And she can't tell him, she can't tell anyone. Anyone else would be glad, would celebrate it.

"Guy?" Her voice escaped her, trembling, just as she went to look from thier hands (the precarious gentle way he was taking hers, as though afraid it might strike him) to his face.


Except a movement caught her vision. And there was Robin, watching her from the window, and it was enough to feel as though she had been roughly slapped. That she should have been greateful. After all he'd put her through. After everything.

Marian tried to pull her eyes from Robin and her hand from Guy.

[landlesslord]

Her hesitation and withdrawal breaks the spell and instinctively Guy grasped her retreating hand more tightly.

"What?"

He can feel something vitally important slipping away.

[queenofmay]

Why. Was her throat was closing. Were her eyes prickling. She shouldn't care. He had done terrible things. Even if he hadn't killed the children, he held another hostage. Right now. People were still dying. She -- all the things he'd done to her. She couldn't dredge up gratitude, for them even?


Almost to a question he hadn't asked, her head shook too fast. "I don't know."

[landlesslord]

Tantalisingly, frustratingly slipping out of his fingers. And he didn't know what it was.

"Marian, what is this all about?"

[queenofmay]

"It's about friendship." She repeated it. Clinging to her last words that made sense. "That's all."

Trying to thrust the spin of her thoughts, and the racing inside her chest anywhere else but here, and another set of words almost about friendship. But now. She had to make her voice stop trembling. To focus on the reason she was here: as willing colateral to save the life of a child, keeping the lie in a ruse.

That's all.

[landlesslord]

"No," it couldn't be all. There had to be more, he was certain. "This isn't about friendship."

"You want your freedom back," standing so close to her that he couldn't resist caressing her cheek, as if to check that she was really there. "That's what this is all about, and I can't give that to you."

[queenofmay]

The back of his finger stroked down her cheek, as her chest tightened against his words, eyes still pircking, as those words marked on something too close and too deep and too true. While he was the only, and every, reason for that missing freedom.

Her house burnt down to ashes. Imprisoned daily.

She pulled her hand back as though he had burned it, too.

With the touch to her cheek. The words about her freedom.

[landlesslord]

Withdrawal. This was the reality he was used to. Guy's hand clenched around nothing and he steeled himself a little more.

"You and your father, you’ve made your own bed."

[queenofmay]

Slight upon slight. Lies she could not rebuke.

Insinuations that weakness, selfishness, was her reason.
That all of could be laid at their feet. For fighting back.



Steps interrupted the silence of trying to plan anything. Guy's scowl toward the person behind her. And voice with low apology. "Sorry, Master. There's a messenger from the Sheriff."

She took that for the miracle it was. Allan's arrival; and her dismissal from this. This whatever this was. That was over.

"I should go," Marian said quickly, and turned on her heel walking toward the door before he could stop her. Praying he wouldn't call after her to do just that.

[landlesslord]

A messenger from the Sheriff.

The Sheriff, always at the wrong time, and Marian, always leaving at the first opportunity.

Guy clenched his teeth, trying to calm some of the sudden anger he felt. He would have to deal with this messenger and then try to make sense of Marian after.

[queenofmay]

It had been a straight shot, sparing no time and few words, only to the servant who held out her cloak. Fastening as she made her way out of the house and back into the stable for her borrowed horse, all of her confusion giving way to much easier sharp anger.

She'd had him just untethered, and begun to lead him out, when a voice from the further stall area called, "That looked friendly."

Marian looked back, knowing it was sharp. How she moved, the words that came out, "You were spying on me."

"I was not spying on you," Robin returned instantly, surprised and defensive, even as he leaned an arm out on the saddle. "I was making sure you were safe."

"I was safe," Marian shot back, turning back to the horse, and the door she'd been headed for.

Gisborne might be a terror, and quite dangerous to even those in the service of The Sheriff. But he had never once dared to raise a hand against her. At least not when she wasn't dressed as the Nightwatchman. "Shouldn't you be making sure Allan is safe."

She look back at him, shaking her head, feeling it all unraveling. "I've played my part."

Marian led the horse out, leaving Robin behind, listened to him call out her name, bewildered confusion at her temper and her words. But she didn't have it in her to look back, to say anything that wasn't going to be terrible at that moment. And Allan truly might need him.