Episode 1x13 "A Clue: No"

She watched the mask burn.

It was harder than she thought.
Even with an extra few nights to think about.

The clothing she dropped to her side unable to toss it into the flames yet, unable to look back to the fire yet.

"How are you feeling?" Robin's voice came from behind her, softer than normal, more unassuming, and she turned to look at him, her hand still resting on the mantle.

"I have been to see Guy." The fire crackled louder than their voices and Marian told herself it was the scent of the burning leather, not his face, that cause her to swallow before she spoke again. "I've challenged him."

"And let me guess: You asked him if he was a traitor, he said he wasn't and you believed him," Robin walked forward, arms being thrown out, the annoyance in his tone smaller, and yet sharper, than she expected.

"Yes."

He looked way and she pulled her hands together, her fingers working against each other. Last night or this morning (weeks ago) she had told him that they never once spoke the truth to each other. She could not help feeling that even this, this exchange of words, was nothing more than an act they felt they had to perform.

There was a hollow defeat in the pit of her stomach, as Marian stared at his face turned toward the stairs.

She gathered her strength, and her own faith, to her to try this again. Somehow softer, somehow easier for both of them.

"Robin, I think you've been wrong about him."

(Tyrants act from fear, the secret font of all anger.)

"No." He stared at her, face a cross between ludicrous and deathly still annoyance. "Trust me. I've been right about him."

"Maybe the differences between you and he is not so huge. And isn't that your thesis?" Marian asked walking closer to him. "Isn't that the Robin world view?"

(That fear buried deeply within tends to spring from a lack of something more important than lands or power.)

"What thesis?" Robin asked, barely opening his mouth, jaw obviously tensed the closer she had come.

"That one man is much like another. That the poor are no different from the wealthy and just as deserving." She felt her own annoyance sprout as he looked away from her face, beginning to scoff, but she went onward, not allowing him to interrupt. "Why can not you apply you charitable principles to someone who has been deprives in a different way--"

(For me, it was lack of belonging, lack of love.)

"--deprived of love."

He stood up, that arrogant smirk enough of an answer that she wanted to sigh. His tone was audacious, even in their shared quiet. "Deprived of love?"

Robin walked behind her, toward the fire, shaking his head and Marian stared forward toward the door. Her lips pressed together and one of her hands balled into a fist. She threw her hands out, clenching her fingers in. Brought them back to the sides of her dress. Crossed them before her again.

He was not listening. How could she make him understand? Make herself understand. Make this better--easier--something less than what they both knew was making itself out to be.

There had to be something she could say. Or do.

"The Nightwatchman?"

The name was a dagger. She did not have to turn to know he was looking either at the mask in the flames or her clothing on the floor. This had to be done. It could not be worse than five years ago, she told herself, even as her heart betrayed her thought.

Marian turned on her heel, everything inside of her screaming not to say the words even as she did, "This is goodbye, Robin."

His back tensed before her, turning to her with a look she did not expect. One of quiet--what was that? Plea? Sadness? Regret?--held in patient check. But still she made herself keep speak. "It is time for both of us to grow up and accept our lot in life."

"Are you marrying him?"

There was no other way.

All the danger, all their words, all his promises brought to nothing.

She took a breath in (hating herself and her father and him and Guy and the Sheriff and the King).

"I am marrying him."

He nodded, looking down. "Very well."

"Pardon?" Marian asked, her head tilting.

She expected many things of Robin, but this--?

"You said grow up," he repeated, voice still and empty, walking toward her, eyes on the floor, only glancing up for the briefest second as he walked past her. "I'm growing up."

Marian turned but he continued to walk onward.

"Robin?"

Across the room, across the threshold.

"Where are you going?"

He didn't answer or hesitate.

He simply kept walking toward his horse.



As the maelstrom in her stomach revolted in terrified confusion, Marian raised a hand and slammed it, palm open, against one of the standing beams.



Neither the sound, nor the shock of pain, helped.

(no subject)

[OOM: Back in Nottingham, on the day before her wedding, aka The Day That Will Not End, Marian gets what she asked for.]

When the door open on to Milliways only half an hour later, Marian glared contemptibly at the Bar and abandoned the bar proper in favor of the stables.

She spent the next few hours riding hard across the land toward the mountains, following beaten paths until they gave way to streams and sparse trees and untouched lands. After resting in the foothills, eating bread and cheese from her sack, the earlier evening was spent on leisurely ride back toward civilization.

Now returned, Marian is walking toward the stables, reigns in her hands while Lineave follows close behind her.

They both look quietly, contentedly, drained.