Sherwood Shenanigans, Part III of III

[queenofmay]

It takes all her will power not to run. Every faintly quickened, but not running, step toward her room. Which she knows anyone she passes will take as her running away from the Sheriff's hands. When it is far more directed in running to.

To the door of her room, which she locked without slamming. To the pile of clothes hidden under her mattress, the candles not even lit. To her Night Watchman costume, which goes on, as the dress gets thrown on the bed. It could be dealt with later. Coiling her hair quickly, as her mask dangled from a strap between her pressed lips. Her hair might end up far more knotted, but that could be dealt with later, too.


Then Marian was back at her door, beginning to push the mask up past her chin, as she looked down the dark hallway to the left.

Comments

[the_seafarer]

He really is terrible at sneaking.

Still, what is amusing when Amy is teasing him is less so when it becomes a matter of life and death as he attempts to find his way around an unfamiliar castle.

The girl had assured him that Marian's rooms are here, but he's wary of the long stretch of corridor between him and the door that had been pointed out as hers.

There's nothing for it; he starts forward, close to the wall, every nerve alight and hypersensitive. A motion -- he startles -- the door opens, and a dark figure strides through, before glancing away from him.

He frowns.

Whispered: "Marian?"

[queenofmay]

She turned at her name, sharp and tight as night, and cloaked in the colors of it now. Her face entirely lost behind a cloth and a mask, the night all but too dark to show how wide her eyes go.

It's too much habit for the costume, the cloth tight over her lips, that she doesn't speak the first question, another name to answer the voice that spooked her. But it is him in the dark. His shape, his face. Even as her heart staggered, with blinding relief, and she threw herself at him.


The smallest whisper escaping through silk against his shoulder. "Oh, thank God."

[the_seafarer]

She moves fast and silent, a swifter shadow than he could ever be, dressed in unfamiliar leathers and roughspun wool, but the form that presses up against him is familiar. One hand presses into the center of her back, the other finds the wall to balance himself.

This has been far too close. A single slip-up, a few less mercies from those who helped him, and he could have found himself at the gallows come daybreak.

For now, though, he can close his eyes and give silent thanks to Aslan that an escape was found, and that Marian is here.

He does not wish to pull away, but he does, looking down at her, searching for familiar eyes in a shadowed mask.

"We should retreat to your rooms. It is not safe to stand out here."

[queenofmay]

She doesn't need to be warned. She can't be found here, and she glances down the late midnight hallway, each way before hauling him him with her, back into her room.

Throwing the door back closed and locking it, in the pitch dark room, with one hand, while pushing up her mask, into the tumble of her hair and the hood of her cloak.

[the_seafarer]

There's the face he knows so well, the wide smoke-colored eyes that flick over his face. She at least looks as though she has fared better than he: she does not appear to be wounded, nor is her face more drawn or pale than it might be from worry and subsequent relief.

"Sir Guy helped me escape," he tells her, "but I lack my sword and Kiseki is still being held with your stallion in the stables here."

And then there was the man in the other cell. The one Guy had come to see, the one who had struck such surprise into Caspian.

But he says nothing yet.

[queenofmay]

"Sir Guy?" The repetition of the name is a shocked and disbelieving scoff in that silence. Even as she moved across the room, beginning to light one or two candles to take them from the realm of all shadows.

That was insane. The idea of it. Except he was here.




And Caspian did not have a reason to lie.



"I know where the stables are," she said a little distantly. Hadn't been there recently, but she knew where it was from childhood.

[the_seafarer]

"Yes. He found me there and rendered me aid. I can't imagine that will go well for him in the morning."

But he did not come to the dungeons in the middle of the night for Caspian, had no idea Caspian was there until he saw him, spoke to him.

She's lighting candles, but he follows her across the room, lays a hand gently on her arm.

"Marian, why didn't you tell me your father is a prisoner here?"

[queenofmay]

Even. Even as he says the words. Even as he drags that darkness from the ever-present whisper at the edges of her mind. She doesn't want him to know it. Doesn't want him to be holding it. If she'd had stillness in the darkness down leaving her door.

Even that moment had nothing on the stillness his question had brought her to.

She frowned, flickers of emotion chasing through the egg shell mask that was too easy to pull close to her after so many hours with Vaisey, the candle light casting shadows to chase it all. She reached up her free arm, the one he wasn't touching, to start pulling the pins from her hair, even as her eyes fell on his hand.

Because she couldn't. Because she was a fool. She can't say either, can't bare either in this darkness, or looking to him just yet. She starts with damning herself further. "This time, or last time?"

[the_seafarer]

His expression hardens. It's just a faint shadow, but it's there in the line of his jaw and the way his eyes study her so closely.

"It hardly matters," he says, a little clipped. "As I suspect you would have continued not speaking."

He feels a fool for not knowing, for not having tried to help because he was ignorant of the problem, but worst is the heaviness in his heart at the realization that even now, after everything they've entrusted to each other, she still chooses to carry her worries alone.

"He spoke to me in the dungeons. Truly, he is the reason I escaped. If Sir Guy had not come to bring him food, I expect I'd have hanged in the morning."

[queenofmay]

His anger, she expects. The way his voice is colder, more distant, more sharp, louder even when the timbre doesn't change. She can bare that. She just stood in a room for hours, her whole body is still singing with the aches, and watched far worse things said, about people's live, with glee.

But, even when the words about Guy are circling for confusion, she can't take Caspian last words. The snap went without thinking about it, because she couldn't believe he'd ever even thought. "I would not have let you hang."

[the_seafarer]

He doesn't flinch at the sharpness in her tone, and his hand remains on her arm for a moment longer before dropping to his side.

"Of course not, if you could have stopped it."

But he doesn't know how she could have, and he doesn't believe she knows, either.

It is not a thing he would wish to put to the test.

[queenofmay]

That single movement is almost worse than anything that could have words. She lives in a world of words. Her eyes had dropped, tellingly toward the movement, causing her mouth to stiffen, even as she shook her head and looked back up.

"I would not have let you die." Even for the edge of insult at not being believed, her voice is lower, firmer, and just the edge of raw from so many hours of use.

There was no part of her that could or would let him. She would not have slept. If she couldn't do it herself, she'd find the others that could. She could not lose him like that.

[the_seafarer]

There's a faint hoarse note to her voice that makes the shadow of a frown cross his face, but he nods.

Being locked in a dungeon couldn't shake his faith in her. "I know. But I am still glad that risks taken were not yours."

He could never stand for her to be punished just for helping him.

"Though we may yet risk even more. If you just tell me where the stable is, there will be nothing to tie you to either my arrest or escape."

[queenofmay]

Maybe if he were a different man, with green eyes, she'd scoff. Maybe if the weight of his gaze still didn't feel like an pleaded accusation in and of itself, maybe then. As it is his last words caused her eyebrows to rise. At the very least.



Her eyes narrow, unsettled in the half-light, voice faintly harder for the assumption, a note of something almost unnameable at the realization he came just to go. "You would have me not help you, now?"



"Then, you would what?" Her voice was a torn attempt at kindness and guilt. "Run away into the night, without any idea which direction you even came from to get here? Or where to go from here? You do not know my world at all."

And it was her fault regardless of whether it wasn't her choice.


Maybe if he was that person, she would have finished with You need me. Maybe if it weren't for everything else trapped, sharp and tight, smothering the air in her chest, with his one question.

[the_seafarer]

"Marian!"

He reaches forward to take her by the shoulders and meet her eyes. "This is not about wanting your help or not. You can not be caught with me. Do you think I would wish to leave without you? Do you think I would want to be lost in the woods? If you would not let me hang, I will not let you risk yourself for me."

It's impassioned, but she's stubborn, has been since the day he met her, and her strength and loyalty are things he respects and admires about Marian, but there are times when she needs to think as much for herself as for her friends, her family.

Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes, frowning with a shake of his head before opening them again.

Whether she says it or not, it's a truth he knows only too well. He needs her.

There's no way out of here without her, risk or no.

"Can I be blamed," he says, his voice softer now, but he's lost this argument and there's no denying it, "for wishing to keep you as far out of any of this as possible?"

[queenofmay]

"No." It's not a snipe. It's so flat as to almost be apologetic, staring at his hair in the darkness as he shook his head, listening to a quiet desperation she hoped never to hear from him. Not here, and not for her, and not as necessity to himself.

Marian took a breath in, pushing it right back out her nose and making her shoulders, in the span of his hands, sink slowly down from ram rod straight. The exhaustion of hours wearing through, the shock of him knowing bleeding off it's first staggering blow. "You cannot keep me out of my own life."

Because they are calling it two different things, that it is, with only one foundation to their word now.

And if Robin and her father never could stop her?

And if it did involve her father so far below, a week unknown?

[the_seafarer]

It isn't as though he doesn't know Marian can handle herself. He'd never willingly try a test of skill with her; he might be taller, stronger, but her abilities demand respect.

In a fight, she can deal as well as anyone who might come after her, but the thought of her being caught, clear proof of her involvement with Robin's men, turns his blood to ice.

But there's nothing for it: this is her world, her life, and he is absolutely dependent on her to return home. His hands loosen but do not lift from her shoulders, and he meets her eyes with his own rueful.

"All right. We'll make for the stables, find Kiseki." He pauses, and when he goes on, his voice is not unkind.

"Is there anything at all we can do for your father?"

[queenofmay]

Her jaw tightened briefly, but she didn't go still even if her eyes left his. To his arm, to somewhere between. Somewhere. Else. She can't look at him. Can't. And it is struggle to make words work there, when it is a struggle to stand near him and speak.

The only related words to her father in a week have been pleading to a man who gets the greatest satisfaction in having a reason to have her grovel at his feet. To have her standing in a corner like a song bird, knowing she won't fight back. For that solitary reason. The price is too high.

Even when it only strengthens her resolve. And desperation.


"I cannot tell you every single time The Sheriff threatens to do something to me, to any of us." She doesn't care if she's talking his arm near one of her shoulders. If she can't look at him, she can at least try to give him something.

"Half the time it is only that. Threats. Greater and greater threats. The earned fear is a great motivator to his aims where it comes to most people." She. She -- they aren't most people, she doesn't say.


Nor that 'the other half of the time,' is all cut tongues or hands, and poisoned people, and dead men swinging. That Nottingham has no other other half either. Except. Except the ribbon of hope being cut by Robin through the center slowly.

[the_seafarer]

If she will not look at him, at least she'll speak, though the question she answers is not the one he'd just asked. His hands are warm on her shoulders, his eyes are on her face, watching the play and flicker of emotions as they cross her features.

No. She cannot always tell him; he has no right to expect that she'd tell him anything but what she wished to. How could he, when he is so completely cut off from this world and all it's troubles? Wishing to help does not give him the ability to make it possible.

And yet -- and yet this is not a threat against people he may sympathize for but will never meet. It isn't an idle warning, intended to terrorize villagers.

"This is not an idle threat," he says, gentle. "You don't have to tell me, but, Marian, neither do you have to be alone in this."

[queenofmay]

"It is my fault he's there."


The amount of effort and emotion in those very small words, means her shoulders draw in and she steps away from him. At least from his touch. But she doesn't walk anywhere. There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere she can outrun that.

[the_seafarer]

"It is not."

When she turns, he lets her go, and he might not go after her, but neither does he move away.

"It's the Sheriff's fault. He is to blame for all of this. Not you. Never you."

It's the Sheriff who hurts the people he's meant to protect and says it's in the name of punishment for their wrongdoing, the Sheriff who imprisons unfairly and doles out vindictive rulings where he will. Marian can't be blamed for his actions. She may be the reason, but it is not her fault.

Not that he believes she will ever accept that.

[queenofmay]

No, she made a choice. She took a risk. A direct stand against The Sheriff. For Robin's life. Even if she'll claim aloud it might have been for both men. She made that choice. To defy him, so openly, before the whole of Locksley Village. Trusting, idiotically and arrogantly, she was safe.

And maybe she was. Still untouched a week later. But he'd done well to slam his point home into her heart for choosing to correct him, for calling his choice a mistake. Her eyes when she looked back at Caspian were a riot of all those emotions.



"It was only an hour after it happened the time-" She nodded, barely, trying to mean the day it happened. Filing in, with only thing she can think to shove there instead. "-the day you arrived in Milliways, again."

"It's only been a few days since." As though each hour doesn't have more weight. She keeps forcing the words, as though it's not a knife cutting through her. Hard straight lines in her face, as she looks to her bed or her window, not crossing her arms, hands curled.

Harder yet. To not let her voice flicker for the last words.

"I haven't seen him since that day. There are orders against it."

[the_seafarer]

She doesn't need to explain herself to him, will never need to explain herself to him, but he listens anyway, because she seems to need to tell him.

Even if the look in her eyes makes his heart contract and ache for her.

"He seemed well."

It's all he can offer her, a tiny thing to cling to, but, mayhaps, something. Anything.

"As well as could be. And Sir Guy has been bringing him food."

[queenofmay]

She'd argue if he'd said that. The sound of his voice after her question. The way he'd pulled away. Even if she has now, she isn't. Contradictory, but true. All of it.



And Guy. Clinging to his first words even as they went unanswered, she frowned with a bitter, sharp edge thinking about his last ones. "He said he would two days ago."

Right there at that door where they came in.

"I hadn't thought to ask him since." She shook her head.

"Maybe some part of him actually feels remorse-" And, oh, but these word are icy ironic and almost mean, with no faith to them. "-for standing there and doing absolutely nothing while my father was carted off as the price for keeping his own life."

Two. Two for one. They were both alive. And he had walked away. Not even saying a single thing to her after The Sheriff turned on her.

[the_seafarer]

He won't presume to know what Sir Guy might be thinking or what his motivations are, and he's not inclined to better his opinion of the man though he'd helped Caspian escape. The hearts of men and what good or evil they might accomplish are nothing he has ever been able to understand, though he'd swear that most are capable of great deeds of both.

The bitterness in Marian's words, therefore, he does not argue or attempt to cheer away, but there is nothing they can do to help her father tonight, and they must be quick if they hope to avoid capture.

"Marian," he says, gentle, "I am sorry for your father, for you, and everything you've lost. But I fear the guards will soon discover my escape, and will begin searching. If there is nothing we can do to aid your father, we must leave as soon as we can."