Living in Trinity

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

~*~

The guards at the foot of the stairs dropped the blocks before her once again, as each time before it, and it was all she could do to keep her frustration and desperation from coming out in another fashion. Calling out, even as she hated the plaintive note in her voice, which made it a plea more than an order to the man she could not even see from here. "Please, Jailer, Let me see my father."

"Can't be done." The cold voice called back from the darkened interior, twisted and turned around another corner, deeper into the dungeon. The footsteps of his movements, against his cool, annoyed, voice. "I've tol' you."

(  Marian, I am well. )

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

~*~

Marian had been surprised by the early summons to dress and be prepared to accompany The Sheriff to Locksley still. For what, she was informed once dressed and arriving at the gate, would either be the hanging of one of the peasant boys or a trade with Robin for his property. The Black Diamonds, she now knew were used to make the Damascus Steel for Guy's armor.

Things she didn't offer any knowledge about, only annoyance. Being pulled from her bed to attend to his dealing with 'an outlaw,' when her father was still doing poorly and her time was better spent at his bed. It wasn't exactly a lie either, but dissent meant The Sheriff ordered her into the carriage.


( It wasn't as though she could ask why Daniel was still at Locksley Manor )

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

~*~

Coming up with a plan to get herself out of the Castle wasn't actually all that hard. She'd had several those bouncing around in her head since the moment she managed to escape House Arrest the first two times Count Frederick had pushed The Sheriff's hand, after The Sheriff had pushed her on him as entertainment.

( Getting out wasn't the problem. )

It's been over a month since she's seen Milliways.

It made her reluctant to return to any space where she could even see The Door.

It's definitely why she spent the afternoon riding, as fast as she could, as far away as possible, before she returned. To Milliways. To the Door. And, eventually, to the House of Arch. To the room she hasn't seen since the night everything was taken away.

She took a long bath before curling up on her bed, thinking about her return.

There isn't even an option in the through process.
Her father needs her; Robin; their people.





But still she falls asleep there, with her hair still dripping rose water in thick, sticking, curls, on top of her pillows and blankets, for the first time not rigid with the tension of being watched.

Marian walked through the stalls of cloth, picking up pieces and putting them down. Too many of them reminded her of gowns once had, their remnants now as burned epitaphs to a life that was gone. The others only clear reminders of the life she had slunk into. The grievous insults and mockery she would have to withstand so long as she stayed in Nottingham Castle.

Perturbed was the mildest of terms for what she was, where mild was far from true.

She took regretful delight in snapping at the guard who followed her through the market square.

When the peddler came up behind her, arm widening a cloak with trinkets galore and head too near to her ear, her first thought had been to deck him. Her fingers had balled into the cloth in her hands until she'd glanced up while he started his spiel--the voice and the presence dissolving the most topical layers of her tension as she realized it was Robin. She shook her head in show to his offer, small smile tugging her lips even as she thought he was being too cavalier being so close to her under guard.

Turning slowly from the cloth, Marian looked to her guard with a more-acted-than-true-annoyance now and beyond him where Robin moved to, nodding himself to Much and Little John also cloaked and hooded.

She idled herself with another bolt next to the red one she'd just set down, listening to the riot the men were starting not thirty feet from her. Her peripheral vision stayed with her guard as Much started shouting and then both men, plus the cabbage seller got into a fight over freshness--a fight her guard, as pillar of Nottingham would be bound to break up. The moment the guard turned, coming from two different sides of the walkway, Marian and Robin both moved to walk down it.

"They have you well guarded."

"Why did I choose this?" Marian hissed, watching his face as his hand at her waist urged her further and faster through the market aisle, leaving the loud ruckus behind him. "I can hardly breathe in there."

"Shh." His hand tightened on her side. "What happened?"

"They're expecting a guest today. A rich German Count, and their making me fawn over him, making me dress up and act--"

"A German? Do you think the Sherriff and Prince John are looking for allies abroad?"

They pulled off from the main market aisle taking a side street, as Marian shook her head. "He's not ally. He's a gambler. The sheriff has set up gambling tables in the castle. He's planning to fill his new strong room with the Count's money."

Robin's smile was wide and amused, as they stopped amid laundry sheets hanging. "You see, another good reason to rob him."

"Robin," Marian said imploringly, edged with both annoyance and concern. "Please do not go down there. It's dangerous."

"You know me. I like a challenge" he said, leaning in toward her. The arrogant smirk of amusement shifting softer, as his hand came to rest at the base of her neck, across it and up through her hair. His voice was little better than a pleading whisper. "You don't have to do this."

"Yes. I do. Without me you wouldn't even know there was a strong room."

Robin laughed, cocky and arrogant covering that slip. "England needs me."

"Yes. England needs me." Marian countered, tartly with half a frown, followed by the barest pause as she studied his face. "England needs us."

"And I need you."He leaned in and kissed her deeply and she reached up, curling her hand around the back of his at her throat.

She did not know how long it would be until she'd see him again. Days, possibly a week, time passed so achingly slow inside the high walls.

Marian tried to cast all of it out for the brief seconds her lips were pressed against his, to taste only the sunshine and the trees and the rich earth of Sherwood and all the was Robin, but at the same time she hoarded each sensation, the pressure of his lips, the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips, the scent of the forest and a well needed bath, things to clutch to once she was alone among the wolves again.

Pulling away, she smiled, small and true and false all at once, giving his hand a light squeeze.

Then she let go, angling her face upward and ignoring the clench of her stomach as she called out, "Guard!"

Robin drew a breath in, surprised and annoyed and amused, as he turned off toward the side and left her there once again.

Marian forced herself to come out from behind the house where she'd fallen apart. If she didn't move she wouldn't stop (crying, shaking, and the urge to scream was far too great. What was a life without Robin Hood? Why had she rebuked him and rejected him, made fun of his plea for her to run away with him? If she had only know a few hours ago where they would have been now, she would have gone. She would have found a way to rescue her father afterwards.

She pulled the dress on and made herself walk out, forcing down sobs, denying to let people see her this way. Vasey’s spies were everywhere. She brushed a tree out of the way, watching the wind ripple the sheet hanging on the line before her, until suddenly one side of it blew--no, was pulled back and Robin was looking out.

"Robin!"

If it was possible her heart ached more seeing his face, and the impossibility of breathing was made worse when he smiled, and somehow she knew she must have been smiling, but all she could do, all she could think of doing was throwing her arms around him and putting all her weight into it. His built, but still thin body against hers, her fingers threading into his hair, and his laughter, mocking and amused, filling her ears as tears welled in her eyes again. Joy. Joy, this time. Vasey had lied. Vasey had been wrong.

Robin--her Robin--was alive.

"Who died?" He laughed, only one arm wrapped around her.

Marian culled her hand tight around the back of his neck, not wanting to pull away yet, especially as her voice trembled. "You did. The sheriff said you were dead."

"The sheriff--" He steered her, half detaching her, only to slide an arm around her so they were head back through the laundry lines the way she had originally come. "--is plotting to kill the king, with his friends the Black Knights. They've already divided England between themselves. You can't go back into the castle!"

"We must get word to the King." Marian said, brushing her hair back from her cheeks as they walked. "Nottingham is not safe."

"It's not just Nottingham," Robin said, pulling her before a doorway of another house. "The Black Knights--they're everywhere, taxing the poor of England to pay for an army of mercenaries."

"Well, then we must stop them," Marian said, steel bounding back into her voice, watching him take a few steps, before she turned back the way they'd come. "I must go back to the castle-"

Her hand was grabbed and she was jerked back. "It's too dangerous!"

"Robin!" Marian said, looking back at his face, having another wave of the same relief she'd felt only minutes ago. She shoved it down this time. There were other things she had to focus on now. She had to, she had to or she might do anything but what was necessary. "Having a spy on the inside, when there's a coup being plotted, is useful-"

"No!" He yelled, his face mottling red. "Just listen to me!"

She loved that, even if he was wrong. It was so easy to take all of it and turn it into snapping. "And my father is in there, Robin. I have to go back."

"Marian," he said it softer, hands coming up, then moving closer to her. "I can't protect you in the caste."

Oh, silly, arrogant, well-meaning, boy. She moves forward, raising her hands to slide them against his cheeks. Her throat closing and her eyes still watering. "Two minutes ago, I thought you were dead and I would have given anything for another chance to be with you-"

His hands raised and mimicked hers, warm against her cheeks, warm from fighting and dirty from the pit, still impossibly alive against the odds, and everything she always respected. "Well, then take that chance, and come with me."

Marian threaded her fingers back into his hair, leaning closer to his face, every particle of the ache in her chest wanting, as she said, "But listen."

"What?"

She leaned in and kissed him, using the words he had used on her. The softness of his lips, against the roughness of his beard, against her mouth and her fingers. "The little voice saying yes." Her hands fells from his cheeks to the wrists of his hands on the sides of her neck now. "When the king is home. Safe."

Marian turned and walked away, toward the castle quickly, praying he wouldn't call her name and take all the will she had left not to go with him.

There's going to be a display in the courtyard near the market place.

She heard two guards talking about it while walking the corridor between her rooms and the chapel. (She hadn't felt the need to pray. No, the urge for space was simply that great. The need to move, to walk, to figure out her situation beyond being locked into one room where she would be under her father scrutiny and warning.) When another set of guards came out leading children toward the square she followed them-- until she found find herself behind crossed pole arms when she'd tried to walk out and stand in the crowd to watch.

Not even orders about staying in Nottingham since their arrest last night, but orders about not leaving the Castle proper.



The Sheriff swaggered in the crowd talking about the women tied to the stake in the center of the square. A guard has taken pity on the children for stealing bread, and let their mother take their punishment. He claimed they had to loose a hand. The mother whined and sobbed from her position while the children were locked down at the wrist, and the Sherriff read.

"I, Vasey, Sheriff of Nottingham here pronounce sentence of little tiny Billy and little Tiny Jane blah-de-blah-de-blah-chop off their hands!"

The mother screamed and Marian watched, lip pursed, her whole body flooding with relief when the children's manacles were suddenly shot free by two arrows. The Sheriff antagonized him, and Robin shot the executioners axe away, and then the ropes binding the mother. He screamed for them to run, but she screamed they couldn't. Marian watched with growing confusion, as she called out those words, whispering, "No, Robin. Don't go down."

She couldn't figure how, but something....something was wrong.

He scaled down a house, hitting guards out of his way, tossing a knife to the mother telling her to pick the locks.

She caught it, but didn't move.

Then Guy yelled, "Now!"



Marian's blood ran cold, fists clenching at her side as she stepped closer to the crossed pole arms, only to be pressed back.

Guards in peasants robes came out of everywhere at him, surrounding him in only seconds. She half-shook her head, unable to feel surprised, unable to turn away, unable to give any reaction she actually felt. Robin's sword fell with a clatter before Guy and the mother. Who wasn't a mother, but an actress wearing a skin mask and a wig; both removed to betray strikingly pale skin and long curling blonde hair.

She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she stood there the whole time they did.

Until the guards had to move her when Robin was walked into the castle in chains.

[From Here]

After her father had fallen asleep sitting up (for the second time), Marian spent the better part of an hour convincing a guard to let her leave to use a privy. A million excuses and reasoning’s that fell from her lips, forgotten as soon as they were said, until he conceded to her whim. When she'd opened the door to the privy, she'd found something better than an empty room. There was Milliways on the other side.

She slid in, keeping the view out, and closed the door behind her, body leaning against it's solidness. The peripheral glance showed that nothing looked like it should. Which meant everything was normal at the end of the universe.

Marian left her head fall back against the door, eyes looking upward, body resolutely still, and finally let out a breath that shook like the leaves in early winter.

The night's deliveries to Merton hadn't taken as long as she expected.

Her horse stabled, she climbed the house outside her bedroom window and lighted in as silently as possible. Her father would not be surprised to have her gone out as the Nightwatchman, but she did not tell him when she went more often than she did. It gave him less to worry about, and the less he was worried the less she had to spend worrying about him, and his possibly reactions or actions, in turn.

Walking across the room, the pale light from down stairs cast through open door and a large shadow in it. Knowing the door had been closed when she left and her father wouldn't stand in the shadows, Marian's lips quirked into a smile even ash she didn't stop. She walked toward her bed, pulling back her hood, and then pulled off her mask, tugging the down the cover over her cheeks and mouth.

Pulling her hair free, she announced, "And that's all I'm taking off until you go away," before walking on to light the candles on the mantle above the fireplace.

It was followed by a quick laugh and slow swaggering steps forward into her bedroom. "You're a spoil-sport, Marian." He stepped up behind her and she wonder what would come next, knowing Robin it could be anything. Especially given the last few weeks. But it was followed with a more neutral, business like tone. "What do you make of this?"

She looked up, managing to catch the object through at her in mid air. Her fingers tensed, but her palm stayed half-open, cradling the ring that she longed to crush under her heel already. "The sheriff’s insignia?" Marian toyed with it, looping the tip of her thumb inside the band and she looked up expectantly. That could not be all. He wasn't that daft.

"We took it off a women on her way to Nottingham today. And she had men." Her eyes followed him, as she turned to light other candles in the room, wondering where this would end after the details. It wouldn't be beyond him to ask, or beyond him to not recognize the reminents were burned beyond use. She looked instead at the stick she was lighting with or the ring in her hand. "They were well trained. It was like a military unit."

His movement cast a shadow on the wall when he made an exaggerate arm movement. "And she's been granted the sheriff’s insignia."

Marian, still looking at the ring, began to frown. "And what does that mean?"

"I don't know," he said, more quietly, more confidingly as Marian blew out the stick and set it down. "I was hoping you or your father might know."

Marian resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. Sweet though he could be sometimes she wondered if he considered the ramifications of the choice she'd made. She kept her voice soft, walking back toward him. "I get the feeling we're not too welcome in corridors of power."

"Good." She looked up at him, a reluctance there that had nothing to do with him. "Come and join my gang."

From one impossibility to the next. Marian looked down once, face only half blanked, as the weight settled again from both directions. The forced air between her lips made a quiet almost-laugh. She turned away, saying, "In your dreams."

"Wait."' Robin said, taking her arm and pulling her back, pulling her so that she was only inches from him again. "Listen."

He leaned in, one hand caressing her check and ear, and kissed her. Nothing like the kiss on horseback or a number of the ones between then and now. Yet somehow its soft and sweet nature, nearly chaste, impatient nature, still caused her heart to rush at the same time as it caused it to sink. "Did you hear it?"

"What?"

"That kiss spoke volumes," he said, whispering now, leaving his hand tangled in her hair.

"Did it?" Marian asked, watching his face. "And what did it say?"

He pulled her in, closer this time, into his arms until she was resting against him. Where she went gladly, feeling like some part of her that couldn't relaxed even without her admission to the action. Her eyes closed and she let out a quiet breath, but as he spoke into her hair she watched the ground with some sadness. "It said Marian wants to come and join your gang."

"Really?" She gave a small laugh against his shoulder, eyes focused with intensity on the wall far from them. And the pain somewhere, without a location, inside her at the request. "That's not what I heard. What I heard was a little voice saying--" Marian pulled back from him, away from his arms, the warmth and shelter and rest they offered. Away from them she could look into his eyes, squarely and still keep her expression between stern and mocking. "--abandon your home, abandon your father, give up any hope of a normal life, and take up arms with a man who thinks resistance is about showing off with a bow."

He pulled back stung, and while she regretted hurting him, she could not regret her words.

Or their truth.

"That's not fair."

"And to do what?" Marian asked, letting him take more steps back, to move in more space, because it was easier for both of them. "To wait for a king who, lets face it, may or may not make it home."

He started laughing. That--and his insufferably wide grin suddenly--was far more infuriating than any tart response she had expected to her dressing down. Annoyed, she blurted, "What?"

"So you have been thinking about it then."

Marian blinked, and looked down, her mouth tugging into a rueful grin.

From the window suddenly came the sound of thudding hooves and a horse whining, and Robin dashed to the window first, Marian close behind him. He leaned inward where she looked from a few feet back heart icing over as she spotted in the flickering light of a handful of torches Gisborne leaping off his horse and the guards who surrounded him.