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It takes time to get used to it: sleeping in the manor when he's used to the forest, the stars behind their heavy cloud blankets winking sleepily at him up above. Inside there is only stone overhead, grey almost as dark as soil, everything dim no matter how many candles Robin wastes. They can afford it now, certainly, but still something in him rebels against that very fact, the idea of being gentry again, of being able to burn candles when there are those not so far away who are still in darkness. It itches, the thought of it, the money in his pocket, the fine warm fabric he wears and clothes his wife in, the food and wine – no matter how hard he works and no matter how much he gives away, no matter how many lives he's saved. No matter how things are improving, slowly, steadily, for the common man under Richard's less tyrannical rule.
He spends long days outside as the year winds on to that point where everything seems damp, a dampness that never dries no matter how many fires you light. He remembers this same dampness from back in the camp, the way it grew familiar against your skin, they way they had huddled together around campfires in air rich with the smell of roasting game. Now he goes out to the villages bringing food. The people reach out to touch the hem of his clothes as if he were a king or a saint and it makes him uncomfortable. Everywhere, people are grateful. Robin dislikes that their gratitude plays on his ego in a way that's not entirely unpleasant. He's grateful, himself, for his men, his friends, because they keep him from getting above himself.
Will, especially. Will has always, from the very first, been spectacularly good at taking Robin down a peg or two. Showing him his hypocrisy, the distance he still has to travel before he makes up for the luck of his birth. There's an honesty to it which is uncomfortable and important.
Will lives with them, now, officially. Though he hardly spends more than a night at a time in the manor before disappearing off again. Robin knows Will feels the same uneasiness he does being there, but he doesn't know how to put that right, how to make Will feel more at home in a place that, honestly, Robin doesn't feel too comfortable in either.
Marian is better at it. She smiles and jokes and takes Will's arm after dinner when they go together through to the hall where the great fire is lit, in a way that makes Robin feel... not jealous, exactly. More just outside, a little. Looking in for a change.
He finds Will at the old camp site, once. Or rather, Will finds him. Robin's taken to going back there from time to time, times when he hasn't been sleeping and everything is a bit grey and hazy and Marian is worried about how tired he looks. Something about the emptiness of the place is peaceful to him at those times. Reassuring. Because it's no longer needed, it's not necessary for his men to sleep rough in the forest away from their families, to steal from wealthy travellers to put food on the tables of the area's poor and dying.
The blackened circle of their old campfire is still visible, the wooden shelters still stand, the ropes still twine up through the trees. It's from one of those trees that Will drops, this one day, startling Robin so much that he nearly falls over, and Will laughs in a way that Robin hasn't heard in a long time, and suddenly finds he misses fiercely.
“Will! Where have you been? I feel like I've not seen you in months.”
“Days, more like. Let us not get carried away.” Will is already turning away, that cheeky little grin on his face, staring up at the tree houses as if seeing them for the first time.
Robin wants to hug him. So he does, a big bear hug from behind, his strong arm around Will's more slender shoulders. Will laughs, and tolerates it in a way he never would have before, and something in Robin swells with this feeling of being a big brother, of not entirely ruining the fragile bond that's been slowly, unsteadily forming between them since Will first confessed their relation to each other.
Robin lets him go.
“So what are you doing here?” he asks him, and almost regrets it when he sees Will's expression tighten.
“Don't know,” Will says, and scuffs the dirt at his feet. “What are you doing here, rich boy?”
“You're hardly a pauper yourself.” And it's true, now. Robin made sure of it, insisted that Will be given an equal share of the inheritance that had been returned to Robin.
“So we're both rich boys.” Will shrugs. “Still doesn't explain what you're doing here.”
He's wrong there, Robin thinks. But the way he puts it is: “If you could go back to this-” he gestures all around them at the abandoned camp site. “Would you? Would you give up the money and the comfort for it?” And he's so sure that Will is going to say yes that his actual reply, when it comes, is a surprise.
“Only someone who has never struggled for food would even ask such a question,” he says, and he seems angry at Robin, in a way he hasn't been for a while.
“What do you mean?”
Will casts a hand through the air, sweeping, taking in the derelict treehouses, the ropes that creep like vines through the foliage. “This was all a game to you. It was fun because you weren't afraid of losing and having nothing, having to go through another winter where people are dying all around you because they've nothing to eat. Now the game is over and you're bored of your fine house and want to play at adventuring in the woods again with your friends, don't you? But it was real for the rest of us.”
Robin's fists clench, but instead of replying angrily that food for his men and their families was something he worried about constantly in the forest, he takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. Because nobody can wind him up like Will does, but that's a good thing. It's a sign that he's hitting close to the bone, close to the truth. “You're right,” he says, at last. “I've never gone hungry. I'm sorry for every time you had to.” He puts every ounce of sincerity he can muster into it. “But it's not... boredom, not exactly.”
“No? Then what is it?”
Robin stamps his feet against the encroaching cold, and draws his cloak close around himself. “I don't know. Guilt, maybe?”
Will frowns at that. “You feel guilty? For what?”
“For my fine house. For the food I've never gone without. I don't know.” Robin leans heavily back against one of the wide, old tree trunks that grow so densely in the forest. “Things have gone back to the way they were before. I'm Lord of the Manor again. At least when we were living out here I felt... I don't know. Honest. Like I was doing something I believed in.”
“Idiot,” Will says, simply, but he slings an arm around Robin's shoulders and Robin thinks it must be the first time Will has been the one to instigate contact between them.
“Brother,” Robin replies, gratefully.
*
Marian sees them approaching from her spot by the window, her lap full of needlework. It's a pretty piece she's been working on, intricate in a way that takes her full attention – which can be a blessing when her mind is moving too fast and she can't seem to slow it in any other way. But she needs a lot of light to work such fine detail, and this is not a time of year when light is abundant. Her sight is a little fuzzy and vague as she glances out towards the horizon – the forest stretching like a mossy pond across the distant landscape, the hills peeking out above.
She follows the road through the village with her eyes. It's too far for her to see the people she knows will be milling about, she can only make out the clutter of little houses, the neatly fenced off spaces of the gardens and small fields. She follows the road further, closer, and that's when she sees them, two figures walking side by side that are so familiar to her that she recognises them even from this distance, in the cloudy light and with her eyes misty from needlework.
They've been spending more time together lately, her husband and brother-in-law. Marian approves of this. She loves them both so dearly, and knows that although they can be prickly with each other, the relationship is an important one to both of them. She watches them approach, and then goes down to the main door to greet them, smiling happily enough that it makes both of them smile in return – Will cautiously, almost suspiciously, and Robin with fond confusion and amusement. She offers each of them an arm.
“And where have you two been this afternoon?” she asks, leading them through to the main hall with its warm fire, where dinner will be served them soon. “I hope you know I have been quite appallingly bored here by myself. I have had to resort to needlework.”
“Heaven forbid, my lady,” Will laughs, although his arm through hers is still tense. He always seems to be this way, coiled up like a spindle wound too tightly. She wonders if he ever spins out, goes slack and unspooled. She wonders what it looks like.
“We've been out at Redhill, helping Mark's family put up their new winter stable,” Robin says, and she can hear in his voice how the work has exhausted him, although he tries to conceal it. She smiles up at him. “Don't worry,” he laughs, “Sarah let us wash in her kitchen before we came home. She knew better than to let us face you as we were.”
“Covered in hay and pitch and Heaven knows what else? Yes, I should hope she did!”
“I made sure he cleaned behind his ears,” Will says, and she laughs brightly.
They sink into the three comfortable chairs closest to the fire. She keeps her hand on her husband's arm. It is peaceful and warm, and Marian feels lucky, so very lucky, that they are here and together, safe. She lets her tired eyes close for a few moments as she listens to them chatter. They talk about the new barn, mostly, and she must have dozed off because after a moment she is woken by a hand on her arm that is so unsure that it must belong to Will, who has always liked her, she knows, but has never known quite what to do about it, how to behave towards her now she is the wife of his brother.
She smiles warmly at him, then follows his eyes over to where Robin sits, his head tipped against the chair back, also deep in sleep. She feels a wave of such tenderness wash over her that she struggles, for a moment, not to have to blink back tears of emotion. “He gives so much,” she says. “Even now.”
Will nods, but slowly, as if there are things he wants to add but he doesn't know if he should.
“Be kind with him, Will. He's trying his best to be worthy of you all.”
He looks away, but not before she sees a little guilt in his eyes. “Yes, my lady,” he says.
She laughs, quietly so as not to wake Robin. “Oh come, Will. How many times will I have to ask you to call me Marian? We are brother and sister now.”
“Yes... Marian.”
“There. That's better.” She stretches a little, her neck aching from the way she was curled in the chair. “Mary was here today, you know.”
“John's Mary?”
“Yes. You know she's expecting again?” Will seems horrified at this, and Marian laughs again. “She's doing well. I suppose she's used to it by now.”
“I suppose...” Will still hasn't lost the horrified look. “It's so dangerous,” he blurts.
“Aye. It is.” She and Robin have not been blessed with children yet. There is time, everyone says, plenty of time. Marian doesn't know quite how to feel about it. On one hand relieved, because the danger is real, and she doesn't want a child to grow up not knowing its mother, as she had to do. On the other, more than a little sad. Because a child with Robin's eyes would be... well. She tries not to let herself think about it too much.
“I thought,” Will was saying, “after the last time, I thought...”
“That they wouldn't have any more?” Marian shrugs. “John and Mary are in love,” she says, hoping he catches the implication. “Sometimes these things happen without our planning for them.” She looks over at Robin. “And sometimes they don't. Despite our best laid plans.”
When she looks back, Will seems distinctly uncomfortable. “Oh Will,” she says, with great fondness. “Let us talk about something else.”
But it's all right, because then the food is brought through – warm bowls full of thick, rich stew, and the smell of it is enough to wake Robin. Will goads him for being an old man who can't stay awake past nightfall, and they eat and drink, and are merry.
*
Robin and Marian go out of their way to be nice to him, and Will isn't sure how to handle it. He instinctively doesn't want to trust it, because any time he's trusted anyone it has turned out to be a very bad idea in the end.
He reminds himself that that isn't true of Robin. Robin asked for his trust and so far has not betrayed it. Still, Will can't help being wary. Can't help feeling the weight of all those years of hatred and resentment, the loss of his mother which he still can't help blaming on Robin - or, rather, the boy Robin once was. It's a lot to overcome, and Will isn't sure how to even start.
One night he and Robin build a campfire after Marian retires to bed, and they lie out beside it feeling its heat and crackle. The ground is dry under them, but cold. It's a strange contrast – the chill of the ground, the warmth of the air from the fire. A contrast Will remembers well from their time in the woods together.
No cloud, tonight. Up above them the sky is silver with stars. They lie with their heads together, their legs pointing in opposite directions, each curled around the fire, as close as they dare to get. Every so often Robin throws another log onto it, and Will hears it gutter and hiss.
They are quiet together, in a way that feels more companionable and comfortable than it ever has before. It's a good sort of quiet. One that Will finds himself breaking with the words “Do you still feel guilty, Robin?”
Robin doesn't answer for a moment, and Will worries that it was entirely the wrong thing to have said, until the reply comes.
“I always feel guilty.” Robin says it with amusement in his voice, as if its supposed to be funny. Will doesn't find it funny.
“For being rich?”
“For everything I have by birth that others are denied. For not even realising how unfair that is until I went away to the Crusades.” Will sees him rub at his face with a shaking hand. Robin doesn't speak about the war, usually. Will isn't sure he wants to know what sort of horrors Robin saw and suffered through there.
“Do you... want to talk about that?” Will asks, cautiously.
“The Crusades?” Robin squirms around to look at him. “No, Will. And you don't want to listen to it. Trust me.”
“I'm not a child,” Will says, feeling sudden annoyance.
“You're my little brother.”
Will bristles at the implication that Robin sees him as little, someone to be protected from harsh truths. But at the same time, there is some part of him that can't help responding to those words every time Robin says them. Can't help basking in the open admission of their shared fatherhood. Although he fights to hide it, the fact that Robin knows this terrible secret, now, and doesn't find it so terrible at all – in fact seems to welcome it... it affects Will in ways he can't even put words to inside his own head. He keeps this private, hidden, a secret he carries within himself. One of many.
“You should have someone to talk to about it,” he says, eventually. “And you can't talk to Marian.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I wish you would trust me with it.”
Robin reaches out at that to clasp Will's shoulder. His hands are big, Will thinks. Warm. “It's not a matter of trust, Will.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Now will you trust me, and leave it alone?”
Will sighs dramatically. “I suppose I can manage that.” He smiles at Robin, and Robin smiles back, and holds his gaze for long enough that Will feels uncomfortable and looks away, looks into the fire that crackles and spits, until his eyes are burning with its light.
*
Robin starts to worry about three days into Will's latest absence. Because Will hasn't been disappearing as much as he used to, not for a long while now, and it's a bad time of year to be out of doors overnight. Marian chides him for his silliness, but after another day he can see the concern on her face, too.
Marian and Will have become close, he knows. Possibly even closer than he himself has managed to become with his brother. Marian has always had an easy way with people, always been charming and personable. So easy to love. No awkward history between them to make things more strained than they should be. Robin sees them together often in the evenings, Will sat at her feet in the comfortable chair she prefers by the window, while she sews and he reads aloud to her to spare her tired eyes.
By the fifth day with no word of Will's whereabouts they are distraught, and Robin declares that he will ride out across the county until he finds him. Marian only nods, her eyes still searching the horizon beyond her window nook as if she is sure he will appear there at any moment.
He finds Will later that evening, drunk in a tavern in a small town some miles from the manor. Robin feels an uncomfortably strong pang of sheer anger at him for worrying them like this over something so stupid, and wants to cuff Will's ear for it, and instantly thinks that this must have been how his father felt on all the occasions that Robin did something similarly thoughtless while he was growing up. He feels a sympathy that he wishes he could go back and share with his father, explaining that he gets it now, that he's sorry for all the times he worried his family like this.
He drags Will out of the room that is hot with the press of bodies, loud with the out-of-tune singing of the tavern's customers. Will is giggling, and can hardly stand. Robin shakes him for good measure, and slings him up at the front of the horse, mounting it behind him and holding the young man tight in his arms to stop him falling. “Idiot,” he scolds, and turns the mare towards home, stopping only for Will to expel the contents of his stomach onto a grass verge by the lane.
“I don't want Marian to see you like this,” he says, but there is a light in her window when they return, as always.
“Robin!” She calls, he hears her voice echoing from within before he has even carried Will through the door. She is rushing down the staircase. “Will!”
“He's here, don't worry.”
But she pauses in the entryway, her face frozen in shock at the sight of him limp in Robin's arms. “Oh God in Heaven, what's wrong? Is he injured?”
Robin laughs. “Nothing that a good night's sleep won't cure, my love. He's had too much drink, that's all.”
She raises one of those impossibly delicate eyebrows. “Oh. I see.” Will twitches in Robin's arms, perhaps hearing the disapproval in her voice. “I will have a bath drawn for him,” she sighs, and retreats into the house.
Robin doesn't want Will to drown in the bath, and so he undresses him and helps him into it, and washes his scrawny body with as much gentleness as he can muster. He feels exhausted, all of a sudden. As if the last four sleepless nights are catching up with him all at once now that he knows Will is safe.
“Sorry Robin,” Will mumbles into the bathwater. The fire is behind him, its shadow makes it hard for Robin to see his face.
“Why didn't you let us know where you were? We were worried sick about you.”
Will frowns at that, as if he's not used to the idea of people worrying about him. Robin's heart aches at that thought.
“Why?” Will asks, eventually.
“Why were we worried? For goodness' sake, Will. It's winter, you were gone for days...”
“I've been gone before. You were never bothered.”
“You haven't been gone so long without telling us for a good twelve months. We're not used to it any more.”
Will is silent a moment. “Has it been so long?” he asks, very quietly.
Robin only sighs, and leans in against the brass tub. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, but his shirt is still damp from the water.
“I'm sorry,” Will repeats, and Robin feels the anger drain from him like sand from an hour glass.
“You should apologise to Marian. She was worried.”
Will has the good grace to look mortified at that. Robin thinks that the cold ride home and the cleanness of the bath water must have gone some way to sobering him.
“Come on. Let's get you dry and in bed.”
Robin supports Will as he gets out of the tub, and Will does not push him away. He dries his brother with a square of linen that Marian has laid out for such a purpose, and pulls a night shirt onto him.
“I'm not a child,” Will says, but his voice is tired, without the usual fight to it.
“I know you're not,” Robin says, soothingly, and steers him towards the four poster bed in his room. Robin sits beside Will, upright against the headboard with the intention of staying until morning, just to be sure he doesn't do something idiotic like choking on his own vomit in the night.
He falls asleep before the last candle gutters and dies.
*
Marian goes out early the next morning to fetch rosemary and parsley from the kitchen gardens, cutting off small, sparing quantities from each plant with her little wood-handled knife and laying them in her basket to bring in to cook. It is cook's roasting day, a day when the manor will fill with the appetising scent of slowly cooking game, and Marian will open the window by her favourite chair and let the cool, fresh air stream in.
Marian is very, very handy with a knife. She has had to be, in the past. Her hands are small and deft, and her arms strong. They suit this sort of tool very well. She flicks the knife in her fingers occasionally as she walks, feeling an unexpectedly overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a time she would certainly never choose to go back to. She wonders if this is why Robin goes off into the forest on certain days, and does not speak of it when he returns.
When she gets back to the house she finds Will awake, stood in the back doorway watching her. Obviously somewhat recovered from the previous few days' excesses. She smiles at him.
“I'm glad you're back, Will,” she says warmly, genuinely, when she reaches him, and takes his hand and squeezes it.
“Robin said I should apologise to you,” he blurts, and her smile becomes fonder.
“You don't have to apologise. You owe us nothing, you're free to come and go as you please.”
“He's right, though. I should apologise.”
She laughs. “Then do, by all means.” She lifts an eyebrow expectantly.
Will forces out what seems to be an extremely uncomfortable “I'm sorry, my lady. Please forgive me.”
She pats his cheek. “You're forgiven. Now be a dear and take these through to cook for me.”
He does as he's told while she takes off her apron and cap and hangs them by the door, slipping her knife into the pretty pocket she wears about her waist. The early light is so clean and cold that for a moment she can't bring herself to move further into the shadowy house. She wants to stand here by the doorway a while, feeling the sunlight's fingers in her wild, curly hair.
“Where is Robin?” she asks, when she hears Will's footsteps once more on the stone behind her.
“Still sleeping in my room.”
“Poor love. He was worried about you, you know.”
“Yes, he said.”
“I think he thought he'd done something wrong and made you angry with him.” She turns and watches Will's face as she says this, gauging his reaction. Heaven knows her husband can be careless with his words and quick with his actions, and Will has always been as quick-tempered. Marian wonders privately if it is a trait inherited from their father. It wouldn't surprise her if there had been some argument between them.
“No,” Will says, quickly. “No, it's nothing like that.” He makes a noise of frustration and scrubs at his face. “It's just the time of year. It makes me restless.”
Marian almost believes him.
*
Will's not sure why, but Robin has decided they should take a trip out to the woods. Again. And because Will is still feeling guilty he can do nothing but agree to it.
At least it's not raining. Yet.
Their cloaks are already damp at the hems just from forging a path through the undergrowth by the time they reach the campsite. It is more overgrown than it was at this time last year, the eternal and irrepressible forest growing in and through their feeble, temporary attempts to contain its wilderness. Will admires it, and feels at the same time slightly horrified by the inevitability of it all, of the earth reclaiming their lives' work no matter what they do to try and halt the process.
One day trees such as these will sink their roots through his mortal body. And Robin's, Marian's, everyone they know and love. One day they will all return to moss and grass and frost-bitten ground, just as their old camp will. He folds his arms around himself.
“I thought this might help,” Robin says from somewhere beside him. “But you look miserable, Will.”
“This time of year reminds me of my mother,” Will finds himself saying, so unexpectedly it shocks him.
“Oh, Will.” Some smug part of Will enjoys the heartbroken tone in Robin's voice, even as the rest of him is embarrassed by it. “I'm so very-”
“I know,” Will says, firmly. Because he does know. A lot has happened between then and now. A lot will happen between now and what is to come. Nothing can last forever – not even his mistrust and caution, the barriers he still can't help erecting between himself and the man who wants so desperately to be his brother. Hope muscles through, spreads its tiny, tentative tendrils through spaces thought too small to let in any light.
“I would like to know about her,” Robin says into the silence. “I would like it if you would tell me.”
Will nods. “I think I might,” he says. “Some day.”
*
Marian waits at her window. The sun sets early at this time of year, and she likes to watch it when she can. She waits until she sees two familiar figures on a familiar path, from Sherwood to the manor. They are silhouetted against the brilliant orange horizon, two small figures against a sky full of fire. Behind them the forest. Ahead a road that will lead them home.
When they are close enough, she goes down to greet them.