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It's only when the noose is already round Marian's neck, rough and thick like a lethal, ugly necklace, that it really sinks in: Marian is going to die. Despite all his threats and rants, regardless of the betrayal and anger he felt when he found out, he never thought it would come to this. The second he realizes that, he also realizes something else: he doesn't want this. How could he want this when it's Marian on the gallows, and everything inside him screams for her? Broken cries for a marriage that never happened and a future that will never be.
It all accumulates to one single-minded idea: he must save her. He may have been the one who brought her to this point, but he must also be the one to right this wrong. He must save her now, before it's too late.
She's worth dying for, he thinks, as he reaches for his sword and starts to run.
* * *
He tastes dust in his mouth; it's bitter and gritty and makes his teeth crunch and his throat ache. Half-turning his head to look how close their pursuers are (too close, and getting closer even), he catches a glimpse of Marian out of the corner of his eyes (the same eyes that looked at him through the Nightwatchman's mask).
It's as if time slows down, and everything but her blurs out. Only this moment, only this instant. Only her eyes on him, and her hair flying in the wind. Only her body pressed against his, behind him on the horse, and he feels the rapid rise and fall of her chest through the leather on his back.
"Guy," she says, warningly, and time starts to accelerate again. He snaps his head around in time to escape being hit by a low branch from a tree, and he feels her arms close a little tighter around his midriff.
"Hold on," he says, as if she wasn't already doing just that. The trees around them are standing closer together now, and the ground is slippery with mud and fallen leaves. He can hear the trample of hooves behind them; it's much too loud already, much too close, and he urges the horse on without turning around again.
Sherwood Forest, which always felt like an overpowering, sinister enemy all by itself before now, welcomes them with implicit promise of places to hide at and a strange sense of safety.
Marian's breath brushes against his neck, and he feels the softness of her hair against his skin. He has no idea where they're going. For a moment, he's almost grateful that there's no time to stop and think about what he's done and how this will end.
* * *
And then, suddenly, they're circled: guardsmen with their swords drawn all around them. He knows he could take one, two, maybe three. He remembers seeing the Nightwatchman fight, and he thinks that Marian could probably take on a couple herself, if she managed to get her hands on a weapon. But there are at least twelve of the Sheriff's men, and there's no way to make it out of this alive.
"Put down your sword," one of the guards says.
Beside him, Marian blindly reaches for his hand, enlacing their fingers. This moment alone, he thinks, might have been worth dying for.
Smiling, he raises his sword, as the guards around them get ready to fight.
A rain of arrows stops them before anyone can move. Marian's hand slips from his, and Guy can't help but think that rescue shouldn't be accompanied by the bitter feeling of defeat.
* * *
"The Sheriff will send more men." He stares after the last of the guards who scrambles away, stumbling on the slippery ground, before he turns to Hood. "Take her away, somewhere safe."
The words feel like thorns on his tongue, and it hurts to speak them. But he needs to make sure that Marian is alive and safe, and if he needs to let her go for this, so be it. Even if it means handing her over to Robin Hood. No matter what he thinks of Hood, Guy knows that he'll take care of Marian. He's learned that the hard way. (Even now, he tries not to remember Marian hissing, "I love him. No matter what you'll do to me, you will always know that I love him and that I would have chosen him, not you," when he went to see her down in her cell, only hours before she was going to hang. It feels like it was a lifetime ago.) To think that he thought just a few weeks ago that Marian needed saving from Hood almost makes him laugh now.
Hood nods, a grim promise Guy draws from him with a hard, long look.
"Good," he hears himself say and turns away. He cannot bear to look at Marian, standing next to the man she loves, a man who isn't him.
Something in him breaks, and something burns, whispering that he should kill them both now, that they deserved it, that he can always go back to the Sheriff and say his rescuing Marian was just an elaborate ploy to bring down Hood. He could have his life back, if he wanted. It's not too late yet.
Grinding his teeth, he ignores the voices in his head and walks on.
"Wait," Marian calls out behind him. His feet instinctively obey her, but he needs to summon all his willpower to find the strength to turn and face her. She takes a step towards him, a step away from Hood, and his heart takes a leap.
"Come with us," she says.
The offer is unexpected, and he doesn't know how to react. Hood, it seems, is less hesitant. "What? Marian!" His voice is incredulous. For once, Guy can't blame him.
"He saved my life, Robin," she says, as if that explains it all. For her, it probably does.
"How kind of him, after he brought you to the gallows himself!"
Guy looks from Marian to Hood, looks at her pleading eyes and Hood's angry glare, and he shakes his head. "I don't think that would work."
Even now, she has to be the reasonable one. "Would you rather wait here for the Sheriff and have him kill you?"
What he'd rather do is to take her home to Locksley Manor with him. But he has no home anymore, not after today. He can stay and face the Sheriff's punishment, which he doubtlessly won't survive, or he can run.
"Marian, we must go," Hood urges, speaking out loud what each of them is only too well aware of, his eyes fixed on Marian who in turn is still looking at Guy.
"Please, Guy!"
He used to long to hear her beg for him, beg him to come to her, to come with her – but not like this, never like this. In his fantasies, it was always just the two of them, and they would have a future together, a home and a life, not the bare shadow of it, here in the forest or on the run as common outlaws, always one step away from capture and the dungeons and the gallows.
But this is the life he chose when he saved her, and however much he wants to, he cannot bring himself to regret that. Marian takes a step further towards him until she's halfway to where he stands, rooted to the spot and undecided about which way to turn to, and when she holds out her hand to him, part of him wants nothing more than to take it.
It is Hood – always bloody Robin Hood – who breaks the standstill. "For God's sake, Gisborne, what the hell are you waiting for? There's nothing for you here anymore." He sounds sulky and unhappy, but his eyes are challenging.
Hood is right, Guy reluctantly admits. The question is: is there anything for him, wherever they are going?
Only one way to find out. He reaches out and takes Marian's hand. Her fingers close around his, cold and trembling but with surprising strength in their grip. Behind her, Hood turns away. "Let's get going."
* * *
When Hood turns up with Marian and Guy in tow, the outrage at the outlaw's camp is almost amusing to watch. Hood's little man-servant rants, and the oaf yells, and the pretty boy silently glares at him.
"I don't like this," the Saracen woman says with quiet insistence, but Hood seems to have no patience for her.
"And you think I do?" he snaps, short-tempered.
Later, the boy who once tried to poison the Sheriff – Guy searches his mind for a name, but he can't remember – asks him about Allan. Guy has no idea what's become of him after their escape from the castle; he didn't even think of him until now. He imagines that the Sheriff may well have had made Allan pay for Guy's treachery, and when he says so, the boy's fist slams into his jaw with a viciousness he hadn't expected from someone as delicate looking.
Staggering back, he wipes at his mouth, and his palm comes away red. He wants to hit back, but he knows better than to aggravate Hood's men any further when he's at their mercy. And it's not like he doesn't understand the boy's concern for his friend, despite Allan's betrayal. "My priorities lie with Marian," he says, annoyed. "They always lie with Marian. And if Allan dies, or if I die, or the Sheriff or Hood or the entire kingdom, as long as she lives, that's fine with me."
The boy has no answer to that.
Guy notices Hood standing a short distance away, looking at him with an inscrutable gaze, and he wonders how much Hood has heard.
"What happened?" Marian appears through the trees, taking one look at Guy's bruising jaw and his bloodied lip and rushing to his side. Her probing fingers hurt more than they help, but he revels too much in being touched by her to stop her.
Guy keeps looking at Marian, even when the boy starts to speak again. "Robin, we must do something!"
"We'll go down to Nottingham tomorrow. Don't worry, Will, we'll find him. I'm sure Gisborne here will be only too happy to help us find a way into the castle."
Guy glares at him, but doesn't object, and he allows Marian's ministrations to distract him, trying to convince himself that it was no mistake to come here.
* * *
They break Allan free from the dungeons, who obviously enjoys being allowed back into the fold and acts as if Guy was his best mate, which annoys Guy more than Hood's unveiled loathing, Much's open suspicion and John's threats.
He wants nothing more than to lash out at Allan and give him the thrashing he deserves for his insolence, but what holds him back is the uncomfortable realization that in a way, Allan is right: he is the only thing close to a friend Guy has here. With the exception of Marian, Allan may well be the only one who wouldn't be only too happy to cut his throat while he's sleeping.
Not that Allan wouldn't kill him, if he thought it served him well – but then again, this is nothing Allan wouldn't do to any of the people he considers his friends.
* * *
Marian drives him insane. She's always close, and yet out of reach. She keeps touching him, but only fleetingly – a friend's touch, not a lover's, and when he sees her brushing against Hood, his stomach clenches. He tries to kiss her once, but she ducks away before their lips meet. It reminds him of how it used to be between them, back before the wedding that never happened, and he hates it that they're back to where they started.
The frustration makes him grumpy and short-tempered, but everyone in the camp seems to be grumpy and short-tempered these days, for one reason or another, so no one really notices.
It's late in the evening, and he's just escaped Allan's drunken campfire ramblings, when he hears voices from a clearing behind the trees. Through the darkness and the faint shimmer from the fire light, he can only make out silhouettes, but Hood's voice unmistakable.
"You have to choose, Marian."
The stubborn edge in Marian's voice is all too familiar. "I don't have to choose anyone."
Guy takes a step towards them, feeling rather than seeing both of them turn towards him as he reveals himself. "No, you don't. You don't have to choose either of us, if that's what you want. But as much as I hate to say it, Hood is right; you need to make a choice!"
"Very well. Fine." He can hear her take a breath and, for a moment, wants to stop her. But it cannot go on like this, Marian's affections half-hearted and never more than platonic, never more than hinting at something else. Much as the hope that she'll choose him one day keeps him alive, it also kills him, slowly. He needs to know.
The silence stretches uncomfortably long, until finally, she speaks again. "I choose both of you," she says.
"Marian…" Hood groans, exasperated, and Guy closes his eyes.
"It doesn't work that way," he says. She can have him, or she can have Hood, or she can choose to leave them both behind, but she cannot possibly have this. "You cannot want us both equally."
"I don't. But how can I make a choice between you? You're both— You love me! Robin, you're my soul mate, and there'll never be a time in my life when I won't love you. And Guy…"
He expects her to say something about how he saved her life and gave away all he ever had in the process. He expects her to talk of gratitude, and he's half-prepared to turn and walk away and never look back. But that's not what she says.
"You—you get under my skin. You always did, even back when I knew I shouldn't let you. And you keep surprising me, in good ways. You—" She stops herself suddenly, and Guy doesn't know what to say.
It is Hood who speaks. "You're stirred by him," he says, accusingly, and even though he's talking to Marian, Guy feels his eyes on him. Echoes of a half-forgotten fight flash through him, and he feels a rush of satisfaction.
"I am," Marian says. "That's why I choose both of you. And if you find it impossible to share me, well, then you don't love me enough, do you?"
She knows them both well enough to know that neither of them can resist the challenge any more than they can resist her.
* * *
"I choose both of you." – It's easier said than done. As it turns out, Marian might know what she wants, but she hadn't properly thought this through and considered what it really meant. They all find themselves drawn into an uneasy dance and no one really knows where its boundaries lie.
There's a hesitance in the way Marian acts around him that drives him insane, and it doesn't give him the satisfaction he expected to see her treat Hood with the same kind of awkwardness. If anything, it's worse than before because now he knows that she wants him, and that alone makes the desire to finally possess her stronger than it ever was.
He breaks one day after watching Marian almost getting killed in a fight. A fight she was never supposed to be in, because everyone – and when he says everyone, he means him and Hood – had told her to stay behind. Except Marian lives by her own rules and obeys no one, and the idea that her wilfulness would one day kill her was impossible to bear.
It's anger that makes him push her against a tree, forearm against her throat, and hiss threats at her that he isn't half prepared to follow through. She just raises her chin a fraction and stares at him defiantly, and before he knows what he's doing, he's kissing her, rough and punishing, the kind of kiss he's been holding back for months, years maybe, releasing all the pent-up frustration into it.
When he realizes that he's overstepped an invisible line, he expects to be pushed away, and no one is more surprised than him when he isn't, when Marian's lips part under his and her hands slide through his hair and pull him closer. Her lips are soft, but her hands are not, and the low groan she releases into his mouth makes him shiver against her.
They only notice Hood when they breathlessly break apart. Hood is leaning against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression hard, watching them, and Guy feels a surge of triumph.
"What? Am I supposed to look away when you kiss him? Is that what you want me to do?"
"No, that's not it at all," Marian says. As she crosses the distance between her and Hood, Guy realizes that his sense of victory might have been misplaced. Watching her put her hand on Hood's arm, it takes all his willpower not to step between them and pull her away. He grinds his teeth and watches her lean in and kiss him, and he suddenly knows exactly what it must have been like for Hood before. If Guy didn't hate him so much right in this moment, he would have felt sympathy.
But Hood is kissing her, his mouth claiming the same lips that had been Guy's to claim before, and he cannot bear to watch. And yet, at the same time, he cannot tear his eyes away, not because he likes to torture himself, but because she's beautiful like this, passionate and unrestrained and flushed with heat. And when she breaks the kiss and half-turns her head, beckoning him closer, how could he resist her siren call?
He steps behind her and presses a not-quite-chaste kiss to her neck, all too aware of Hood's eyes on him, on them.
"This is what you want?" Hood asks Marian, forcing her into an angry kiss, and her voice is only a little unsteady when she says, "This is what I want."
Guy's fingers brush against Hood's once, when his hand trails down Marian's arm. Both of them flinch away as if they'd touched fire. In a way, they have.
* * *
At sundown, he finds Hood away from the camp, sitting on a small hill and listlessly throwing small stones into the distance.
"Do you ever get the feeling that your life hasn't turned out the way you wanted it to?" Hood asks without turning around, and Guy wonders how Hood knew that he was here.
The question is almost too ironic to consider. "I'm living in the forest and sharing the woman I love with Robin Hood," he replies wryly.
He sits down next to Hood, who chuckles quietly. "Yeah, well, when you put it like that…"
"I proposed to her, you know," Hood continues, staring into the distance, and Guy's gut clenches. "Back before she brought you here. I proposed to her and she said yes, that she would marry me when King Richard is back."
"She once made the same promise to me." It might not mean anything. Or maybe it means everything.
From the corner of his eyes, he sees Hood nodding, silently. They don't say anything else until Marian finds them, hours later.
* * *
Guy hates seeing the scars he left on Marian's body. The one on her forearm from his first encounter with the Nightwatchman is bad enough, but the one where he stabbed her… that one, he cannot quite forgive himself for.
He presses his lips there, wordlessly asking for absolution: an "I'm sorry" kissed, unspoken, against the pale scar tissue on her stomach.
"Don't," she whispers, and for a moment he thinks she's telling him not to touch her, to get away from her, but she keeps talking. "It was so long ago. We need to bury the past."
"Forget about the past, focus on the future, eh?" Hood asks beside them, his head propped up on an arm.
Marian smiles at him. "Why don't we focus on the present, for now?"
"We can do that," Hood says. And then, just like that, as if it's no big thing at all, he leans across Marian's body and kisses Guy. Guy thinks he should be more surprised than he is – and in a way, he is surprised. That it happens here, like this, with Marian between them, the lack of anger in it – that's unexpected. The kiss itself isn't.
Hood smells like fresh grass and smoke, and tastes like the awful wine Allan found them for dinner. His beard burns into Guy's cheek, but when Guy reaches out to steady him and his hand curves around the back of Hood's head, the hair under his fingers is softer than he expected.
When they break apart, Marian's smile is bright as sunlight, and for the first time, Guy doesn't hate that he has to share her.
* * *
It doesn't mean he likes Hood, or doesn't question his orders every step along the way. It doesn't mean that Hood stops listing all of the sins of Guy's past whenever he thinks it suits him. It doesn't mean that Marian ever listens to them when they tell her not to get involved in something that might kill her.
It doesn't mean that it's easy. But then, Guy had never expected it to be.