Work Text:
It began with a statement born from an understanding that only those with shared pains could truly know. It was an autumn afternoon when Will found Marion sitting under a tree, fletching an arrow. His focus didn’t stray from the arrows he was bringing to her as he leaned against the tree beside her.
“Tomorrow is the Samhain festival.”
Samhain marked the change of the seasons from harvest into winter, and it was said that the night before the festival began, while people feasted amongst loved ones before bon fires, offered the best chance of reconnecting with the loved ones they had lost.
The loves they would never be able to find again.
“I know.” She always knew when it was Samhain. As a child she had always left her room’s door opened, hoping to glimpse her long missed mother. And since losing Robin, well, her heart always ached a little harder that night than any other.
“Wickham is celebrating.” Will continued, still not looking at her, never wanting to show vulnerability, even to someone who would never judge him for it. “I was thinking of going.”
Marion looked at Will and saw in him many versions of herself within the pain of losing his wife years before that still lay so close to the surface. Would her pain remain that fresh after so long? She both hoped and feared it would. In that way, her Robin would never truly be gone.
“You heard Robert,” she said at last, her jaw set and focused once again on her task, not wanting to open herself up to the disappointment that always found her as a child, when her mother never came, “The sheriff’s men have been spotted near the forest. They’re sure to have eyes on Wickham. We should stay where we are best hidden.”
“Nonsense,” Robert said, coming upon them, having watched the pair’s low spirits grow lower throughout the morn. He glanced behind him to where the others stood, gathering their things, preparing for something he had not yet shared. “You should go to Wickham.”
Marion wasn’t sure she believed it. “But the soldiers…”
His smile rose mischievously, like a boy ready for a game, and he shrugged. What made it worse is that he, like them all, knew what was at risk and how much that smile could cost them all.
“The rest of us are planning on finding the soldiers, have some exercise and draw them far away from Wickham.” It was the least they could do for the hamlet that had done so much for them and had already suffered greatly for that charity. If they could make sure this festival stayed free from Gisburne’s ire, while causing him some pain... his smile grew. “Edward may feel better, knowing the two of you are there, watching their backs, just in case some get by us.”
Normally they would complete the well known trek to Wickham in silence as the sun began to set, two very different people who rarely found common ground. But not this trek. Not this night.
Will had often spoken of his wife, but his remembrances were always painful recollections that ate at his soul, picking open the wound that could never heal to become a scar.
But now his tone changed and there was tenderness and affection that spoke of the greatest devotion and purity. He was truly remembering her and not just her end.
“I'm forgetting what her face looks like,” he confessed, his head hung with shame, “I can't remember the feel of her touch. Without that, how can I keep her memory alive.”
“By the feel of her love. Nothing can rob you of that Will Scathlock. Nor of the name you both have shared.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” she knew, “it’s not. But that's all we have.”
Robert had spent his youth learning skills he never thought he would have a chance to use. Now, he was perfecting them. It was a kind of freedom he had never thought possible back in those days of begging guards to share what they knew. And it was a freedom he now vowed to make the most of, however short that freedom may last.
He watched from the treeline of the fading light as the majority of the men on patrol peeled off to follow the decoy that had been set for them by the others, all intent on taking them on a scenic route back towards Nottingham. What else could they expect being out near the forest at nightfall?
All took the bait except for Gisburne, it seemed, whose gaze was fixed towards Wickham.
Of course he would pick now to gain some sense.
Perhaps he had inherited something from their father after all.
Somewhere between a smile and a curse he stood, making his presence known to Gisburne with a bow and salute, ensuring he was seen before skirting back into the treeline, through the threshold into their home of sherwood forest, where a fog was beginning to rise.
He needed these moments. He needed to judge his opponents skills and strengths and follies. At first it was just to ensure the continued safety of himself, those who served under him and the cause he followed. But since learning about their connection, well, now he also needed to know the ways they were the same and the ways in which they would never be.
Gisburne had always been stubborn. And no matter how much he had often chided the Sheriff for his obsession to catching the outlaw, he knew that the term could also be applied to himself. The first Robin Hood had been bad enough, but the second… there was something about him that provoked a primal reaction from the knight. Robert of Huntingdon could have been an Earl. One of the most important men in England. He had the love and approval of his father. He had countless fathers wishing his daughters to marry him, just to be aligned with that family. And he not only betrayed his blood, but also threw everything away.
And yet, somehow, he was still adored: by father, by kin, and by commoner while Gisburne was as viled by the populace as he had been by the man he had once called father.
Gritting his teeth, sword in hand, he dismounted his horse and rushed into the tree line and headlong in the misty forest as darkness fell upon them.
This was no longer about stubbornness or obsession.
This was about revenge.
Perhaps they should have stayed in Wickham.
But they hadn’t.
And by the time they wished they had, it was too late. And the fog that had been threatening when they left Sherwood, was now fully upon them, making it difficult to see even one another let alone find their way home.
And before any of them knew what was happening, Samhain was fully upon them, whether they had believed in it or not…
It started as a caress. One long thought forgotten but the memory came back like a slap to the heart, causing the breath to leave Will, and for him to stop dead in his tracks, eyes wide for whatever had attacked them.
“Marion?” He whispered into the darkness where not even a tree could be seen or the crunch of leaves underfoot be heard. It was just him and the dark and the feel of the past crashing hard upon him.
No, he thought, jaw clenched and determined not to believe this trickery and swearing to hurt whomever thought this a funny prank to pull. He had just been talking about his wife, his Elena. Surely that was the only reason he now felt her touch upon his face.
Upon the breath of the still wind, the mixing scents of meadowsweet, thyme and his wife’s unique scent reached him, tormenting him anew.
Where only hours before he had been afraid of forgetting his wife, now he felt almost doomed to remember it all again. He fell to his knees as tears fell upon his cheek. No, he thought again, this isn’t happening.
“Did you not call me home to you?”
A sob escaped from Will as the emotions welled high and fast and fierce within him, overwhelming him. Elena’s voice. How could he ever forget?
He looked up when the feel of a hand caressed his face once more, lifting his chin so that he could look into the face that he swore he could see but who was not really there. But within the mist and fog he could see her as she looked on their wedding day, and feel within the fog’s embrace, hers as well.
“I’m sorry,” he fought to get out amongst the feelings he usually pushed aside or expressed in anger. “I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t save you. That I wasn’t there.”
Comforting arms of the fog tightened around him, rocking him back and forth, the wind that wasn’t there whispering affirmations and loving reminders and assurances that there was nothing she blamed him for.
“I am at peace,” she promised. “For in my life I loved and was loved. And in death, I watch over you proudly until we can meet again. I always knew you were a hero.”
“I love you,” he promised, closing his eyes so that he could convince himself that when he reached out towards her figure that he could feel her too. “I will always, always love you.”
“My dear Will with the heart of scarlet. Forgive yourself. Find peace.”
“No…” his anger was all he had left of her. To let go of that, to allow himself the freedom to feel anything else would be to lose the last thing of the one person whom he had built his happiness around. It would be betraying her all over again.
“I do not want you angry when you think of me. I want you to think of me as fondly as I think of you. I want you to be that man again. If not for you, then please, please, my love, do so for me.”
Will wept like he had never before allowed himself to do; working through the aching that had left him shattered for years, the anger he had held onto and the bitterness that had filled the parts of himself that had been left vacant after she had been torn from him. He could feel her with him. He could hear her voice. He could smell her presence.
And he knew, with a fear of whatever he would find to rebuild himself around, that he would be knowing these things for the very last time.
Gisburne swung his sword at the enemy that he felt surrounding him, taunting him with not really being there.
Bitter words stabbed and cut into him with a fierceness that meant to bring him to his knees, but for whom he would not break. And as the voice that had haunted his dreams boomed oppressively upon him from all sides, he held fast against the punishment that felt like it was coming from his very soul itself.
‘Weakling.’
‘Soft.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Grot.’
‘No son of mine!’
“No,” he exclaimed through gritted teeth, doubled over in pain, the smell of booze and sweat and disappointment joining the rest of his tortures, another one he would not give into.
Like he had never given into his father.
His eyes were still shut tight when everything stilled and the air cleared of the oppression that had been choking him a moment before. Everything wiped clean as dust being swept off the street.
He wasn’t sure if he should trust it. Not that he was trustful of anything. While he knew it was Samhain, the time of fairies and trickery in the dark, he had never paid it much heed as a child, having much more to fear at home.
“Perhaps it doesn’t matter if you believe,” came an all-too-familiar voice that still struck his heart with cold resolve, “As long as it believes in you.”
He stood straight with a soldier’s posture that had been drilled into him since childhood, his eyes staring straight into the visage of his mother within the dense fog. But not as she looked when he had last seen her, as weak as he had always known her to be, but as a young woman, as the young mother she had been before he discovered her treachery.
He snorted when the first hints of roses and lilacs tried to make themselves known to him, reminders of the gardens she had loved to tend and where he had loved to play along side her. They never failed to remind him of her.
He once loved the smell that he now revolted against.
“You’re dead,” he spat, his resolve not wavering under this new torture, however uncomfortable it made him feel. He was used to being hit. He was used to being hated. Reminders of love… well, that was something very strange indeed.
“Oh, my poor, poor boy,” she mourned before the soundscape changed again and he was hearing the lullaby she had always sung too lull him to sleep, or to comfort him after facing his father’s ire. “That will never stop my love for you.”
He scoffed. He had long rejected her love for him. It had come at the price of his father’s pride and respect. It was a price that he had never been able to pay.
“I know you don’t believe me. That was just another thing your father stole from you at too young an age. I am sorry, Guy, that you were forced to pay for my mistakes. But my mistake wasn’t in your conception for you were conceived by love. It was a mistake to bring you back to a man that I had once thought dead and could never mourn. For that, I hope you will one day forgive me.”
“Forgive you? Why would I do that!”
“So that you are not forged into your father’s image. So that the love with which you were made, may one day fill your heart.”
He glanced around, seeking escape from her words and visage and presence, growing tired of the tedium of this trick.
Her head hung low and he could see the image of himself within her features, the image of whom he might have become had things been different. “Even if you choose not to feel it, know that I am with you, my son. My beautiful boy. You used to smile so brightly as that. And I hope to one day see that smile again. You deserve a chance to be happy, even if your father never wanted you to.”
Gisburne was left alone with only the chill of the fog made cold upon the night air, now feeling as empty as he did. As empty as he feared he would always be.
Because of his father. And because he was the man his parents had made him to be.
Marion was shaking as she fell into what she could only assume was a tree in the blindness she currently found herself stumbling about in. While she knew better than to be afraid of the dark, what lay within it still got to her.
“I thought you had more courage.”
She raised the bow she was never without, eyes darting around for where that sound came from, refusing to hope she had heard anything at all. She shivered as the damp fog closed in upon her.
“Have you been cold since I left?” She heard teasing her ear.
With a held breath and a silent tear she turned towards the voice that she knew better than any other despite it being over a year since she heard it last.
And there he was. Her Robin. Complete with mischievous smile and eyes overflowing with love for her.
“You’re here.”
After a lifetime of wishing for her mother to visit her on Samhain, how come she had never come? But he…
He smiled as though reading her thoughts. “You didn’t need to see your mother. She knew you’d be alright without her.”
“Robin…”
He shook his head, silencing her words, already knowing what she was about to say, before she even was. “You’re so beautiful.”
“I love you,” she told him, her chest tightening at the feel of his thumb against her cheek. “I did what you said. I live. I remember. I’m keeping you alive.”
“Marion. Do you remember-”
“Everything,” she tried to assure.
“-When I said I still had much I wanted to tell you?”
She nodded, the sting of regret flaring at the reminder, just as cruel and fresh as the day he lost his chance to say anything to her again.
“None of it matters, because you knew it already. What matters is what I did say because I meant it. I want you to live, Marion. I want you to keep fighting. I want you to be happy.”
Coldness grabbed hold of her as it always did since he left her. Since she refused to let herself be warm again. And she knew what he was asking her to do. “You want me to love him.” She shook her head. “I lost you and a part of me died with you. How can you want me to live through that again?”
“Because of every moment before the end. You made my life worth living, Marion. You made every fight worth winning and every hardship worth enduring. Because I knew - I knew! - I was doing all of it for you.
“Don’t tell the others.”
There was so much she wanted to say to him, only now, in this moment, it was she who couldn’t find the words. Not when they meant saying goodbye. “Hold me.”
“It takes courage to love,” he told her, the mist of his arms giving her comfort. “It takes more courage to do it more than once.”
“How can you want me to love another? To give you up for someone else who wears your name?”
“Nothing is forgotten. Certainly not our love. And since I can’t be there to fight with you and live with you and love with you… well, when Herne called for his next chosen, I gave my seal of approval then. Just as I give it now. Be brave. Be loved. And know that I died happy knowing that I lived loving you.”
The feel of Robin’s touch lingered long after his visage and the sound of his words left. Unlike when he had been torn from her embrace, here she was finally able to let it go.
“Goodbye my Robin. I’ll always love you.”
Robert of Sherwood, late of Huntingdon, was thoroughly confused as he stalked the forest from atop a hill. Below, lost within a blanket of fog, was Gisburne, being tormented by something within, something that he could not see.
And some may wonder why he wasn’t affected like the others were. And the truth was simple: he had yet to be part of a loss so great that a loved one could pass the veil into this world. Those he loved and lived for were luckily all still alive.
So, ignorant of the significance of what was happening, and secure in the knowledge that Wickham would remain safe from the likes of Gisburne, for that night at least, he went merrily upon his way through the darkened forest that felt like home, back towards the camp to make sure everyone else returned safe.
Will and the others were already there, sat about the fire. The fighter in a heavy silence that no one thought to break upon as Tuck, Much, John and even watchful Nasir relayed stories of the chase they had successfully sent the soldiers on. But where was Marion?
He could spy her nearby, off by herself, as deep in thought as Will was. Hopefully that wasn’t a sign of danger that would be soon to come. While he didn’t want to interrupt her solitude, he also needed to make sure they were all safe. Especially her.
“Marion?”
The young woman started at the sound of her own name not being said by her husband. Pushing aside the rising hurt, she offered Robert a smile, all the encouragement that he needed to join her.
“Is everything alright?”
Her chest tightened at the concern in his voice, concern that she knew meant he cared. “Yes. You all did well, Wickham was spared any interruption and the feast was very good.”
“You know,” he admitted, leaning against a nearby tree, arms crossed and trying not to still look concerned, drawing connections between what he saw of Gisburne and how Will and Marion now appeared, “I don’t know much about Samhain. Growing up it was just used as an excuse for merriment and too much drink.”
“Well, I’ll tell you all about its importance some time, and how one goes to celebrate it right. But until then,” she then offered when he looked about to leave her, giving in to both herself and Robin in reaching out to him, “Perhaps you would sit with me?”
“Of course, my lady.” He smiled and readily sank beside her, smiling more when she wrapped her arm through his and rested her head upon her shoulder. “For as long as you let me.”
Samhain, above all else, was a mark of change, saying goodbye to one season - one love, one phase of life - and welcoming in another. And for those who witnessed the true potential of what such a change could bring, it was a Samhain that none of them would forget.