Fic: Eve of Destruction (Robin Hood BBC)

[keep_counting]

Title:  Eve of Destruction
Characters/Pairings: Guy, Marian, Robin, implied Guy/Marian and Robin/Marian
Rating: R - to be safe
Warnings: Violence and spoilers for everything
Genre: Angst, slight romance, Gen
Word-count:  3,122
Disclaimer: If I owned Robin Hood everyone would have worn leather. Everyone.
A/N: Inspired by a discussion on the Robin Hood Fan Community Board, that somehow spawned this little demon in my head. Thanks to Lena who informed me that the first paragraph was crap and then helped me go on from there - unfortunately un-beated, so sorry! 
Summary:  It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murders are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets (Voltaire)

Eve of Destruction

 

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murders are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets

-Voltaire

The Holy Land.

The words had become synonymous with death, ever since the announcement came back of his father’s demise. It’s not something you wish to hear when you are ten and your father has only been gone for a year, but it is neither something you wish to hear when so many of the other children’s fathers has returned and yours is lost forever.

It is never something Guy wished to hear, as much for his mother whose eyes still shine just slightly or for his sister who doesn’t understand; who was too young to properly know the man that raised them.

“Death is a punishment that only God can bestow,” A clergy-man tells him and Guy wonders if he will go to hell if he punches him. His fist clench and his mother pull him back and he thinks that if God decides who dies, the dealers of it are not punishable.

Everything happens for a reason. It turns out that this reason was named Archer, but there is honestly no room to care about that, not at the time when he had just burned down the only home he’d ever known and killed the only people he’d ever loved. Oh yes, and sold the last one.

There’s a limbo of walking the streets and scraping together whatever he can find, working as a soldier one week and a stable-boy the next. Before he knows it, he’s off the streets of France and back in England and somewhere between London and York and being a soldier in a rotten King’s army, he’s picked up by a small man who needs someone to… well, tag along, Guy supposes. It doesn’t matter either way: Vaisey is insane and his sister is insane – and ought to stop hitting on him – and Guy supposes that he is insane too, as he slits the throat of the unfortunate dealer owing his employer money. The dead body hits the ground and Guy thinks that this should be punishable, but really isn’t.

“We’re going to Nottingham, Gisbourne.” Vaisey says and Guy thinks; sure, why not and follows. Of course he follows.

“The Sheriff back in that town is an old, foppish fool,” Vaisey declares, picking at his grapes. “He’s overtly sentimental; it is going to be easy to kick him right out of commission!” He squeezes the grape and giggles and Guy wonders if it sounds like that when the Devil laughs.

Vaisey never mentioned that the Sheriff had a daughter and Guy isn’t sure if he should have, because little could have prepared anyone for Marian, jaw set in determination and her eyes as sharp as daggers.

“Do you not find it odd, Sir Guy, that men need to travel thousands of miles just to find glory?”

Her voice is like soft honey, slowly sliding over his skin and filling out the scars. The banquet held in the King’s honor had seemed brighter the moment she stepped in.

Her words catch up with him then and there’s a stone being dropped in his stomach.

“Yes,” He says and thinks of his father reaching out, leprosy having destroyed his face and life. “I do.”

He feels nauseous for the rest of the evening, but the approving glint in her eyes makes him fall asleep just a little easier that night.

Six months passes by the time a pebble has fallen from a tree in his – in Locksley’s – backyard, and Vaisey is Sheriff. The man’s pure glee and excitement is contagious and as the pebble hits the water in a small pond, Guy knows that this is the life he was meant for. Something greater than being a simple soldier, coming back to an unfaithful wife and an unwelcome home.

Everything stretches out and as Marian smiles at him again, the green of Sherwood Forest seem just a little more merry.

“Gisbourne, you’re going to the Holy Land,” Vaisey tells him and there’s a thud, the sound of something deep inside breaking into pieces and Guy can barely stand with the load that is suddenly being lifted on him. The ground spins as he gives his consent.

He isn’t to leave for another three days, and Guy uses one of them to get everything in order and two of them to get immensely drunk. Somewhere along the lines, he wakes up with a wolfs-head tattoo on his arm and thinks that now maybe it’s time to leave.

The Holy Land is as godforsaken a place as his childhood dreams had told him, nothing but sand and sun and wind that rips the very skin from his bones. His duty here is simple and mind-staggering, an assassination and a betrayal.

Guy has no second thoughts on the betrayal and the urge to physically harm himself is becoming stronger by the minute in this land of blood and memories.   

Mission failed and he journeys back to Nottingham with a bitter taste in his mouth, a crust of blood still stuck to his jacket. It’s become impossible to wash of and he burns it the moment he steps foot inside Locksley manor again.

Apparently, all they accomplished was bringing back someone who would turn out to be a sworn enemy and the real lord of Locksley.

“Don’t say that you do not love war. I know you do. I’ve seen you fight.”

He’d seen him kill.

 

oOo

 

“That poor girl,” People would sometimes whisper when she came to the market. “To have grown up without a mother. Poor Sir Edward, raising a daughter all on his own.”

It was a curse, at first. To constantly be reminded of what she didn’t have, what was so sorely lacking. To know that a vital part of what should be her life simply wasn’t there, and would that make her a broken person because of it?

It was agony to miss a person that she had never known.

“Your mother was good and kind, Marian,” Her father used to tell her, smiling to her, softly and sadly. “Just like you are.”

“I never knew my mum either,” One of the older servants say to her, one night when Marian had been feeling particularly crestfallen. “But I knew yours,”

Marian gently peeks over the covers that had just been tucked around her. “You did?” She mumbles, hoping that for once someone will tell her a bit more, will venture into the subject that is still too painful for her father to talk about.

“Aye. She was a good lady,” The candles in Marian’s room are blown out one by one, leaving only the moon to illuminate the room. “And a very kind woman. You look exactly like her.”

The drapes are drawn and the room enveloped in darkness.

It is like a mantra in her head for the next years, like a painting of her mother inside her head. On the lazy days, Marian sits and applies colours to her friends and family, steel-grey and soft blue for her father and an unmistakable green, the soft touch of dark leaves, for her mother.

Good and kind.

There is not much goodness or kindness left in her world. There is the warmth of her father, the joy of riding and the simple pleasure of simply being alive, but all of that is sucked into the background as her world turns into an ugly shade of black, like a shadow wanting to grow into something bigger and obscuring the sunlight on its path.

Her father grows ill, as does she, though her illness show itself only in the heart, in the bile that rises in her throat every time a new one hangs – which is becoming more frequent as the weeks drop by.

It is the bitter revelation of what growing up really means, of heartbreak and sorrow and everyone leaving you behind. Of glory being bigger than love, more important. Of Robin telling her that he needs to go, that he has to go.

Of Robin lying to her, because there is no need to, no has to. There is a choice and there is a consequence.

She sits alone after another execution and wonders if he will ever return, a dark part of her whispering in hopes that he will, only to find her indifferent and his world in ashes. Everything in Nottingham seems like ash these days.

Her mother’s grave is surrounded almost completely by dandelions this time of year, creating a beautiful painting of yellow and greens and it is something to cling to, amidst the darkness and gloom of Nottingham Castle.

“My mother died when I was seventeen,” Guy tells her one day as he finds her by the grave and she’s told him the story of the too-early death of a wife and mother. “She was an amazing woman.”

“You must miss her very much,” Marian mumbles and thinks that she only misses a memory that doesn’t even belong to her.

“She was very kind,” He says and something snaps in her, a string that has been pulled too taut and now breaks.

It is kind to take care of the servant household. It is kind to sneak food from her own plate and to the hungry mouths on the streets. It is even kind to cry as someone dies, the string around a neck snapping or the gentle thud of an axe against skin and wood. But what is decidedly not good, is to stand passively and watch as this is happening, over and over.

She has already starting sneaking out at night, small visits to the surrounding houses. There is no reason for her not to take it a step further.

The costume is a soft brown, a good blend against the brown wood of houses. Her mask is an unmistakable green, the soft touch of dark leaves. No one will see her face. She does not want for glory or recognition, she cannot go to open war. But she will not sit still and wait anymore.

It is exhilarating and thrilling at first, the throes of danger gripping her as yet another guard walks right past the shadow she has hid herself in. The grip on her bow is tight, but if he sees her and raises the alarm she has but little chance of escape.

Killed on sight.

She comes home with bruise and scrapes and injures after nearly getting caught and getting punched in the stomach and hitting her shoulder against the hard stone-wall, but even her father notice the bright smile on her lips and she visit her mother’s grave one more time to place a lily from their garden on it.

“I’m trying,” She whispers and that same night she is discovered yet again, by a lone guard having gone into the food-stores alone to check out what the muffled noises where and his sword had nicked her arm before she could escape, the throbbing dulling her senses and making tears appear in her eyes. He’d stormed after her, hand reaching for the warning bell, ready to pull and signal to everyone that someone was here.

Her arrow had hit its mark before his hand could touch the bell and he fell to the ground with a low thud. There had been a beat, an instance of almost proud wonder, that she had hit her mark so perfectly in near-complete darkness, wondering what her father would say, what Guy would say and what Robin would say.

What her mother would say.

She’d stumbled away from the Castle, somehow avoiding the guards and fumbled into an empty alley, just barely pulling down the cloth over her mouth before she emptied her stomach on the already dirt-covered ground. Half-mad with fear of being discovered, she’d eventually found her way home, making such a racket that she woke her father. She had only just pulled on a night-gown when a heavy knock sounded on her door, making her flinch and spin around in fear, a sound that sounded pitiful escaping from her lips.

“Marian? Are you alright?” The door creaks slightly open, her father’s worried eyes illuminated by the candle in his hand. “Oh,” He sees her and steps into the room, looking ten years older in the darkness. “Oh, my dear sweet Marian…”

She breaks down crying before he can reach her and she is slightly aware of being hold all night, the faint drumming of his heart a soft echo in her ear.

She doesn’t visit her mother’s grave for a long time after that.

 

oOo

 

Contrary to popular belief, Robin did not go to war out of love for his King: no, the love came later, when he’d known him through trials and tribulations and the killings of people evil and innocent alike.

Nor did he do it out of duty; out of a sense that he had to do something for his country. In a way, going to the Holy Land, Robin almost left his duty behind. His duty to Locksley, as a lord. His duty to Edward, as a supporter.

His duty to Marian.

It was the thrill of glory that took him in, the promise of immortality through hand-down stories and legends, of people shouting his name and of coming home, inevitably a better man for everything that has happened.

The truth is that glory is a lie. That the men who are sung of in ballads come home broken and beaten, a wild look in their eyes and fear in their hearts. The truth is that the first time he kills someone, he shakes for the entirety of two days and considers fifteen different ways of suicide, before Much’s voice reaches him through the layers of despair. The truth is that he isn’t even certain who was the first man he killed, because after the first was a second and a third and a tenth and it had been a glorious day, a battle won and soldiers screaming and cheering and he’d sobbed himself to sleep.

The truth is that he closes his eyes and envisions the green that is the fields outside Locksley, the shades of Sherwood and the leaves in Marian’s hair. And when he opens his eyes he feels empty, because there is no green in The Holy Land, only sand and dust and blood.

It is an emptiness that creeps in slowly but surely, lets him do the godforsaken duty and fall back asleep. After a while, he stops seeing the faces, of enemies and comrades alike and just moves through a hazy cloud of killing and breathing, only Much reaching through at times, the bright colours of his shield beckoning Robin’s eyes towards it.

It is Richard that breaks through it at last: if there ever was glory personified, Robin thinks that it would be his King, riding out in white and gold to meet the enemy. Lionheart, he thinks and charges in after him.

A wound and a fever destroys all that and sends him back to a home that he isn’t sure he’s welcome to after all this. But at least, he thinks, its home.

It isn’t. It’s just another battle-field, a raging fire that destroys everything in its path and that no water can quench. It’s one of his worst nightmares, come to life as he stands and is responsible for innocent people, his people, hanging.

It is perhaps the easiest decision of his life to save them and it feels like just a tiny bit of balance is restored, like a part of him, the part he lost when he started killing others, fits back into place, no longer floating beyond his reach.

I am Robin Hood.

“You’re such a glory-hog,” Allan teases him one day, one brilliant day with sunshine and successfully evading the guards.

“No,” Robin says. “I don’t care about glory,” He saves a small boys life the next day, looks into eyes of someone who is now an orphan and sees himself.

He wonders if he ever looked that scared. If he looks as scared as he feels now, every day. But he has never felt more alive either: it is invigorating, a rush, a tidal wave come to sweep him off his feet. For once he is doing the right thing, and he knows that this is the right thing, every bone in his body is singing it to him, from the way his fingers grip the bow and do not shake, not even the tiniest bit.

But it isn’t working.

He realizes it in a crashing of events, in the way that everything suddenly turns darker in betrayal and death and loss. Things were supposed to be better, not this sudden mismatch of hurt and blood and before he knows it, his blade has already struck two guards down and from there on it’s an easy road to follow.

Nottingham really is a battlefield. But at least he knows how to handle this, even when everything seems lost.

Everything is lost.

“We will have to kill the Sheriff,” He tells Tuck, ready to throw the monk out of the camp should he disagree. “And we will have to do it soon.”

There is mumblings of mixed emotions, of support and dread and that he has to think this all through. Robin doesn’t need to; he’s been thinking it through ever since he saw three bodies hang from a rope and he almost didn’t stop it.

It is a truth that they will never know – that deep down, when he got home, he still longed for the glory that was so lost to him in the Holy Land. That he didn’t get it and instead something dark and sinister was born, something that could live and grow and feed off of all the wrong things already existing in this hellhole.

That only a broken replica of the man he used to be is back. That this war has cost him more than the last one did.

But he is Robin Hood and he cannot give up, even should he wish to. He didn’t know that, when he choose to go to war, it would be a path that he could never stray from again and a small part of him resents someone, anyone, for that, for not telling him of reality. For not informing him that, when you killed people, they were dead and it was inevitably your fault.

At least, he will journey off that road in death, leaving his worthy friends to pick up the mantle left behind.