Enemy of My Enemy

Chapter Six - Discussions

"What did you think you were doing?" Robin rounded on her. "You could have gotten yourself killed....or any one of us."

They hadn't even reached camp; he was too angry to wait. The rest of the gang, suspecting the storm about to break, had trotted ahead without them.

"Oh, and you don't risk that, every time you show up in Nottingham in one of your outlandish disguises, running around the castle as if you own it, getting yourselves arrested...."

"That's different – I know what I'm doing...."

"And I don't?"

Robin knew he'd chosen his words poorly, but was too angry to care. He paced, incensed. She'd acted recklessly, and as much as he'd wanted her to be in the forest with them he realised now that perhaps this wasn't going to be easy. The gang he trusted to take care of themselves; but Marian....

...he knew, in his head, that she was a capable fighter. But she wasn't infallible. He recalled that heart-stopping moment, the raised blade that she hadn't seen, and it fuelled his anger even more.

"You didn't think. You just rushed in..." he accused.

"....of course I did, they were hurting people."

"And we would have helped them, when the time was right. Not with the sheriff still in sight, and Gisborne hovering..."

"And that's what really bothers you, isn't it? That I went with him."

"No – well, yes, that bothers me too. What did you think you were doing? He knows you're the Nightwatchman. He's back with the sheriff. For all you knew, he could have taken you straight back to the castle."

"But he didn't, did he?"

Robin threw up his hands in frustration.

"What kind of an argument is that? My point is, you didn't know."

"But I did know. That's the thing, I know Gisborne well enough...."

"I could see that – you do know him quite well..."

"Grow up, Robin... you're being a child."

They were getting nowhere. And he was sick of being told to grow up. It was her fall-back response, whenever an argument wasn't going her way. And what could he say to that? I've done my growing up, in blood, in the Holy Land. I've done it here, refusing – whatever the cost – to watch people suffer. But even this they disagreed on. Fight the system from within, she'd always told him.

Well, that way didn't work. She should know that, by now. That way saw you reading the sheriff's proclamations from a platform as he looked on, it saw you standing by and watching innocent men hang, or starve, or feel the blade between their ribs. That way saw Little John's Alice lose her tongue, or.....

"Robin. Wait."

He'd stalked ahead of her, enraged. Now he turned back, and saw that she hadn't followed. He stood, waiting; when she made no move forward, he relented, pacing back to where she waited.

"I apologise. I shouldn't have called you a child. But nor will I be treated like one. And nor will I trail after you like some...servant." Defiance glinted in her eyes. "If I'm to be here, I will walk beside you, or not at all."

Robin felt a surge of admiration for her, then; it was one of the reasons he loved her. Beautiful, bold, spirited...here she was, laying down her terms after less than a day with the gang. Here she was, charging into a fray, possessed of no thought but protecting her people....and all this so soon after she'd lost her father, since her world had been turned upon its head.