The Most Resilient Heart.

A Merry Woman

Marion stood there, alone, in the middle of the hotel room that Robin had booked whilst trying to make her feel more 'at home'. It had given her the wrong idea. 

And so she stood there watching as the door slammed, her heart in her throat, barely breathing. She loved him, really, but all she could feel in her throat was guilt. She couldn't ignore that feeling in her, that relief that he hadn't chosen her. She sighed and let her gaze drop to the ground. She needed some air. Guilt in a warm room is insufferable.

***

She found herself in the forest. It wasn't her preferred place of retreat, but it wasn't as if she was going to find some sort of medievil villa or castle in the middle of nowhere. She breathes in the cold air and feels it against her skin. She had refused to change out of the clothes she had arrived in. They seemed to make her feel as though everything was still the same as before, but they didn't seem to make her feel that way anymore. Robin was an honest man, she had married him for that, not to mention that he had been desperately in love with her too, but she had had different reasons for agreeing to marry him. 

The guilt that choked her even in this lovely clean air was not for not dying. It was not for coming back and giving Robin one of the hardest decisions someone has ever had to make and it was not for saying awful things about the woman that Robin so obviously loved. This guilt that hung in her heart was the thing she had denied for her whole life until now. 

A twig cracks behind her and she swings around to find herself face-to-face with a crossbow.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" A strong voice protrudes out of the dark. A woman's voice.

"I- I-" She trembles. "My name is Maid Marion." Her tone gets more confident with every word.

The crossbow is lowered slowly and a small woman steps out of the dark. "Maid Marion? But that's..."

"Impossible?" Marion stares at the woman in front of her and that guilt seemed to disappear for a moment filling her stomach with butterflies only to find the guilt weigh down on her even more. She couldn't deny it to herself any more.

The woman who had stepped out of the dark had heard of Robin's wife; of his dead wife and she had never expected to see her on one of her patrols. She was finding it hard to get her head around the matter but this woman was no amateur. She knew how to deal with shock. This woman in front of her seemed to make her less confident. The way that Marion held herself took her back. No woman is that confident. "How..." The woman from the dark tries but for once is speechless. "Do you..."

Marion watches the woman struggle with words with the same look of confidence. Her determination was the only thing she had against the small woman who comported herself with the evident air of a trained fighter.

"Let me take you to camp." The woman from the dark motions in the general direction of her camp.

"Camp?" Marion's confidence doesn't disappear. "You mean, the Merry Men?"

The woman nods with a smile.

Marion feels that guilt sink into her again. Every smile or insecurity she saw in this other woman's eyes seemed to fill her with that feeling again; the amazing feeling that was always followed by shame. "But you're a..."

The other woman continues to smile, glad that she was finally the one of top. This woman was the first that had ever made her lose her sureness of herself the first time they had met. "A woman?"

The woman from the shadows stuck her hand out. "Nice to meet you, Marion. I'm Mulan."

***

It was so very cold but they lay under Robin's thick jacket, naked bodies emitting warmth from their proximity. Robin runs his fingers through Regina's hair, watching the small smile on her gorgeous lips. Her eyes remain closed but he knows she's awake.