Who are you?
J-John… My name’s John.
Is it really? You don’t look like a John.
Why would you say that?
I have an uncle named John – he’s not very nice, though.
But there are plenty of other people named John.
Well, alright, I guess I’ll just have to call you Little John, then.
Little? I’m not… I’m not little!
Despite the fact that fall had come and was nearly gone, the trees in this particular forest were still wearing their autumn colors with pride, the long branches clinging onto their thick leafy bundles as a strong wind danced past. In that brief moment, curtains of auburn and gold parted to reveal a long figure perched on a tree branch, not participating in the night’s revelries.
Below her and underneath the moon’s crooked smile, a cluster of men were drunkenly dancing and singing around a rather impressive bonfire. The flames flickered and sparked, seemingly swaying to broken lyrics and out of tune melodies. Laughter and human cheer flittered through the empty forest, driving away animals and inky darkness alike, their apparent mirth causing the corners of the girl’s mouth to curve upwards in the slightest. Now that the mission was over, her men deserved this moment of respite.
She sat against the base of the tree, legs crossed and eyes closed, wearing a black shirt inside of a green hooded vest, black shorts, and a pair of worn black boots. In her hands was a dagger with a hilt in the form of a lion’s head. Scarlet bangs fluttered as another gust of air blew by, this one a gentle breeze carrying with it the rich earthy scents of the forest. She took a deep breath, held it in for a while, before letting it out in one big sigh of contentment.
A rustling of leaves to her left caused her to tense and grip the base of her dagger. No longer leaning against the trunk, she turned to the source, her emerald eyes blazing from the light cast by the bonfire. She visibly relaxed, however, and lowered the dagger to her side when a familiar mop of shaggy blonde hair poked out from behind dying leaves, revealing a warm smile and sky blue eyes that were bright even at night.
“Mind if I join you?” he said to her, voice crisp and loud enough to be heard over the racket. It was an inane question, but she nodded anyway, patting the empty spot beside her as she ignored the way her pulse stuttered at his arrival.
Once he was settled, their sides touching, he pulled out a thermos and offered her a drink. She eyed the cup he unscrewed from the thermos’s top and raised a single scarlet eyebrow, and in return he stifled a laugh.
“No alcohol, I promise.”
Knowing how the guys wanted to party, she eyed the cup for a moment longer before sheathing her dagger and accepting the drink he offered – tea, she decided upon further inspection. The cup warmed her fingers, and she closed her eyes to savor the warmth. And if she was referring to the person instead of the drink, well.
That was nobody’s business but hers.
He was the one who broke the comfortable silence, propping his elbow on his knee and resting his chin on his palm. “You’re going to freeze to death, you know.”
The roll of her eyes was eloquent, and so was the way she clicked her tongue at him. “No, I’m not.” She raised the cup to her lips and took a sip of the tea he’d brought her. She detected a hint of lemon and honey, which was nice. What was not nice, however, was the unimpressed look he was giving her. Really, the boy worried too much. “Unlike you, I’m not that weak against the cold.”
He glanced to his own attire, which consisted of dark brown boots, long pants, and a black shirt underneath two sweaters and a large black coat. Oddly enough, he wasn’t wearing his usual black gloves, but then again, with the thermos in his hands, he didn’t need them to keep warm. “If you must know, I won this coat from some earl in Yorkshire who seemed quite pained to part ways with it. Would be worth a pretty penny, I reckon.”
“And the second sweater?”
That made him pout, and she stifled a laugh.
Setting the thermos aside, he moved so that his cheek was resting against her shoulder. “Laugh all you want, but by the end of the night, you’re going to be the one shivering, and come sunrise, I’ll have to be the one to break the news to the friar about your totally avoidable demise.”
“I’ll give him the specifics of my death myself when we see him tomorrow,” she said, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow.
He huffed but didn’t pull away, opting to shake his head and tickle her with his bright hair. Laughter bubbled past her lips and she squirmed, trying to get away from the evil, evil man, to no avail. He finally pulled his stupid head back when she nearly fell off the branch in an effort to get away from him, never mind that the drop to the ground would have broken several significant things. Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close enough to his chest that she felt, rather than heard him laugh at her, the scent of him washing over her like a fall blanket.
“You’re an ass,” she muttered, but the comment only made his grin widen, which wasn’t fair, because smiles weren’t supposed to be that disarming.
Sensing where her thoughts were going, because he was always eerily perceptive when it came to her, he reached to his side to grab the thermos. “Peace?” he offered.
“For now,” she deadpanned, holding her cup out for a refill.
“Of course,” he conceded with a smile, careful not to spill as he poured.
Another silence settled over them as they leaned into a comfortable position, her head on his shoulder as she sipped on the warm tea. It wasn’t often they had moments like these where they didn’t need to worry about the world around them. Rarer still were the moments they had to themselves. She loved her men, but privacy was hard to come by when they were constantly on the move. Following his gaze down below, her eyes landed on the pair of children – a girl and a boy – they’d found during the mission. She couldn’t help but smile at how sound asleep they were in the middle of all the noise.
“They’re getting along with the rest of the guys pretty well, you know,” he told her, and she snorted. Of course they’d get along. The guys were merely overgrown children with a permit to drink. She turned to tell him as much, but he wasn’t looking at her. “Too bad we can’t keep them.”
His tone was light, but his eyes were somber, and she lowered the empty cup to her lap as she turned back to the children fast asleep underneath a patched-up blanket. They were huddled together, their hands clasped and heads turned to each other, and she recognized the sweaters they were wearing as his. She knew how close he was getting to them, but at the end of the day, they had to do what was right.
With a heavy heart, she sighed and touched his arm. “You know we can’t.”
“Mmm.”
“The orphanage will be good for them,” she added, when he had fallen silent again. “Better that than a home that never sits still.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I know,” he replied, for lack of anything better to say. He wasn’t meeting her eyes, so she went ahead and screwed the cup onto the top of the thermos herself. He still looked as if he was miles away when he said, “They remind me of us.”
“Us?” she repeated, caught off guard. That certainly came out of nowhere. She looked at the kids, then back at him, and thought out loud, “She’s a dainty one and he’s an imp. How is that like us at all?”
He turned to her, and for a moment, his expression remained distant. He stared at her, eyes searching her face for something, but he must have found it, because the fog eventually lifted and his eyes cleared. She felt something in her uncoil at that.
“Aside from the fact that you’re about as well-mannered as a gremlin and I’m as delicate as a wildflower…” he said, and she smacked his arm. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the circumstances, or maybe it’s how young they are. Were we ever that young? That small?” His voice was full of wonder.
She snorted. “Yeah, you certainly were,” she said as she reached up to pinch his cheek, the image of a skinny blond boy in tattered clothing clear in her mind’s eye. “I remember.”
Covering her hand on his cheek with his own before she could pull away, he turned his head so that he was facing her fully. The sudden shift of attention was alarming and having him focus on her like this made her cheeks feel warm.
“Do you, now?” his voice was soft when he spoke, an even softer smile gracing his lips. “What about when we first met. Do you remember that?”
Staring back at him, she had to gulp and find her words, willfully ignoring the rapid thudding of her heartbeat. “Oh – I – yeah – of course. How could I forget?” That was the day her life changed, after all. “What about you?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, never taking his eyes off of hers. His voice was warm with unmasked affection, but how he managed to say the following sentence with a straight face was beyond her. “It was the most terrifying moment of my life.”
He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers and together they laughed, their breaths mingling until a fairly strong breeze blew by and she shivered against him. With a sigh and shake of his head, he quickly let go of her hand and leaned back to peel off his coat.
“Not a word of protest,” he warned as he handed her the soft material.
Under normal circumstances, she would have argued, but she sensed the tone, and with the mood they were in, she couldn’t find it in her to refuse such a pleasant request.
Plus, she was starting to feel a little chilly.
Not that she would admit that, of course, comfort be damned.
Once the coat was on – it really was a nice coat, definitely something expensive, definitely something she was going to steal again – and he was satisfied, he pulled her back into his arms. She went ahead and sat between his legs, settling comfortably against his chest, a warm ball of contentment.
Pulling away some stray strands of scarlet, he rested his chin on her shoulder. “Now that I think about it…” he paused there, his breath tickling her ear and giving her goosebumps, “back then, it was the other way around, wasn’t it?”
“That day? I suppose so, since I was the one giving you the jacket.”
“Mmm.”
“Guess you were terrible at handling the cold, even as a child.”
“Come on, I was only eleven!”
“And how exactly is having a ten-year-old save you supposed to be any better?”
“In any case…” He willfully ignored her comment, much to her amusement, and laced his hands together over her stomach. “It’s been… What – ten? Twelve years?” Surely not?
“Fifteen.”
He whistled under his breath. “That long, huh. Bloody hell, so much has happened since then,” he mused, probably thinking about the events that had followed their fateful encounter. “I had no idea what I was walking into that day.”
“If I remember correctly, you were walking into the river,” she teased, mouth quirked, and felt him shudder. “You remember, the one that went through the forest behind the castle.”
“Vividly,” he muttered bitterly. “Then again, you can imagine my surprise when a little girl in a red pinafore fished me out of the freezing autumn water. I thought I was a goner.”
“We don’t speak of the pinafore.” That earned her a cheeky grin, and she turned to glare at him. “At any rate, who told you to get lost in that forest?”
“Who told you to sneak out of the castle to practice archery?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re were such a crybaby back then.” He opened his mouth to say something but she continued, “Actually, you still are.”
“And you’re still as sharp-tongued as ever,” he chuckled, tightening his hold on her. “But putting aside the risk of pneumonia, I’m glad I got to meet you.”
“Damn straight you are.”
“Mmm,” he conceded, and held her hands between his. She let him, watching his thumbs trace the lines of her palms. Not that he knew how to read them, anyway, as much as he liked to joke that he did. “You know what else I remember?”
She shook her head, and he said, “I remember promising you something.” He left it at that, seemingly disinclined to continue his train of thought, so she turned to face him. Her heart stuttered at the sight of his eyes, which were bright and gleaming with an emotion she couldn’t quite place. “Something about never leaving your side?”
And he did promise her that, didn’t he?
She drew a breath and swept her thumb along his cheek, moving close enough now that she could feel his breath ghosting over her lips.
“The promise still holds,” she told him. He leaned into her hand and turned his face to plant a kiss on her palm, his eyes never leaving hers even as she moved her hand down to his neck. “So you better make sure you always come back after a mission.” She said it as a joke, but in their line of work, a promise like that wasn’t something to take lightly, and he knew as much as she did the underlying meaning behind such a request.
At least, she hoped he knew.
“You’re my home. I’ll always come back to you.” He didn’t say he would try to come back. This was a promise, and his voice was quiet and steady – like he meant every word of what he said, and she was inclined to believe him. Fate might have other plans, but for right now, at this very moment in time, nothing else mattered except those blue eyes.
“You had better,” she whispered, and there was the tiniest hint of laughter threading through those words.
He didn’t say anything else after that, but merely reached up, one hand on her nape and the other cradling her face as he leaned in to press a kiss against her mouth, soothing away the edges of whatever tension had remained until she was relaxed against him. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed back, willing to give as good as she got. He kissed her again and again, slow and insistent, lingering against her mouth between pauses.
Her mouth felt tender by the time he pulled away long enough to say, “I’m not going anywhere.”
She let out a breath that was only somewhat shaky and nodded to him, brushing her lips against his in turn. He eventually drew away from her mouth to plant a kiss on her forehead and rearrange them so that she was settled against his chest again.
The absence of human voices made her glance down where, sure enough, the bonfire was out, along with everyone else. Bodies were strewn across the forest floor in no particular order, some asleep with bottles of sherry still clasped in their hands. She shook her head at them, sure that tomorrow more than one person would vow to swear off the booze forever – that is, until the next break came along, anyway.
She must have been more tired than she realized because she found herself yawning hard enough to make her jaw ache. At that, he planted a kiss on her temple and murmured into her hair, “I’ll stay up. Sleep.”
“Thanks,” she whispered into his shirt, pressing closer and shutting her eyes as he stroked his fingers through her hair. She was already drifting to sleep and therefore could never decide afterwards whether she dreamed him quietly saying all yours, love.
Then again, regardless of whether or not he said any such thing, the fact remained that he was still there when she woke up the next day and the remainder of days after that. And honestly? In the end, that was all that really mattered.
Don’t worry, maybe one day you’ll grow big enough to protect yourself.
I can protect myself just fine, thank you very much.
No you can’t. But that’s alright – I’ll protect you, so don’t ever leave my side, okay?
Don’t ever leave your side?
Yeah, I’m in charge of you now, so you’re mine, promise?
Alright then. Promise. But I’m a boy, and you’re a girl. I should be the one protecting you.
You can try. We’ll see about that. But, you know what, Little John? You’re funny. I like you.
Fine, but if I’m Little John, then who’re you?
Who am I? I’m Robin. Pleased ta meet ya, Little John.