Title: When in Acre

Word Count: 1325

Rating: PG

Summary: Guy and Djaq meet in a marketplace

Disclaimer: Robin Hood is copyrighted to Tiger Aspect and the BBC. All rights reserved. No copyright infringement is intended, and no money is being made.

Warnings: *Mentions of character deaths and spoilers

A/N: Yet another attempt at fic organisation, several years in the making. An old LJ comm fic - and a gift for LadyKate's birthday, way back when. :)

He could easily have imagined her a desert mirage if they had not already jostled each other reaching for the same length of cloth draped over the merchant's arm.

"You!" He said, with no small amount of surprise. "You are Hood's Saracen."

"And you are the Sheriff's dog." She replied, her eyes widening as she recognised his distinctive features beneath the keffiyeh.

He touched the edge of his headdress almost self-consciously. "I suppose I was."

She eyed him cautiously, craning her neck up to look him straight on, and neither noticed that the Egyptian merchant had discreetly stopped his hawking.

"You've come back." Her eyes were narrowing with the unspoken question; why?

"It's… complicated." He cast his gaze around the marketplace, and caught sight of more than a few unfriendly faces. "But perhaps this is neither the time nor place for it."

He kept his gaze aloof; saw her turn her head slightly to look behind her, and nod in agreement.

"Alley behind me on your left. Take the first right, then another left into a dead end street. Third door down. Ask for Nabil. Tell him you wish to speak with Saffiyah."

She then proceeded to upset a basket of pomegranates as he made his quiet exit through the throng of gathering onlookers.

The man, Nabil, was a nice man, and despite his lack of command of English, managed to invite Guy in for a seat and a strong brew, before proceeding to repeat in varying combinations of Arabic and English that they had to wait for dusk to move around the town safely.

"White man." Nabil offered by way of explanation. "Foreigner."

Guy didn't mind. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.

The light had almost faded from the sky when the old man finally grabbed his walking stick and shuffled out the door. Guy followed obediently, making sure his shemagh was well secured.

The house they wanted, as it turned out, was just the next street down. Saffiyah, it turned out, was the Saracen girl's name.

Nabil had barely bid them farewell when Guy turned from the door and found himself staring down the blade of a dagger.

"Did you invite me in so you could kill me?" He undid the cloth from around his face, eyes flicking between the blade and her neutral countenance.

Saffiyah seemed to consider his question. "It did cross my mind, but most might consider that poor hospitality."

She gestured to the table with her knife-hand. "Sit."

They sat opposite each other, her fingers clenching around the dagger hilt even as she sheathed it. His hands were on the table, spread and weaponless.

"So. It is complicated?"

He leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on the edge. "Very."

"Obviously you're not here to kill the King, because he's not here anymore."

"The King no longer concerns me. At least, not in the way you think."

Guy leaned back against the wall, clasping his fingers in front of him and closing his eyes for a brief moment.

"I am running from him. He is in England, and I'm running from him."

And he told her, of the two years that had passed, and of the turn of events so strange and extraordinary. He spoke of his sister, his 'brothers', and the Gang with its new additions and old stalwarts. Of the Sheriff, and Prince John, and that final stand against the ranks of the Prince's army. Of the fight in the dungeons, and how Robin died from a poisoned blade, surrounded by his closest and dearest. Of his own devastating wound that nearly cost him his life, which he would have gladly forfeited, but Archer had nursed him back to unwilling health in secret before sending him away from England upon hearing of Richard's release and impending return - "God knows of your treason, brother, and so does the King." Of his travels, aimless and wandering, through the far lands of Spain and Sicily, until he finally decided to stop running and make for these shores.

Saffiyah was silent throughout. He expected her, perhaps, to weep at the news of Robin's demise, but she was silent even then.

She did speak, eventually.

"God causes to live, and causes to die." She stared at him - almost through him. "We've all lost someone." And his old wound flared achingly at the thought. Too much death; they had all seen too much.

Suddenly, there came a baby's cry from the room upstairs.

"Excuse me," she said, and left him in utter bewilderment as she went to attend to her child.

"We named her Maryam." She told him as she suckled the babe beneath her shawl.

"We?" He asked, feeling rather ignorant.

"Will Scarlett, I married Will Scarlett. That is why we did not return to Nottingham."

Guy remembered; he was the carpenter's son from Locksley. He asked after him.

"He fell very sick. You Englishmen are very vulnerable to sickness here."

The baby decided to cry at this point, and she shifted sides with much maneuvering.

"He never got to meet his daughter, but we agreed on her name before he died." Saffiyah smiled sadly. "I tell her he watches her from heaven."

He felt like he was intruding on a very private moment. And he wished they hadn't named the little one in memory of her.

Saffiyah watched him closely, eyes softening at the sight of his pain. "You know she watches from heaven too," she said.

The room was suddenly very hot and very small. He nearly fell over trying to get to the window. He opened the shutters and let the chill of the night air seep into his lungs and bones, and her name was mist on his lips.

Marian.

He didn't tell Saffiyah, but he suspected she knew anyway. That when the time came for him to die, truly die, for his crimes, he wanted his resting place to be where she was. Here. In Acre.

When he finally turned back from the window, he saw her with the child on her lap. Dark-skinned, like her mother, but green-eyed with a head of light brown hair. Nothing like his Marian, but if she were anything like her parents, he imagined they wouldn't be all that different. He smiled and tried to remember what his mother taught him.

"She's a beautiful girl."

Saffiyah laughed, suddenly and loudly, and he is, for a moment, quietly worried. But she restrained herself quickly and merely grinned at him.

"You have changed, Guy of Gisborne."

Before he could reply, she whisked her daughter back to bed.

"Where are you staying?" She asked him after their second brew of tea.

"Been moving around." He shrugged. "Several places. For a fee, most are willing to let a white man sleep a few nights."

"And you have the money to keep paying these people?" There was an uncharacteristic note of concern in her voice.

"For now."

He was not expecting the offer of help when it came. And from her, it was even more startling. So he blinked stupidly at her for several seconds before he could find his tongue.

"Here?"

"Not here!" She said, almost outraged. "My granduncle can take you in for a while. Until you decide what you really want - and where you want to go from here. You won't have to pay him, but he will need help around his house. I would but for Maryam. He will welcome the extra pair of hands."

Guy thought it sounded like a good improvement over his current lodgings.

"I will come with you to tell him. And you can collect your things tomorrow."

When they stood, he noticed for the first time how very small she really was, and so he stooped over a little as he clasped her hand in his.

"Thank you, Saffiyah."

And she shook her head, and smiled.

"You really have changed, Sir Guy."

FIN