We've been waiting for each other to wake up recently so we can have breakfast at the same time while watching an anime. It's quite a good system! We've gone through quite a few. Dan, 2014

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Dan peeked over the edge of the log, rolling his eyes at Phil, who was still across the path, trying to mate with a hawk. "Will you be serious? They'll be here any second!"

"You said that ages ago."

"Well, they'll shoot you if they see you. And I swear I'll laugh."

Phil pouted and darted across the street, jumping over the log to join Dan on the ground. "I don't want to rob to the rich to give to the poor," Phil muttered, morosely. "I want to just be rich. And get a cat."

"Robin will love that," Dan snorted, and then imitated what was probably supposed to be Phil's voice. "'Um, Mr Robin Hood? I have a new business proposition. Let's forget about this whole solving corruption thing and just get a load of cats instead.'"

Phil blinked at him. "I don't sound like that."

"You really, really do."

Phil sighed, leaning back against the log and picking at a thread in his pants. "I'm hungry," he said, mostly for show. They'd eaten the day before, a pigeon Phil had killed. He'd had a bit of a cry over that. Not that it was his first kill. He just always seemed to cry whenever something died. Dan called him a sensitive soul.

Dan pulled a mint leaf from his pocket and handed it over.

"Thanks," Phil muttered, nibbling the edge of the leaf. He kept his eyes on the road, where any second now (or so Dan said) a caravan would be coming around. And they'd do their thing, get the gold, get away, give it to people more deserving. It wasn't a bad life, and he believed in Robin, but he was here mostly because Dan was much, much braver that Phil was, and needed some looking after.

"I'm thinking about leaving the Merry Men," Phil said, lightly. Conversationally.

"Oh yeah? In favor of cats?"

"I'm serious. It's...I mean, it's good and all, but this isn't much of a life."

"Phil," Dan said, his tone not quite serious but getting there. "We help people every day. That's kind of our thing."

Instead of responding to this, Phil stripped the mint from the stem and gave a piece to a passing chipmunk. "Do you remember when Little John was hurt?"

Dan shuddered, and nodded. Little John had led a raiding party on one of the bigger caravan trains, and had caught an arrow in the hip. It was already infected by the time five men were able to drag him to camp, sweating and swearing.

"Do you remember Robin?" Phil asked, his tone still determinedly light.

"He was distraught." Dan had never seen anything like it. Their usually calm, funny leader snapping like a mad dog, hands over John's wound like he could stop the bleeding by willing it. Dan had found himself praying that John would live, not only because he liked the big bear of a man but because he'd known, in that moment, that Robin wouldn't be the same without his right hand man.

And still, Dan didn't know what Phil was getting at until his friend turned to him, eyes suddenly soft and serious, the smirk that usually lived in the corner of his mouth gone. "Danny, you're so reckless."

When they were young, they'd call each other Danny and Philly. Both orphaned street rats, Dan was the thief of the pair, while Phil was more apt to work for wages. Dan was better at finding hiding places in the nooks and crevices of castles, while Phil was better at hunting, trapping, and starting fires. They'd been a pair for years and years, and Dan had long since taken Phil for granted. He was just there, constant and soothing as a sunrise.

"Oh," Dan said. He couldn't think of anything else.

"Yeah," said Phil, looking at him for the first time since the conversation began. "I...I still believe in the cause, Dan, you know that. I believe that Robin and John and...and all of us are making the world a better place. But I had you before I had the Merry Men, and I plan to have you after."

"Damn," Dan said, "we do need to find some girls."

Phil poked Dan hard in the side. "Even if a girl is crazy enough to fall for you, she'll be stuck with me. Someone has to keep you out of trouble."

Phil rarely pulled the I'm-older-than-you-so-I-know-better card, but Dan could see it coming. He didn't need it. The Merry Men had taken them in when they were still wiry teenagers, half-starved and half-wild. They'd been a good home, but with the archers accompanying every caravan nowadays, with hardened take-no-prisoners soldiers back from the War, ready to kill on sight...it just wasn't worth it anymore. Dan was getting tired.

And, suddenly, he longed for those days when they were young and beholden only to each other, camping whenever and wherever they wanted, talking about girls they'd seen in the market, about men they admired, making up stories about the stars. Phil used to tame birds to hunt for him. Dan used to whistle wherever they walked.

"If you want to say," Phil said, quietly. "I understand."

Dan did have friends in the Merry Men. Nothing like Phil, of course, but a good bunch of guys all the same. And yet..."Aw, hell Philly," Dan said, poking Phil back, "You know you're stuck with me."

"For this lifetime and the next," Phil said, a sentence they used to repeat often as children.

Dan grinned, and looked down. So he missed the caravan, rounding the corner. Missed the marksman, an unusually vigilant ex-soldier with unusually good aim, running stealthily in the vangaurd.

But he didn't miss the gasp, as Phil had all the breath knocked out of his body. And Phil fell forward; slowly, inexorably, horribly downwards, mouth open as if surprised that death would come even for him. And isn't every young man surprised? To find that death wasn't just a shadow lurking, but a beast waiting to pounce. And even if you're young and vital, and in love with life. Even if you're sensitive, and clever, and too nice for a life of thievery. Even if you have a best friend, a younger brother who you love with a desperate kind of a fear...death comes anyway, an arrow to the heart.

Dan reached out his hands and Phil landed, heavy and already dying in his arms. "Sh," Dan said inanely, pushing back Phil's hair as the older man gasped in his arms, a fish with no water. "Sh, it'll be alright." There was blood everywhere. Dan forced his lips upwards. "This lifetime and the next, right?"

There was blood dribbling from the corner of Phil's lip, and Dan brushed it away with his thumb. At the same moment, the unusually good marksman had nocked his next arrow, was breathing in, breathing out.

It was surprisingly painless, death. Especially when your hands were wrapped around your best friend's body.

Dan opened his eyes, just a crack. All sound had left the world. He could feel nothing. There was just the sight of Phil, and the sharp stench of blood sweeping over the woods.

He and Phil locked eyes. They were both bleeding. And Phil smiled - actually smiled - and, just barely, raised one hand, wiggles his fingers like a wave. As if this wasn't goodbye, as if it was just sleep, and on the other side they would see each other again.

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Half of me hates myself for posting RPF (because it's creepy. It can't help but be creepy.) But the other half of me thinks this might be kind of hilarious.