Title: The Quiet After
Fandom: Robin Hood (2006)
Pairing: Will/Djaq, Allan/Djaq
Rating: PG
Summary: Djaq gets kissed. She doesn't like it.

Her palm still rings from the force of the slap. He looks shocked. She is shocked as well. Her lips tingle, and she hates the feeling, the phantom pressure. She should have punched him.

"I – I'm sorry," he stutters.

Djaq has never seen Allan a Dale at a loss for words before. She hates that too.

Before she can summon the words to explain – and there are no words, cannot be when he has just destroyed her well-built world of illusion – the others return to camp.

"Hey now! Why so serious? Tonight, we feast!" Much is in high spirits. The hunting party has been successful; roast venison for supper, with plenty left to salt and store.

She finds it impossible to meet the eyes of her friends. Surrogate brothers, they have been. Until now. Allan's eyes are on her, regretful, pleading.

"Excuse me. I – I feel ill," she mumbles and realizes it's true only as the words tumble past her lips.

Skittish as a wild colt, she bolts out of camp and stumbles down the slope to a nearby stream. Her legs fail her utterly, and she sinks to the ground in a heap. Her mind races. If she were more of a girl, she would cry; if she were less of one, she would fight.

But she is Djaq. Until tonight, that has been a gender all its own. A safety zone, where she was free to fight and speak her mind and show her face. To sleep amongst men without fear.

Fear grips her now as it has not since the day she took a knife to her hair and killed the girl she once was.

"Are you all right?"

Will's quiet voice, solemn as ever, pulls her back to the moment. Caught in the late afternoon sunlight, he somehow appears taller than ever. Or maybe that is because she is sitting and therefore at a disadvantage. She would not have seen it that way before today.

"Fine," she says then, before he can say anything else, adds, "I need time to think."

Will nods once, then sits down himself, a few feet higher up the bank. He is not in her direct line of sight, but close enough she knows he is there.

At first, Djaq finds it intimidating. But as the minutes pass and the silence lengthens, she relaxes. Will is a soothing presence, calmer than the sluggish stream running past her feet. Her always active mind begins to slow, as though it, too, is learning quietude from the water and the man behind her.

Now the whirlwind has slowed, she is able to find the thread of a thought and follow it to the root of her panic.

"I was to have been married," she says finally, not sure to whom she is speaking. "Or rather, not me, Safiyah."

There is a line between that veiled girl with the flowing mane of dark hair and the echo of her brother sitting here now. Djaq never forgets that.

"He was killed, of course. And she was glad." Now, she winces in remembrance. "She thought it was the one good thing the English ever did. She did not want to leave my father, my brother. He was a good man – they would not have given her to an undeserving one – but she barely knew him. And she so – I so – loved my family. I thought marriage was the worst thing that could happen to me."

Djaq laughs, and the bitterness of the sound nearly chokes her.

"When I became Djaq, I put that behind me. I was to be a man, celibate, unmarriageable. I threw off the veil. Cut my hair. Became the lie. If the men in my country discovered my secret, I would be killed. A matter of honor. But I tell myself that Allah is more forgiving than men, that he knows I've kept my true honor only by throwing away the semblance of it.

"Allan kissed me."

Whether from the shock of her sudden subject change, or something else altogether, Will finally moves. She hears the leaves rustle beneath him but doesn't turn around.

"You…care for him?"

"Of course. As I care for all of you – as a brother. But this changes everything. I cannot stay here at the expense of my honor."

"It was just a kiss."

"You English do not understand. You treat these things…differently. A kiss is sacred to a woman's husband, and I wish for no husband."

"You wish not to be a woman."

His insight is piercingly true, and she turns to study him. Will's gaze is fastened to her, and it brings the same unfamiliar warmth she has always felt when catching him watching.

"I have no wish to be a man, but I hate that there must be such a distinction. Such strict divisions: man, woman; virtue, ruin; black, white. No room for gray."

"Allan was foolish to kiss you, but there has never been a doubt among us that you are a woman. Nothing need change, if you do not wish it."

"What if he attempts it again?"

Will shrugs, a jerky motion with his too-thin frame, shoulders nearly bursting through his skin. "Tell him not to. He'll listen."

"Why would he try it the first place?" She asks the question which has plagued her from the moment it happened. True, she is the only thing resembling female in their little gang, but they are not so removed from the villages that companionship is impossible to find elsewhere.

"He cares for you – and not as a brother to his sister. You gave him your pity and understanding when he needed it, after his brother…and you tease him and laugh with him. And you're beautiful." Will ducks his head as he says the last.

There is a catch in his voice during this speech – a relatively long one from taciturn Will Scarlett – which does not speak of the casual observer. Suspicion darts through Djaq's now awakened mind.

"He thinks I'm beautiful? He has told you this?"

Will shrugs, but he is still not meeting her eyes. From someone whose gaze is so often an arrow straight through her, this is a telling sign.

This time, her question is gentle. "Or is that your own thought?"

His head jerks up as though pulled by strings, and she sees why he was so eager to hide his eyes. Staring back at her through those always expressive organs is panic and fear and – so clear she wonders how she could have missed it all this while – love.

"I would never do what Allan did," is his only response. "You are safe here."

With me.

The last two words remain unspoken, but they settle inside her nonetheless. Djaq is surprised by the way this knowledge calms her. It should not be a reassuring thought. Will's words should frighten her more than Allan's kiss.

Allan a Dale is light of heart and easily changeable. Today he may fancy her, and tomorrow he may pursue some other lass who won't slap him if he dares to steal a kiss. What Will Scarlett feels, he feels deep in the very bone and marrow of him.

There is something sturdy as the trees of this forest she has learned to call home in that certainty.

"I believe you," she says and means I trust you.

They sit in silence together for a long time. When Djaq returns to camp, she is unafraid.