We are Robin Hood.

Allan A'Dale returned to the camp from the castle dungeons. His body felt not yet his own again, and his usually quick mind could settle only upon the most immediately needful task—he must invent some excuse for his prolonged absence and visible injuries. He had not otherwise found himself with enough distance from the day's events, or the strength to reflect upon them, to fully comprehend all that had happened to him and what it might mean, what he might do in light of the supposed deal he'd made with Gisborne in order to save his own life.

There was no time to think on it now as he found himself raising his mug and repeating the toast, adding his skeptical voice to the chorus of We are Robin Hood.

Meaningless. Master of a certain vein of spoken language—if he did say so himself—Allan recognized empty words when he heard them.

He felt as brittle as a dry leaf. A kindly gesture or word from one of his friends would destroy him like a careless footstep. He would drop to the ground as at a gust of wind to be crushed beneath the weight of their trusting and well-meaning attentions.

He kept them at a distance by pretending at cheerfulness. It was something at which he was accomplished, after all—the general concealment of emotions and desires being nearly second-nature.

As much as he wished to indulge in the ale, a clear head would be of greater use to him. There might still be further questions, and he wanted to give nothing away just yet. Instead he smiled and nodded when he deemed it appropriate, all the while looking forward to the moment when he could slip off to bed, secret away the incriminating sack of coins until a better hiding place could be found, and sink into the temporary forgetfulness that sleep would bring.

He drank little and observed the others. Robin's speeches were the loudest and the longest, although Allan paid scant attention to the words themselves. He listened only closely enough to glean that Robin was attempting to convey a sense of pride and unity. From the fierce look on John's face, he believed every word of it. He nodded his head more and more vigorously, and he occasionally punctuated Robin's statements with a thump of his staff upon the ground. Much, who had seemed more agitated than usual when Allan first arrived, now grinned like a fool and echoed seemingly every other word that left Robin's mouth—that was, when he wasn't interjecting nonsense of his own. As usual, Will was the quietest of them all, but he raised his cup as he repeated each toast, and if his tongue became thicker as the night wore on, his voice lost none of its conviction. His eyes were bright, and in between drinks he cast longing looks at Djaq. Surely she would notice, for Djaq alone was not drinking.

At last the talk died away, and the others began making their preparations for sleep. Allan turned gratefully toward his bunk, but Robin stopped him with a nod and a gesture to indicate the bruising of his eye. "Have Djaq see to that before you take your rest."

Allan attempted a light deflection. "Nah, it's nothin'." More words, more lies.

"It is not a request." Robin's voice was not unkind, but even for all the ale he had drunk, it was clear and firm. Softening a bit, he placed a hand upon Allan's shoulder, and Allan tried not to wince at the unintentionally rough contact as Robin leaned in closer and spoke earnestly. "We cannot all be strong together when one of us is hurt, and so let Djaq take care of this now that you may be whole to fight with us tomorrow."

Was this a continuation of the earlier meant-to-be-rallying talk? Allan pushed down a surge of all too familiar bitterness, a twisted irritation bordering on anger that had become so unusually present during the past several weeks, ever since false word of King Richard's return had first reached them and raised the question of all their futures. He had kept it in check—for the most part—but now it threatened to burst forth again, and Robin would not understand, as he had not understood this morning when Allan had complained of the outlaws keeping nothing for themselves.

"We must all be able to look after one another," Robin said as if in conclusion.

But Robin had not been looking after him today. None of them had. His absence had gone unnoticed, there had been no rescue, and now it was too late. He had been forced to save himself and, in doing so, had broken things that Djaq, with all of her skill, could not fix.

In answer to Robin he only nodded, not trusting himself to speak, lest he give voice to anything so honest.

As much as Allan enjoyed Djaq's company, she was, at present, the last person he wanted to be around. He had not been able to bring himself to look at her earlier when he had told his tale of tavern tricks gone awry, but still he had not failed to notice her distrustful narrowing of eyes. While she could not know what had actually taken place, she must question his story and guess that he was keeping something from them. Allan feared her perception, hovering too closely over the truth, and her quiet sympathy, free of judgment, provoking him into confessions.

But Robin had left him no choice, and so he slowly crossed to where Djaq waited with her small store of supplies. He eased himself down upon the ground, shifting the bag at his belt so the coins within would not jingle at the movement. Then he leaned back, eyes closed, and waited for Djaq to probe his brow with gentle fingers and wash the bruising there with herb-scented water. He heard himself sigh at her touch, warm hands upon his face, as she tilted his head carefully and angled it for a better look.

Allan gave himself up to her care and almost managed to forget the events that had led him here and the burden of decision they had placed upon him. He was simply an outlaw again, one who had suffered from a run-in with Gisborne—the sort of thing that could happen to any one of them on any given day. He was here with his mates in the concealed safety of their new camp, just one of Robin Hood's men.

Djaq interrupted this too-brief moment of contentment with a strange echo of Gisborne's earlier words to him in the dungeon: "Did you know that Robin was in the castle today?" But unlike Gisborne, she was merely voicing her curiosity; there was no hidden barb in her question.

"Yeah? Was 'e?" It was true then. Allan didn't know whether or not to feel surprised. He'd half suspected that Gisborne had been lying to stir up resentment, to push him more easily into betraying Robin. Another part of him had believed it at the time. He'd questioned Robin's plans, argued with Much, and then gone off and done what Robin would not approve of, foolishly getting himself caught in the process. In light of this behavior, he could almost imagine Robin choosing to leave him to his fate.

"Hmmm. This does not look so bad," Djaq said, applying some stinging ointment to the cut. "It does not need stitching, and most of the swelling should be gone by morning."

Allan winced. Glad to still have his eyes closed, he tried to articulate just the right amount of interest as he asked, "Wot was Robin doin' in the castle?"

"The sheriff set a trap for him," answered Djaq with detachment, seemingly more engrossed in her work of the moment than in any earlier excitement. "He was captured and taken to be executed, but he escaped before we arrived to help."

Concern. That would be the appropriate emotion to express. "'e's alright then?"

"Yes, I took care of his injuries earlier, before you returned." She paused almost meaningfully. "Gisborne had beaten him. He will be fine, though."

"Oh." Something they had in common apparently, and in that case, it wasn't Robin's fault. He'd never learned that Allan had been taken prisoner, too, and had had no opportunity to find out and free him. Allan hadn't been abandoned so much as forgotten. So that was better, right?

Suddenly Djaq's hands were gone, leaving his face feeling damp and cool. He heard her sitting back with a soft shifting of fabric, her work done.

"Allan." Something in way she said his name, a certain hesitant seriousness, put him on his guard at once.

He opened his eyes, reluctant and wary. "Yeah?"

"I will help you to remove your shirt so that I can bind your ribs. I think they must be bruised, or maybe worse." She spoke softly, and while he could tell that she aimed for a matter-of-fact tone, the tenderness in her voice caused him to flinch away from her. This was what he had hoped to avoid. She could see, or maybe sense, things the others could not, and she would know at once that something more unpleasant than a rowdy tavern brawl had taken place.

He could not allow it. "Wot? Nah, I'm fine," he insisted with a casual wave of a hand, turning up one corner of his mouth as if to impress her with a thoroughly untroubled expression.

She ignored him. Still keeping her voice low, for which he was thankful, she said, "I noticed the way you moved and the way you sat down. Carefully, using your arms to lower your weight. And the way you are breathing now—it is uneven and not deep."

He gave what he hoped was a convincing shrug, as if he didn't know what she was talking about, but her next words nearly shattered his resolve.

"I can help you, if you will let me."

He wanted to let her. How he wanted to! But there was more than just bruised ribs, and he didn't know how to explain—didn't know yet if he even wanted to. He needed time to consider all of his options, and if Djaq saw what had been done to him, he would no longer have control over anything that happened next. It was tempting to let her take the decision right out of his hands, to trust her with his sore and battered body and with the state of his soul. She would know what to do with both.

But this was his problem, and he needed to sort it himself. He needed to make a choice while it was still his to make.

Standing up quickly was a mistake. She must have known he lied when he gasped, "I said I'm fine."

He left her there with a questioning and slightly hurt look upon her face and made his way to his bunk without looking back. Once there, he tucked the sack of coins beneath the bedding and did his best to curl into a comfortable position while waiting for sleep.

The scream in his head was no more than a murmur on his lips. For the third time in as many nights, Allan woke at once and lay as though bound, unable to move in the aftermath of a nightmare he could not recall. Its unformed images and a pervasive sense of threat and terror caused his heart to pound frantically in his chest as heaviness pressed in upon him, making breathing difficult. The stench of the dungeon was strong in his nose, clogging his throat, choking him with the smell of human filth and human fear.

Against this fear, he forced himself to open his eyes, and as he did so moved only from darkness to more darkness. The roof of the new camp, tightly closed to keep out the weather, also kept out the stars and the moonlight, the free and cleansing Sherwood breezes, even the quieter sounds of the forest at night. He was cut off from the old familiar outlaw life by the permanence of walls that seemed to confine like the thick doors of a prison.

He could hear the restful movements of the others as they eased sleeping limbs into greater comfort, their gentle breaths. The very air was warm and close with the heat generated by sleeping bodies in a shared space.

In his heart, he felt that surely they were all captives here, strangers to each other joined only by a common fate.

He pushed himself upright with a wrenching movement that shot stiff and aching muscles through with gripping pain. Raw skin stretched tightly across wounds not yet healed, and small indignities raged against the rough fabric of his clothes. Panic and nausea grew within him as he recalled at last, and with perfect clarity, the recent assault upon his person, upon his very being.

He fought to escape, moving blindly. Instinct carried him into the forest, his feet following a path that his eyes could barely make out for darkness. After a time—he knew not how long—he stopped at a distance he vaguely judged to be far enough from the camp for solitude. There he rested against a tree and composed himself, breathing deeply as his dread subsided.

The emptiness that remained felt something like peace, as if there were space and time now in which to think, in which to weigh options and make choices. And yet he could not. All Allan knew for certain was that he was not the same man who had walked glibly out of Sherwood Forest with his companions only a few mornings past.

There were fears, he had learned since then, even greater than that of death. Thinking back to the day Robin had rescued Will and him from the gallows, it had been a horrifying moment, but one that offered an escape. A few suffering heartbeats, and it would soon be over. Except that it wasn't. Robin had saved him, and he had lived.

The terror of torture was something different. There had been intention behind his deliberate and sustained torment at the hands of Gisborne's jailor, something beyond the mere infliction pain—a desire to break him utterly. He was left with no control, no understanding, no self in the face of such inhuman treatment.

If he considered it too carefully now, he would lose himself again, vulnerable and mindless, in that obscene place where anything might happen and everything was acceptable, so long as he was allowed to live.

He had lived. But he found that it was beyond the limits of his courage to dwell upon his misfortune, the chance that had come to him, and the way he had grasped at it, taken it for his own.

Instead he would allow himself this moment of peace, a brief spell of calm before he must move from this in-between territory he had been occupying ever since. It was a restless place of denial, of hiding coins and injuries, and of lies to his friends. It was also a place where he did not have to think, to choose, to act; and where he could tell himself that any outcome, for good or for ill, might still be possible.

Sweat was starting to chill on his body when he finally sank to the ground, leaning into the tree and allowing all thought to slip away. He had achieved a temporary truce, negotiated both with and for himself, and in its interval he shivered no longer from memory or nightmare, but merely from the cool air of the evening.

Allan slept uneasily until roused by a noise among the trees, a low scuffle that could have been an animal nosing in the undergrowth or a footstep. He did not move. Fear had left him, for now. For who or what could hurt him more than he had already been hurt? Gone was the resolve that had made him stand up to Gisborne in the dungeons, to assert with the only power remaining to him that he would not help to kill Robin or anyone. Gone, too, was the will to save himself at almost any cost, his very instinct for survival buried under the weight of certain knowledge: the price is too high.

The vital question of his future remained unsettled. What would he do? Who would he be? Could he continue to live and fight and defend himself here? With these people? Or would he follow a different path?

The others had made this very choice. There was Robin, who had built his dreams for the future around Locksley and Marian and a renewed England. He fought for them with every mouth he fed and every coin he stole. Allan had begun to doubt the day would ever come when Robin's hopes would be fulfilled, but still he maintained an absolute faith that there was but one uncompromising way Robin could live, and that it was more important to him than his own life.

If his incessant talk was any indication—and Allan suspected it was—Much held onto an unwavering vision of Bonchurch as his future, with life as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest but a temporary delay of this reward. He clung to Bonchurch like a superstition, as if the very idea of it could ward off peril. Bonchurch meant an end to the insecurities caused by hunger, cold, and danger. It meant an end to servitude and to loneliness. Of course, that was not all. Much's entire past, present, and future were tied up in Robin—his very identity linked to the man who had once been, and in some ways always would be, his master. It was such loyalty as existed far beyond Allan's own experience or comprehension. Certainly no one he knew, not even Robin, had done anything to justify his lifelong devotion.

Allan could only guess that John's version of a happy future lay with his son, wherever he now lived, and that John's self-exile served as both a punishment for past misdeeds and a measure to ensure he might one day be worthy of Little Little John. Allan had never had reason to place that much hope or faith or love in family.

Then there was Will Scarlett. Sherwood Forest was a good enough home for Will, for now, and Allan regretted that he had ever tried to sway his friend's loyalties by suggesting they leave the gang for a new life in Scarborough with Gisborne's money. In doing so, he had only succeeded in creating distance between them. Once they had seemed to share the same simple goals and pleasures, but now Will had committed himself to ideals and purposes beyond what he, Allan, could adopt for himself.

What of Djaq? Allan could not help but suspect that one day she would return to the place she still called home, the place she continued to fight for even in her guise as one of Robin Hood's men, an outlaw of England. An entirely different future must await her in the Holy Land, one Allan could not begin to imagine—aside from his certainty that it would be grander than anything she had found here, in a forest in a northern country to which she had been brought against her will. What comforts had she lost in exchange for cold nights and missed meals, dirty clothes and dirtier companions, and near-constant danger? How long would this outlaw life continue to call to her?

Last of all, Allan A'Dale, come from nowhere and heading toward nothing certain. He had stumbled into this life and stayed because he preferred it to any alternative he knew. Before long, he had started to feel himself part of something important, to imagine that he belonged, and, if not to hope, at least to no longer fear his future. He had found friends among people who cared for one another and acted more like a family than he and Tom ever had.

Now everything had come between him and the gang—his anger and his pain, his fear, his shame, his lies.

How could he go to them, days later, and confess what had taken place? What he had agreed to? Perhaps if he had told them right away, they would have understood. But he hadn't. He had kept his secrets and his money, and he had waited, selfish and scared and untrusting, until it was past the point when he could expect sympathy or support.

That was a lesson he should have learned from Roy, who had also been captured and compromised. Robin had forgiven and helped him once he knew, even after Roy had tried to kill him. But then Roy's treachery had been understandable. He had only acted as he did to save his own mother, while Allan had no such excuse. In the end, it hadn't mattered, though, and Allan had watched helplessly with the others as Roy was killed, still declaring his loyalty to Robin Hood and King Richard.

No, Allan was alone in this, as he had been alone in the dungeons, and he knew he must decide his future now, while the choice still belonged to him. The honest part of him acknowledged that he had never wanted to be a lord, or a hero, or a leader of men. He'd long ago put aside any hopes of a secure life with employment or position, a home, a family. Most of all he wanted to live, to find happiness where he could, and to do as little wrong as necessary so that he might live another day.

He had known once that he could only trust in himself, and that knowledge had kept him alive until surviving had become what he was best at. Yet he had begun to doubt his own hard-earned lessons the day he'd met Robin. How many times had he put himself at risk? For Robin's cause? For the others? How many times had they barely escaped with their lives? There had been some excitement in it at first, but that sort of thing could last only so long before you came face to face with the consequences. As he had just days ago. And there was nothing, so far as he could see, that made such risks worthwhile any longer. It had become a matter of danger with no reward.

Whatever ideals Robin had tried to instill in him could be put aside and forgotten. Things like nobility and justice and the doing of good deeds. Allan had played long enough at being a better man than he really was, acting out Robin's goals and living Robin's dreams. He was not Robin and never would be, and it was a pretty certain bet that everyone but he himself had realized that long ago.

So he would go to Gisborne. At the next likely opportunity, he would meet him as by their arrangement, share some harmless information that would lead to one less tangle with armed guards, and walk away with coins in his pocket. If this was something the others would not understand, well, they need never learn of it. He would protect and enrich himself, no one the wiser.

It seemed the best of his limited options. To cross Gisborne would be worse than foolish, and Allan was no fool. Gisborne would find him again one day, and probably soon. By the time Robin arrived it would be too late. He would be tortured to death or brutally killed on the spot—it hardly mattered which—but there would be no second chances, no more deals.

Still, as if in a dream, he could almost envision himself stepping noiselessly through the forest, waking Robin in the darkness, and telling him everything. He could leave it to Robin to figure out how to protect him from Gisborne, how to secure his future. He could trust his life to him and hope that Robin would not fail him, would not one day decide that the poor, or the king, or Marian were more important.

Or he could confide in Djaq, whose subtle but steady watchfulness indicated her lingering concern. If he told her the truth, he knew she would stand with him, fight his fight bravely and fiercely, never giving up, even if he were to give up on himself. But could he, in his falseness, let her do so? She would only find in the end that she had been deceived: he was not who he pretended; he was not as she believed him to be.

Straightening at last away from the tree and pulling himself to his feet, Allan turned until he was facing the direction of the camp. The sky was slowly lightening toward a heavy gray dawn. The sun would soon be rising and chasing away the damp, and his friends would begin to stir in their bunks, but for now the light was pale and thin, offering no warmth and little promise, and the forest was still.

Allan stood as if weighted. In the loneliest hours of the night, he had contemplated his own soul and accepted it. He would no longer struggle against himself.

As if this thought was liberating, he moved at last, and his feet retraced his path from hours earlier, but in his mind, he was already walking away.