Djaq

She stood there deliberately not meeting their eyes. She knew that she should be the one to speak and she knew just what needed to be said, but she was simply not ready to give either shape or voice to what was flashing through her mind.

Djaq was not an emotional woman. She had never been. That did not mean, however, that she did not have feelings. Quite the contrary. She felt things very deeply. Too deeply sometimes. That had been the main reason that she had always made a concentrated effort to absorb her feelings back into herself before they had a chance to bleed into other parts of her consciousness. Before they could get in the way. She was good at that. A quick squeezing of the eyelids or a sharp swift intake of breath were usually all it took and they were gone.

She felt no great need to deal with what she felt the way that other women, and even some men, seemed to. She did not express her feelings. She did not analyze them. It was not necessary. She did not feel that she had to give them names and put them in some semblance of order. Frankly, she rarely even registered their existence.

She ignored her feelings the same way one would ignore any other inescapable nuisance. Like cold, hunger, or stupidity. You try to avoid them, but when you cannot, you simply work around them. Like insects in the forest. They're there and everyone knows it. But you casually brush them away or crunch them under your feet. You do not make friends with them.

This had been the way in which she had chosen to live her life and it had always served her well. Too well. She had become so skilled at swiftly shoving her emotions out of her way, that she failed to notice even the dangerous kind. Therefore she was not prepared for the kind of chaos that two men like Allan and Will could bring to her life.

She had thought herself well equipped to deal with the Englishmen she had allied herself with. After all, they were not terribly complex creatures. But they were decent and honorable and they took her at face value. That was all she could reasonably ask for. That was all she really wanted. A place where she could be herself and do the things that were important to her. What more was there? She had been astute enough to realize, right from the beginning, that she would be a fool to leave.

There were few places in this world that would welcome a woman who had no intention of behaving as women were expected to. A woman who had something to offer the world that did not include husbands, embroidery, or children. A woman who demanded to be treated as an equal. Who wanted only to be valued for her contributions. Who could, and would insist upon, standing up for herself and pulling her own weight.

But somehow, miraculously, it seemed she had stumbled upon just such a place. Who would have imagined that after all she had survived, she would end up in their forest? It was not the life she had planned for herself, but it had rapidly proved better than anything she would have thought possible.

There she found a place and a people who needed her skills. Not only her skills as a physician, but also as a soldier. Two things that were off limits to women at home. Not that they were any more available to women in England. But she did not live in England. She lived in Sherwood Forest with a bunch of scruffy outlaws. A competent healer was something they had been in desperate need of. They, for her, ended up being just what the physician prescribed. And just like that, she had found her niche.

She had been relieved to discover that they were tolerable men. But she had never expected to actually like them. And she had never even considered that two of them could come to mean more to her than any two people ever could. It just made no sense. It was not rational. And it ended up hitting her out of nowhere. She had assumed that she had prepared herself for every eventuality. But true friendship and, what was far more shocking, love? In England, of all places? Try as she might, she still had no idea how she could have reasonably been expected to guard herself from those very unexpected occurrences.

It caught her completely unaware while she had been occupied guarding herself against the world. How was that for irony? But by the time she had stopped and actually noticed that there was something there, it meant too much to her for her to try to find a way out of it. She quickly came to depend on them more than she'd allowed herself to depend on anyone since she'd lost her brother. She counted on them in battle, just as she knew they counted on her. She looked to them often when she found herself in need of some skill that one or the other possessed. But more than anything, she relied on them being there. By her side.

Their presence was a comfort that she would not even allow herself to acknowledge. She did not label what they shared together. It was not necessary to do so. It was real and it was special. It did not need a name. They each brought out the best in each other. They made her laugh all of the time. Especially Allan. He kept both her and Will rolling in laughter. Sometimes they were not even sure why. Some of what he said was not even that funny in retrospect. But their hearts were light and they were open to happiness. She was open to happiness. That was something else that she had never anticipated feeling again.

If she had been the type of woman to indulge in fantastic notions, she might have wondered whether her dear brother had had some hand in guiding her to these two crazy Englishmen. Because, in so many ways, finding them was almost like finding her brother again. Almost. Allan's silliness and Will's steadfastness. The way they had of making her feel that they belonged together and that nothing could ever separate them. The joy that they brought back to her life. It was all almost too much to believe. But it was true.

It was real. And she'd felt more alive than she ever had. And she'd finally given herself over to it without question. It just felt so right. They completed one another. They rounded each other out and made each other better. She did not ask herself what she felt or why. She never worried about where it could lead them. Where it could lead her. Why would she? The three of them balanced each other out and kept each other in check. What could possibly happen to tip the scales?

Well now she knew. And part of her was still so very angry at Allan. Even more than she could admit to herself. She had been perfectly ready to offer him forgiveness and understanding when he was selling their secrets. But she had felt a knife cut through her heart each time she had seen him out doing Gisborne's bidding. He could have tried to find a way back to them. To her. To her and Will. He should have tried. He should have begged Robin for forgiveness. He should have tried to prove himself. Something.

But instead he had moved right on to the next best thing. He had switched sides way too easily. And he had broken her heart in the process. Not only her heart. He had broken everything that had developed between the three of them. Like the snapping of a bone. And it was not a clean break of the sort she could set and be relatively certain of a full recovery. It was a thousand tiny breaks made over the course of several months.

It was the initial distance that Allan's absence had forced between Will and herself. Because they were uncertain how to relate to one another without him around. He had always been around. And also, because they both viewed his betrayal in such different lights, it became almost impossible for them to talk to each other without starting to blame the other. And so they had each pulled away from the only other person who could possibly understand the hurt they felt. Which only hurt more. They had finally found a way to try to work through it and get back a part, at least, of what they'd lost. But, of course, that meant learning to work through things without Allan. And that hurt too. And then there was the break caused by Marian joining them in the forest. Having her there changed the group's dynamic and also enabled them to more easily forget that one of their own was missing. And so many other little things. Day after day. Break after break.

And if Djaq were honest with herself, she resented the fact that Allan had actually returned right after she had closed one door and opened a new one. He just walked back into their lives at the precise moment that she had worked up the courage to make a go of it without him. True, she had not expected to live through the morning. So she had felt a lot safer in opening her heart to Will than she ever would have otherwise. And it was also true that Allan could have had no way of knowing what she was feeling or what she would say. But once the confessions were made, they could not be recalled. They were out there. Not just the words, but the feelings behind them. She had analyzed what she had been keeping inside and given it a name. Then she had released it into the air between them. It had taken flight and now had a life of its own. There was no way of putting it back in its cage.

And she was not certain that she wanted to. She did love Will. She did. But right now, standing so close to the two of them, she could tell that even Will would have been happy just to have back what the three of them had shared. Maybe not at the cost of what they had discovered with each other, but they would never have explored that if Allan had not left them. Or if he would have returned to them sooner.

She was also very angry at herself for not holding out. For thinking that if they were going to die then Will had every right to know how much she loved him. She should have kept it about the three of them. She should never have opened the door to something that could only involve her and Will. She should have been willing to carry what what she had shared with both of them to her grave with her. That would have been the fair thing. She owed Allan that. They both did. But especially her. Because she had told him that she believed in him...in his goodness. Hadn't she? And she had meant it. And she had never given up on him. She had never even considered the possibility that they would not all be reunited at some point. Not until that moment in the stupid barn.

And now she couldn't help but feel that she and Will had been caught doing something very wrong. That they were the ones who were disloyal. That they had let Allan down somehow. It was maddening. All she wanted was what they had once shared. Did being with Will have to make that impossible? Because she couldn't give him up now. She knew she couldn't. She had unlocked something deep within herself where he was concerned and there was nowhere for them to go but forward.

But did that have to exclude Allan? Wasn't there some way in which they could all be happy together? They needed him and now he was back. Shouldn't that be enough to start the healing process? But the physician in her knew that there were some wounds that you could not repair. No matter how much you wanted to or how hard you tried. And she instantly recognized this as one of those wounds. She had known it the moment they had all come together on deck.

It was over. And she knew that she would have to be the one to say so. Neither of them ever would. She had been taught to never lie to a dying or wounded man. A quick truth was always far less painful than a slow lie. Even a lie that they all desperately wanted to hear...and even more desperately needed to believe. So she looked up at them for the first time since they'd been standing there. And she steeled herself for what she knew would be one of the hardest conversations she would ever have.

"There you are. Robin wants everyone below deck so that we can strategize in private. What are you all doing? You look like somebody just died. What's going on up here?"

"Nothing, Much. We are right behind you. Lead the way." And with those words, she swallowed down the ones she had been seconds away from uttering. Maybe they could remain unsaid. They all knew. Perhaps there was no real need to speak the words. She knew that this would not change things between them. It was far too late for that now. One might even say that a spell had been broken...if one was the type of woman who believed in such things.

Well, there you have it. No neat and tidy resolution. I just hated the way that the three of them had no interaction in the finale. So I couldn't quite bring myself to write something in which they worked everything out. Because, of course, if they had, we would have seen some spark of recognition pass between them on the show, and Will and Djaq would not have stayed in the Holy Land. So please forgive the terrible ending, but it's the only ending that the characters would allow me to write. Blame them.