“Well, he believed in something,” Alan’s voice grew tighter, “and he got dead. Will Scarlet, I suppose he believes in something, too, and now he’s about to get dead. He’s gonna get Elena dead, too, for it. But even Little John, these Delaney brothers, they’re all fighting for their land or the people or something. Or something. You know why I’m here?” The wetness in Alan’s eyes was no longer coming from the rain. “It’s fun. It is, you know? The stealing and the fighting, sneaking around and getting away with it all … you know how exciting pulling grain is? This … this is fun.” He looked up again, where the silhouettes of the branches were darker than the cloudy sky above. “At least it was until people started dying.”

Robin gazed upward at the heavy mottled clouds, drifting along so high above, not even noticing the two of them as they rumbled on elsewhere. When he looked down again, Alan’s face was more real than it had ever been. Something tender had taken over.

“Have you ever seen red?” Robin asked.

Alan didn’t seem to understand the question.

“Some say it’s just a phrase, others say it’s real. When you snap, you find out. You find out what sort of violence you really have in you.” Robin paused, even the rain paused. He wasn’t sure why he started saying it, he hadn’t even realized it was on his mind. “I had a brother, you know. He … he succumbed to that. That thing, inside us.”

“I know,” Alan said, gently.

While Alan could only imagine the horrors of seeing his friends hang, Robin’s mind had gone somewhere else. He knew what would happen to anyone who got in between him and Marion. William had picked Marion for a reason, to draw Robin out. It was a personal attack, and an absolute violation of their history together. In every dark fantasy of what happened next, it ended with Robin and William in the same room, swords against each other. It ended with Robin seeing red.

“That violence,” he said at last, “I don’t want to find out if I have it, too.”

Alan’s mouth opened to respond, but rethought it. Eventually he asked, “Is that why you always seem against us killing anyone?”

Robin shrugged. He didn’t want to think on it any longer.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, for someone who is so against violence, you’re very good at it.”

A lump stopped in Robin’s throat. “You have to study your enemy.”

“Robin,” Alan’s voice had startling clarity, “you are not your brother.”

Those words hit Robin with a relief he had not realized he needed.