Good Days, Bad Days [Kate!]

[Allan A Dale]

So life had been a little busy of late and Allan frankly was feeling a little bit exhausted. It was almost as though the bed guys had stepped up a gear in their plans for total world domination and decided that yes, they were going to wear down all opposition and slowly draw them out so they could strangle whatever energy was left in their bodies right out of them. He hadn't even had time to slink off and visit Kate in a good few weeks, a strange occurrence because his visits had been getting pretty frequent. He hadn't even had enough time to tell her he wouldn't be around – knowing his luck, she probably thought he'd gotten bored and had run off to Wales or something.

Perhaps it was a little strange that he was getting so close to the seamstress from Knighton and if he was entirely honest about it, he was a little scared of the entire situation – after all, she was still Will's childhood friend and he hadn't even broached the subject with the other man yet. Not that he actually had any intention of doing so – firstly, it seemed a little childish to have to ask his friend if he could hang around with another friend, and secondly he was a little afraid that Will would get really annoyed with him. To be fair, he would probably have reason to forbid Allan from visiting Kate ever again.

Of course, Allan had no idea how Will would actually react to any of this, and everything he was worrying about was mere speculation. It was healthy, in Allan's opinion, to run through all potential options in his head before deciding to follow the one that made him happiest and hoping that it played out as it did in his mind. This often failed, but it was always worth a try. He'd managed to sneak off today as it had been fairly quiet and slow for a change, no afternoon raids planned or anything like that, but he wasn't sure if he should go try to harass Kate at home or if he should just snoop about before making a decision. As it was, he was lurking around the little well in Knighton, pondering his choices. If he accidentally bumped into Kate's father, then he could be in some serious trouble but he was pretty good at hiding, if he did say so himself, and maybe the man wouldn't even recognise him? It had been a good few months, after all.

Allan sighed and sat on the wall, digging in his pocket and pulling out a small coin. It was battered, tarnished with age, but he'd snuck it out of the pile of loot they'd collected on their last raid and pocketed it. The others didn't know, although they might suspect, but at the end of the day Allan did have to look out for number one. It was only ever a coin or two at the most and he hardly had the largest collection in the world at the moment, stuffed under a rock close to the camp, but he knew the others would be disappointed in him if they ever found out. He mentally scoffed. Aside from Little John, they had no idea what it was like to spend most of your life thieving in order to survive. Some habits were just that hard to break and besides, Robin's gang wasn't going to last forever. Either they were going to be caught and hanged or the King would finally return and put everything back into order, and then would they all be? Allan wanted a little something to keep him going when that time came.

He decided it was going to be a head or tails decision. He could either stick around the well for a bit or go look around Kate's house and feel like a stalker. He checked the coin – one side had a thistle and the other something he didn't recognise, so not a local coin apparently (not that it mattered; silver was silver, at the end of the day) – and threw it into the air. He deftly snatched it back out of the air after mere moments and slapped it on top of his hands, crestfallen as blue eyes observed a head.

”Damn,” he muttered, pocketing the coin and heading towards the Miller's house. There was no one else around so he saddled on up to the window he knew to look into Kate's little workroom and pulled open the shutter, peeking inside and hoping to God that her father wasn't about to shove a blade between his eyes.

[Kate Miller]

Three weeks. That’s how long it had been since she had seen him, three weeks.

Every day without fail Kate would go down to the Knighton Well in hope of running into a certain outlaw. Every day before that day three weeks ago when he hadn’t shown up, he had an uncanny ability of being there when she was. Now she hadn’t seen him for three weeks, twenty one days. Those days had been certainly interesting from her perspective.

The first week Kate had kept going down to the Well each day at around the same time, in hope that he would appear like he used to nearly every day. But he never did. So after a week she gave up trying. She’d gotten a little miserable about it, and taken it out on things in the house – like she always did . She had gotten herself in trouble with her father.

First time it had just been one slap, barely hard enough to bruise her skin. Second time she’d gotten herself a few finger shaped bruises on her shoulders from where he had held onto her so tight. The next time they had argued about nothing in particular which had gotten to far out of hand to stop and Kate had stormed out. When she arrived home her father sat waiting for her, no sympathy on his face, just pure anger – that next morning she woke up with another split lip and having to think up another reason why for her youngest sister.

After that she’d gone back to going to the Well every day, with that added bit of hope that one of those days the outlaw would show. He never did. And now the remains of her cut were only just showing, but it was still clear that something had happened to her – again.

And so much more frequently over the last few weeks.

Now Kate sat in her work area, nothing in her hand, just staring into space, her back to the window. She found herself replaying the most recent argument over and over in her head. He was trying to get her to marry the old blacksmith again, and she point blank refused to do it. Would you? Especially when you had somebody you’d rather marry instead but couldn’t for a million and one reasons – the main one not being the fact that he was an outlaw but the fact tat he probably wouldn’t make it to sunset if her father knew.

Hearing the shutters opening behind her Kate jumped, grabbing whatever the closest thing was to her to ‘arm’ herself with. It just so happened to be a bobbin of thread – oh yeah, totally harmful. On seeing who the intruder was Kate’s eyes narrowed, ”I thought you’d lost interest,” she mumbled bitterly, clenching the bobbin in her hand and turning back away from him, hoping he wouldn’t get close enough to be able to inspect her most recent bruising.

She fiddled with the object in her hand, wrapping a short length of thread around her finger and untwining it again. He’d better have a good reason for not being around for so long, otherwise her father wasn’t going to be the only person she argued with.