All the Time in the World (English)

Chapter 32 - Missing

Alicia waited a long time before ending the call, then she put the phone in her pocket with a sigh.
Jack Robinson was coming toward her quickly, and Alicia turned to him.
"Did they see him going out of the hospital?" She asked.
"No, but there were footprints in the mud of the flower bed under his window, he might have climbed down. How was he physically? Was he able to do it?"
"I think so, Robin didn't suffer from Guy's same injuries and he recovered pretty well after coming out of coma. According to Guy, he has always been full of resources and very agile, he could easily have escaped from there. But we must find him, he doesn't know anything about the modern world!"
The other doctor shook his head.
"I thought Guy's was a very rare, almost unique case, and here's another one with the same symptoms."
Alicia didn't even try to explain him that they weren't symptoms of some mental illness, but that it simply meant that both Guy and Robin came from the past.
"In any case we must find him, he could be in danger."
"Did you try to call Guy? If they are friends they could be together."
"Yes, but it's strange... At this time he should be home, but he doesn't answer the phone."
"Maybe he's in the shower."
"I'll try to call him back in a while."
"We should notify the police. Maybe Robin just walked away to go and eat a sandwich outside the hospital, but he shouldn't go around alone."
Alicia nodded, worried. She knew that Robin Hood wasn't mentally ill, just as Guy wasn't, but it was true that he knew nothing about the twenty-first century and that he could easily be in danger.
"All right, do it. I'm going to get Guy, I'm sure he can help us to find him."

Robin knelt on the ground next to Gisborne and he looked at him, worried. Guy was still on the ground and he was moaning as if he were suffering a great pain.
The outlaw wondered if he had wounded him during the fight, but he didn't remember hitting him in the abdomen. With a sigh he decided to put aside their quarrel, at least for the moment, and he thought he had to help him.
"Gisborne? What happened? Are you hurt?"
Guy answered only with a pained moan.
Robin realized that he was sweating and that it was too hot for the winter clothes they both wore.
He took off his jacket and folded it, making a makeshift pillow that he put under Guy's head, then he tried to open his friend's coat, but Guy pulled back, shuddering.
"Don't touch me! It hurts too much!"
"Gisborne, calm down. I'm not going to hit an injured man. Let me see."
"You can't help me. The pain is in my mind."
"One more reason to calm down, don't you think? Now let me help you, that coat is too warm for this heat."
Guy tried to take slower, deeper breaths, and he nodded faintly.
"All right."
Robin took off his coat, worried about how much suffering Guy was enduring and amazed to see how much he trusted him. For a moment he thought he was back in the castle's vault, with Gisborne dying in his arms.
Despite everything, despite Marian, Robin didn't want it to happen again.
"Is it so painful?"
"As if Vaisey had hit me again."
Robin opened his clothes, expecting to find an open and bleeding wound, but he saw only a recent scar, clean and perfectly healed.
"You're not injured."
"I know. I told you, it's in my mind."
"What does it mean?"
Guy closed his eyes and stiffened, trying to endure a twinge stronger than the others, and he couldn't immediately answer to Robin. The outlaw took his hand and Guy held on to it until the pain returned to be bearable.
"When I am very upset, my mind thinks I feel pain even though my body is healthy. It has already happened to me and I thought I would die. Now I know it isn't true, but it hurts all the same."
"If so, only you can make it go away."
"I can't. I can't do it."
Robin continued to hold his hand and placed the other on his forehead.
Gisborne had lied to him, he had tried to take Marian away from him again and Robin should hate him for this, he should better leave him there to roll in the dust, abandon him to his fate.
But he couldn't.
Because, in spite of everything, he could understand him, he knew how strong the love they both felt for Marian was, and then, in the end, he and Guy had shared too many things for not being friends.
Gisborne had saved him, he had literally tore him away from death with a sort of miracle, and Robin had freed him from the scaffold twice, he had allowed him to redeem himself from his faults, and he had given him the opportunity to escape from the darkness in which Robin himself had unintentionally thrown him so many years before.
"Yes, you can. And I will help you."
Guy looked at him, deeply moved.
"Really, Hood? Do you want to help me even if..." He paused and he was forced to wait for another twinge of pain to fade. "I... I didn't mean to deceive you, I swear. I know that her heart is yours, I always knew she would come back to you. But I couldn't figure out if it was really her. Maybe I didn't want to understand it, but at the beginning it wasn't so important because I thought you were dead so many centuries ago, and then, when you arrived in the twenty-first century, it was too difficult, I didn't have the courage to find out the truth... Because... because Miriam looked at me just like Marian used to look at you! And I never wanted anything else, I didn't want it to end... But now that I know it's really her, I would have told you, and if I kissed her even though I knew the truth it's because I just wanted a last happy memory before losing her forever... I'm sorry Robin... I'm sorry..."
"Gisborne, stop it! I believe you. Maybe I'll be an idiot for this, but I believe you. Now don't think about it, we'll talk about it again, but not now. Now try to calm down."
"How can I calm down? We jumped back in time!"
"Maybe it's right, this is our time."
"No! I don't want to come back here! I want to stay in the twenty-first century. I can no longer live here, in this time only endless suffering and untimely death await me, I have no future, I have nothing."
"It isn't true. You're one of us, Guy, you're part of the gang now."
"Like Allan? How long will I be one of you, Hood? Until the first doubt? I can join you, and I did, but your friends will never trust me, not completely. I don't want to stay here, I just want to go home."
"So were you serious? Do you really want to live in that place?"
"It's still Nottingham. And it's my home."
Robin thought for a few seconds. It seemed absurd to him that Gisborne could call 'home' such a strange and incomprehensible world, a place where he was only a stranger.
He looked at him: Guy had closed his eyes and he was trying to calm himself, breathing slowly, his hand still clutching Robin's.
Robin realized that Gisborne was a stranger even in the Nottingham of the past, indeed he was even worse than a stranger because everyone hated him. It wasn't surprising that he had chosen to start a new life in a less hostile world.
"Then you'll go back there, if that's what you really want."
Guy opened his eyes to look at him.
"How?"
"I'll find a way. You know I will succeed."
Robin saw his friend's eyes filling with tears and Guy closed them to hide his emotion.
"I believe you, Hood. I want to believe you." He said in a worn-out whisper, then he stood still, and Robin remembered with horror the moment he had died in his arms in the castle's vault.
For a moment he thought it had happened again, that Guy's heart had given way after all that suffering, but when he bent over him to check, he saw that he had only fallen asleep. Robin realized that Gisborne's fingers were still tight on his hand, but he did nothing to free it, and just sat next to him, his back leaning against the ruined wall of the house.
He closed his eyes, but he didn't fall asleep: too many thoughts were stirring in his mind at the same time and he absolutely had to do some clarity.
Marian, of course, occupied most of his thoughts. To see her again, alive, had been both a trauma and a miracle, and Robin still couldn't believe it. He realized with horror that she must still be in the Nottingham of the future and wondered if he would ever be able to see her again. But, even if it was impossible to meet her again, Robin couldn't hold back the disruptive joy that warmed his heart and he found himself smiling.
She's alive! Marian is alive!

Alicia knocked on the door of Guy's apartment without receiving an answer and she began to worry: it was too late and he should have been home long ago. She took the phone and tried to call him again: she could hear the phone ringing through the closed door, but no sign of life came from inside.
Alicia was thinking about whether to contact Miriam, when the door of the lift opened, letting out an elderly woman.
"Are you looking for Guy?"
Alicia looked at her.
"Yes. Can you tell me if he's at home?"
"He hasn't returned yet. I was waiting for him, and if I have to be honest, I'm a little worried."
"Why?"
"He told me that today he only had his courses until lunchtime and then he would meet his girlfriend, but that they wouldn't be together for a long time because she then had a work commitment around four. I had asked Guy if he could do some shopping for me when he got home, with this cold I don't trust to go out if I can avoid it, I'm always afraid of slipping on the ice. But by now he should have been here hours ago, I confess I'm a little worried for him."
Alicia tried not to show how much those words had alarmed her too.
"Can you tell me where he could have gone shopping?"
"Yesterday he told me that he would meet his girlfriend at the park... Coming home from there, probably the most convenient place is the supermarket near the bus stop."
"Thanks, I'll check to see if he was there. If he were to come home, can you call me? At any time of the day or night."
Alicia handed her his business card and the old woman smiled as she read her name.
"Ah, Alicia? Guy told me about you, I think he's very fond of you."
The doctor nodded, moved and worried.
"Thank you Madam."
"My name is Aisha. Wait." The woman ripped a little strip of paper from the corner of Alicia's business card and wrote her number with a stub of pencil she kept in the pocket of her robe. "The same goes for you: when you find him, let me know."
Alicia came out of the building, now seriously worried, and she looked up to watch the falling snowflakes, thicker than when she had entered.
She usually liked the snow, but now she thought of Robin, and maybe Guy, out in the cold and how they would spend such a cold night.
She had almost arrived at the supermarket indicated by Mrs. Aisha, when the telephone ring startled her, and she hastened to pull the car to the side of the road to answer. It was Jack Robinson.
"Do you have any news, Jack?"
The doctor's voice was hesitant, uncertain.
"Actually I do, but..."
"No buts, just speak!"
"When I went to talk to the police, an agent had just returned and, when he heard me describe Robin, he intervened saying that he saw a person who corresponded to the description. He said he had intervened to quell a dispute between him and another man near the bus stop in front of the park."
"Guy was supposed to be there!"
"That's it. The agent talked about a man with dark, long hair and he recognized both of them when I showed him their pictures."
"Where are they now?! Why did they fight? Has he arrested them?!"
Jack hesitated and Alicia shuddered.
"Jack, what happened? Tell me."
"The cop had to be drunk, there's no other explanation."
"Speak!"
"He said he had ordered them to stop, but that they continued to fight and trade insults. He believes that the quarrel was due to some woman because he heard the name 'Marian', but he couldn't do anything to stop them."
"Why not? Did they hurt themselves, Jack? Did... did they kill each other?"
"I don't know. The policeman said he was about to call for reinforcements and have them arrested, but they disappeared before his eyes."
"Did they run away?"
"Probably, but he says they just disappeared into thin air, as if they had vanished. He had to be drunk, don't you think?"
Alicia closed the call without answering him.
She knew very well that the policeman hadn't dreamed: Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne had made another leap in time and Alicia couldn't know if this time they would return in the twenty-first century.
"No, Guy, no," she whispered, letting the phone fall into her lap.
Then she covered her face with her hands and she burst into tears.