"That was a long time ago," Marian conceded, taking a slow sip of her beer and then sighing. "If that 'gang of men' is around then they've decided to leave me out of it this time."
(They wouldn't though, would they? Marian thought about that sometimes, how how strange and unlikely that they wouldn't find her if they were looking? In the beginning some of the boys had been against her joining them... what if that was the part of them that had grown stronger? What if Rob had chosen them over her? The Merry Men were always so vital to Robin's tales. What if Marian was an afterthought now?)
Marian's outfit tonight tended towards the more grunge end of the spectrum - Marian had loved grunge and hadn't yet been able to let that casual messiness go completely. She was certainly a lot less done up than the other women in the bar in her torn jeans and open red flannel, but that wasn't unusual.
"You too," she told him, and the words came easily. He did look handsome, but he always had been. Marian couldn't deny that seeing him now, there was a strange attraction. It shouldn't have surprised her - enough stories had tried to make a love triangle with them on two of the sides.