Finally, the second part of my KA fic
Feb. 23rd, 2007 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosiesparkTitle: Two Sides of the Triangle (Part 2)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rosiespark
Summary: Lancelot wants that which he cannot have.
Characters: Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere.
Rating: A bit tame, compared to Part 1. PG-ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. For fun, not for profit. Etc.
Thanks: tofajrdrako for working her usual beta-magic.
Notes: Based on the 2004 King Arthur film. Follows on from Part 1 and takes place the night before the Battle of Badon Hill. I’m following the theatrical cut of the film in which Lancelot and Arthur stand on the fort’s battlements and survey the Saxon Army before Guinevere goes to Arthur’s room. The events of this fic are set in the interval between those two scenes.
.
Even as he hears Arthur’s barked “enter”, he despises himself for the lengths to which he will go in order to secure this last private farewell. He has them already formed in his mind, the words of apology and conciliation that he will say to Arthur. No more than a beaten cur, he thinks viciously, grateful for crumbs from its master’s table, and he closes the door carefully behind him.
Arthur looks wary but not unwelcoming as he rises from his seat behind the massive desk. The last of Lancelot’s anger crumbles to ashes at this courtesy and his rehearsed words are somehow transformed into something true and sincere as they leave his mouth.
“I would not leave tomorrow, Arthur, with hard words still between us. I am sorry.” He swallows. “For questioning you earlier. And for doubting your choices.”
Arthur pairs a decided shake of the head with a slight smile. “No. No apologies between us, Lancelot. But you must understand why I am doing this”. He moves closer, close enough that Lancelot can see the weariness in his eyes. “You do see, do you not?”
The hint of an appeal in the question stops Lancelot’s breath in his throat. This from Arthur, who so rarely asks for anything, even from those who are closest to him. You who know me best of all. He has to swallow again, painfully, before he can reply.
“I do, Arthur. It is the path you have chosen.”
The statement is meaningless in his own ears, but it echoes the Pelagian doctrines that are so close to Arthur’s heart, and Arthur’s brief smile betrays both gratitude and, strangely, relief. He takes Lancelot’s hands, clasping them with both of his own.
“Farewell, then, my brother. May God go with you.”
The words are heartfelt, and Lancelot forces a shadow of his usual mocking grin as he makes his habitual response. “Your God or mine?”
A twitch of the mouth is Arthur’s only response and Lancelot continues, in as light a tone as he can manage, “May you walk in the light, Arthur, always.”
A final pressure of their clasped hands and Arthur releases him and turns away. Lancelot is instantly bereft, stricken by the thought that he will never again feel the touch of those hands, never know the dark heady thrill of that hot demanding mouth on his skin. He opens his mouth, furious hurt broken entreaties crowding his throat only to die unspoken at the sight of Arthur’s face, brow already furrowed in remote concentration as he returns to the scrolls and tablets on his desk.
He gets himself out of Arthur’s room without disgracing himself and comes to a halt in the shadowy passageway. A soldier’s goodbye, and nothing more. They were never lovers, he thinks, and shivers. Nothing between us except for a few shared moments of lust, casually slaked. And yet he is left feeling like half a man, with nowhere to go and the prospect of nothing that moves him, and he wonders dully if this is how it will be from now on.
The thought of Arthur finding him still standing outside his quarters like a witless fool is what goads him into motion. His own room offers a welcome measure of privacy and the solace of a jar of strong wine; he feels a stab of desperate longing for both.
Turning blindly, he sees her too late to step aside. The shock of the collision almost knocks her off her feet and he grabs hold of her wrists to keep her from falling. Even in the dimly-lit passageway, he cannot fail to recognize her. Still he steps to one side so that the flickering torchlight falls on her pale face.
Guinevere. Here.
The passage leads only to Arthur’s rooms. Lancelot’s face hardens and he tightens his grip on the girl’s wrists.
“Where are you going?” he asks softly.
She stares back wordlessly and as he leans in towards her, he can smell the perfume rising from the warmth of her skin. He notes the fine gown and the fall of her hair, artfully arranged to cascade over one shoulder and, unless his nose deceives him, perfumed too. She lifts her chin with her usual air of defiance but maintains an uncharacteristic silence. She cannot be here by invitation, then, if she does not wish to be discovered. That is something, at least. But he has seen the way Arthur looks at her, has noticed the hunger in his eyes, right from when he first saw her in that filthy stinking cell. He will not send her away.
“You are too early. He is not yet abed.” Harsh but low, and he trusts the thick walls to keep the sound of his voice from reaching Arthur.
Her face twists and she frees one wrist with a furious wrench, but he catches her hand before she can reach his face or, more likely, the knife at his belt.
“Oh no, my pretty,” he says quietly, half under his breath, and smiles. “Come with me.”
______________ _________________ _______________
He gets them both to his room in an efficient demonstration of the advantages of superior weight and strength. Once inside, he releases her and settles his back against the closed door. The only door, he sees her realize as she quickly scans the room and whirls to face him again, like some wild thing trapped in a cage.
“Don’t worry. No-one’s going to rape you.” His control, the Gods be thanked, is back in place and he lifts an eyebrow in sardonic amusement at the fierce look his words provoke.
It comes to him suddenly that he is enjoying this. That in some strange fashion that he would not be able to explain, he might almost be sparring with Arthur. Except that with her, he has no need to watch his tongue or temper his words, and can indulge in the savage joy of baiting her.
She doesn’t waste words. “What do you want?”
He lets his lips curl in a sneer. “Tell me,” he says conversationally, “was he expecting you? Or was a midnight tryst your own charming idea? You hoped to stiffen his…resolve, perhaps, before tomorrow’s battle?”
She glances aside, her lips thin, and he welcomes this sign of weakness.
“Do you love him?” he says, hoping to goad her into fighting back, and then watches in fascination the way that her face changes shape as she clenches her jaw.
“You have a reputation for taking other men’s wives. Tell me”, she says, her words echoing his in a voice as deceptively sweet as fermented honey, “do they go with you willingly after you say that you love them? Or do you drag them into the bushes regardless?”
He cannot say why her words should sting as they do. He is used to frequent ribald commentary from Bors and the others, some of it good-natured and some of it less so, and he has never let it get under his skin. He stares at her, and she smiles, bright and taunting. And he suddenly wants, with a force that surprises him, to smash her facade of composure and put an end to this game they’re playing. Abandoning the pretence that this is about anything other than her claim on Arthur, he strikes with the first weapon that comes to hand.
“There is not room for us both beside him,” he says harshly. “I will leave. And the men will follow my lead.”
It is an empty threat which she does not hesitate to expose as such, scorn and triumph plain in her voice. “He told you to go.”
“The men will come with me,’ he says again, as if repeating it will make it true. “You can’t hope to stand against the Saxon, not without us.”
She laughs, a thin brittle sound. “You rate yourselves highly, you Sarmatian knights. You think your handful of horsemen equal to an army of my people?”
He smiles at that, drawing strength from the contempt he has always felt for the Woads. “They are no army. An undisciplined leaderless rabble.”
She takes no offence, merely smiles indulgently as at a child that has said something clever. A leaderless rabble. The fear precedes the realisation by a hairsbreadth. He feels his stomach clench and tastes bile in his mouth. So that is what she wants. He wonders whether the plan was hers or Merlin’s. Either way, she has chosen her leader and will stop at nothing to make sure of him.
She is watching him through narrowed eyes, and he can feel the game, if that is what it ever was, slipping from his grasp. Hating her, and hating himself equally, he voices the unforgivable. “We should have left you in that stinking cell.”
She flinches at that and then brings her gaze back to his face, and this time, it is he who cannot meet her eyes. Her face is bright and pitiless as a blade by firelight. “I would not leave a dog to die in a place like that,“ she says eventually with stinging contempt.
The ice is cracking, treacherous and sinking underfoot, and he stakes everything on one last throw.
“What do you think he knows of women? He is not a tender lover. I bear the marks to prove it.”
The silence echoes and he realizes with growing horror what he has said. She is staring at him without wavering, and more than ever, he cannot read her.
“I should not have said that,” he says. He would take the words back, if only he could. His lips feel numb. “It was not mine alone to share.”
“It is no secret.” She gives a small shrug but her face has softened. She takes a step towards him, one hand outstretched, and his control cracks again.
“You knew.” His voice is flat. “And you will make of yourself a whore and of him a fool if you think to chain him to your cause by letting him share your bed.” There are tears, shamefully, pricking behind his eyes, that he is determined not to let fall. He cannot bear her gaze.
“He is … dear to you, is he not?” There is, surprisingly, no mockery in her question.
“Yes,” he says heavily, with the utter ignominy of defeat.
She holds all the cards, has held them all along, only he had been too blind to see it. He unbolts the door then, and pushes it open. He will not stop her. She will go to Arthur and, having paid her part of the bargain, will hold Arthur to his, and this sorry land will have its leader.
She sweeps past him, so close that her perfume stirs the air, and he struggles to draw in enough breath to speak even a single word.
“Wait.”
She stops but doesn’t turn to face him.
He is lost for words. He, Lancelot of the glib tongue and the cutting rejoinder, is fighting to catch hold of thoughts that flash and glitter in his mind like falling water, fleeting and ungraspable.
There are things he would say to her. That he regrets that they are enemies. That she is nothing like the women he knows, whom he despises even as they succumb so easily to his charm. That she is, impossibly, an equal – a fellow warrior wielding a merciless blade. That he has been aware of her dangerous fascination from the very first, and that he has resisted and fought against it. That, whatever he has said, he could never have abandoned her to the degradation of imprisonment and torture.
“I am sorry.” He cannot find the words to say more, and he can only hope that she, who has outguessed him every step of the way, might sense some of what he is unable to say.
At his words, she turns back into the room, and gives him a grave searching look. There is no anger in her eyes as she raises a hand to his face and says quietly, ”As am I.”
He keeps perfectly still under her touch, and his world contracts to the feel of her cool fingers on his cheek and the sight of her pale face and downcast eyes. His heartbeat shakes his whole body. She is close enough that she must feel it too, but she gives no sign of it.
“Guinevere.” The syllables feel strange on his tongue.
She lifts her eyes to his then, and her lips curve in a slow smile that leaves the pain in her eyes untouched. She smiles, and he is lost.
“Come with me tomorrow,” he says with a recklessness that would frighten him if he were not beyond caring.
Her lips part on a sharp breath, but she shakes her head. “I belong to this land.”
He cannot bear the thought of her and Arthur together. “Do not do this.”
“What choice do I have?” Her voice is hard. “Merlin has seen it, the two of us leading my people. Our people. Arthur shares our blood. It is our fate, his - and mine.”
This talk of druidical visions is beyond his understanding, and he wonders briefly what Arthur, with his Pelagian doctrine of free will, will make of it.
Her perfume is making him dizzy, and he takes her by the shoulders, gently, his thumbs tracing circles on her polished skin. She fits his hands with something like the same sense of rightness that he feels when taking hold of the hilts of his own swords.
“Arthur will stay regardless of what you choose to do.” From nowhere, wild thoughts flood his mind, of her by his side, sharing a life in some strange land, where neither of them is shackled by promises or visions or the heavy chains of duty. “He will stay,” he repeats, suddenly desperate that she should be convinced of this. “You know it.”
“You may be right. But my people will not follow him unless I am there at his side.” There is no evasion in her reply, merely the calm statement of an unanswerable truth.
At the look of distress on his face, she reaches up to takes his face between her hands. “We have known nothing but oppression for decades. I have a chance, Lancelot, to make a difference. How could I refuse it?” Her eyes search his face as she continues, “Could you refuse such a chance for your people?”
He is ashamed of what his answer would be. She is still holding his face so that he cannot look away from her.
“They are my people,“ she say fiercely, and then more gently, “This is not your battle. Leave here and go home, Lancelot. To your oceans of grass and the vast skies above them.”
Home. It is just a word, a hollow promise from fifteen years ago, made by a grieving boy torn from his family and homeland. He is no longer that boy, and the promise is ashes and dust scattered on the wind.
When he kisses her, her lips part under his, and she kisses him back, mouth hot and sweet and demanding. His hands are on her back, revelling in the smooth play of her muscles under the thin fabric of her dress as she lifts her arms and winds them around his neck. He shudders and pulls her even closer, releasing her mouth and letting her bury her face against his cheek and neck.
He aches with the need to hold her, to have her, to bury himself in her. He runs his hands up her arms and slips his fingers under the flimsy clasps at her shoulders, even as his mouth seeks hers again.
She turns her face away. He barely hears her quietly spoken “No”, muffled as the word is against his shoulder.
“Guinevere,” he says, and her name sounds easier on his lips this time, smooth like good wine. He wishes he could see her face, but her forehead is resting against his shoulder, and her features are hidden by the shining fall of her hair. If she would but look at him, he would lace his fingers through the fine softness of her hair and cradle her skull in gentle hands and kiss her until she had no breath left in her lungs and no room in her head for thoughts of anything at all. He marvels at it, this unguessed-at well of tenderness inside him.
“No,” she says again, more clearly this time, and then, “Please,” and it is this as much as the steely grip of her hands, archer’s hands, on his wrists that gives him pause.
He has the warm flesh of her shoulders under his palms, the taste of her still on his tongue. He could take her if he tried. She would not continue to resist after the initial struggle, of that he is sure. And he cannot believe that it would really be against her will. But she would hate him afterwards. He is sure of that too.
She is so beautiful. So strong and yet so breakable.
No. Let the choice be hers, untainted by violence and coercion. He lowers his hands.
He knows that he has lost her as soon as she steps back, raising her head so that he can see both pain and determination in her eyes.
“No,” she repeats, and this time there is steel in her voice.
From across the unbridgeable distance of a single pace, she says, “I am not so much of a whore to go straight from your bed to his.”
It is an explanation, not a plea for understanding or forgiveness. Her life has a purpose, she has a people who need her and a duty that she will not shirk. And she will have Arthur at her side. While he… he is left with nothing.
He will not beg, but he cannot prevent the catch in his breath at the sudden unsupportable pain of her decision.
“Hush, my dear.” The unexpectedness of it almost breaks him. He could never have imagined such tenderness from her, combined with such implacable strength. How has she shed her armour without losing any of her strength, how?
“Go, then,” he says, and holds the door open for her. She walks away from him and he watches her go. She doesn’t look back. He has lost her. He has lost them both.
He is still standing in the doorway when a shadow detaches itself from the deeper gloom of the passageway. Bors, he notes dispassionately.
“That was Guinevere.” The hushed incredulity in Bors’ voice is so unusual that it reaches him even through the strange sense of isolation that has settled on him. He remembers feeling this way once before, years ago after a particularly bloody battle, in the days when he was still a boy and had not become inured to killing.
He nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“But she’s Arthur’s woman.” Again, incredulity rather than accusation.
“Not yet.” His voice cracks at the thought of what he has lost, and he closes his teeth on his lower lip so hard that he tastes blood.
He would not be surprised if Bors were to hit him. And the pain would not be unwelcome. But Bors just grunts and darts a sharp look at him, and then merely says, “Get some sleep, lad. It’s late. ”
He steps back into his room under Bors’ watchful eye. The scent of her still lingers on the cold air. He blows out the lamp as the door swings shut behind him, and lets the night’s darkness in to become one with the vast well of despair inside him.
.
Author:
rosiesparkSummary: Lancelot wants that which he cannot have.
Characters: Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere.
Rating: A bit tame, compared to Part 1. PG-ish.
Disclaimer: Not mine. For fun, not for profit. Etc.
Thanks: to
fajrdrako for working her usual beta-magic.Notes: Based on the 2004 King Arthur film. Follows on from Part 1 and takes place the night before the Battle of Badon Hill. I’m following the theatrical cut of the film in which Lancelot and Arthur stand on the fort’s battlements and survey the Saxon Army before Guinevere goes to Arthur’s room. The events of this fic are set in the interval between those two scenes.
.
Even as he hears Arthur’s barked “enter”, he despises himself for the lengths to which he will go in order to secure this last private farewell. He has them already formed in his mind, the words of apology and conciliation that he will say to Arthur. No more than a beaten cur, he thinks viciously, grateful for crumbs from its master’s table, and he closes the door carefully behind him.
Arthur looks wary but not unwelcoming as he rises from his seat behind the massive desk. The last of Lancelot’s anger crumbles to ashes at this courtesy and his rehearsed words are somehow transformed into something true and sincere as they leave his mouth.
“I would not leave tomorrow, Arthur, with hard words still between us. I am sorry.” He swallows. “For questioning you earlier. And for doubting your choices.”
Arthur pairs a decided shake of the head with a slight smile. “No. No apologies between us, Lancelot. But you must understand why I am doing this”. He moves closer, close enough that Lancelot can see the weariness in his eyes. “You do see, do you not?”
The hint of an appeal in the question stops Lancelot’s breath in his throat. This from Arthur, who so rarely asks for anything, even from those who are closest to him. You who know me best of all. He has to swallow again, painfully, before he can reply.
“I do, Arthur. It is the path you have chosen.”
The statement is meaningless in his own ears, but it echoes the Pelagian doctrines that are so close to Arthur’s heart, and Arthur’s brief smile betrays both gratitude and, strangely, relief. He takes Lancelot’s hands, clasping them with both of his own.
“Farewell, then, my brother. May God go with you.”
The words are heartfelt, and Lancelot forces a shadow of his usual mocking grin as he makes his habitual response. “Your God or mine?”
A twitch of the mouth is Arthur’s only response and Lancelot continues, in as light a tone as he can manage, “May you walk in the light, Arthur, always.”
A final pressure of their clasped hands and Arthur releases him and turns away. Lancelot is instantly bereft, stricken by the thought that he will never again feel the touch of those hands, never know the dark heady thrill of that hot demanding mouth on his skin. He opens his mouth, furious hurt broken entreaties crowding his throat only to die unspoken at the sight of Arthur’s face, brow already furrowed in remote concentration as he returns to the scrolls and tablets on his desk.
He gets himself out of Arthur’s room without disgracing himself and comes to a halt in the shadowy passageway. A soldier’s goodbye, and nothing more. They were never lovers, he thinks, and shivers. Nothing between us except for a few shared moments of lust, casually slaked. And yet he is left feeling like half a man, with nowhere to go and the prospect of nothing that moves him, and he wonders dully if this is how it will be from now on.
The thought of Arthur finding him still standing outside his quarters like a witless fool is what goads him into motion. His own room offers a welcome measure of privacy and the solace of a jar of strong wine; he feels a stab of desperate longing for both.
Turning blindly, he sees her too late to step aside. The shock of the collision almost knocks her off her feet and he grabs hold of her wrists to keep her from falling. Even in the dimly-lit passageway, he cannot fail to recognize her. Still he steps to one side so that the flickering torchlight falls on her pale face.
Guinevere. Here.
The passage leads only to Arthur’s rooms. Lancelot’s face hardens and he tightens his grip on the girl’s wrists.
“Where are you going?” he asks softly.
She stares back wordlessly and as he leans in towards her, he can smell the perfume rising from the warmth of her skin. He notes the fine gown and the fall of her hair, artfully arranged to cascade over one shoulder and, unless his nose deceives him, perfumed too. She lifts her chin with her usual air of defiance but maintains an uncharacteristic silence. She cannot be here by invitation, then, if she does not wish to be discovered. That is something, at least. But he has seen the way Arthur looks at her, has noticed the hunger in his eyes, right from when he first saw her in that filthy stinking cell. He will not send her away.
“You are too early. He is not yet abed.” Harsh but low, and he trusts the thick walls to keep the sound of his voice from reaching Arthur.
Her face twists and she frees one wrist with a furious wrench, but he catches her hand before she can reach his face or, more likely, the knife at his belt.
“Oh no, my pretty,” he says quietly, half under his breath, and smiles. “Come with me.”
______________ _________________ _______________
He gets them both to his room in an efficient demonstration of the advantages of superior weight and strength. Once inside, he releases her and settles his back against the closed door. The only door, he sees her realize as she quickly scans the room and whirls to face him again, like some wild thing trapped in a cage.
“Don’t worry. No-one’s going to rape you.” His control, the Gods be thanked, is back in place and he lifts an eyebrow in sardonic amusement at the fierce look his words provoke.
It comes to him suddenly that he is enjoying this. That in some strange fashion that he would not be able to explain, he might almost be sparring with Arthur. Except that with her, he has no need to watch his tongue or temper his words, and can indulge in the savage joy of baiting her.
She doesn’t waste words. “What do you want?”
He lets his lips curl in a sneer. “Tell me,” he says conversationally, “was he expecting you? Or was a midnight tryst your own charming idea? You hoped to stiffen his…resolve, perhaps, before tomorrow’s battle?”
She glances aside, her lips thin, and he welcomes this sign of weakness.
“Do you love him?” he says, hoping to goad her into fighting back, and then watches in fascination the way that her face changes shape as she clenches her jaw.
“You have a reputation for taking other men’s wives. Tell me”, she says, her words echoing his in a voice as deceptively sweet as fermented honey, “do they go with you willingly after you say that you love them? Or do you drag them into the bushes regardless?”
He cannot say why her words should sting as they do. He is used to frequent ribald commentary from Bors and the others, some of it good-natured and some of it less so, and he has never let it get under his skin. He stares at her, and she smiles, bright and taunting. And he suddenly wants, with a force that surprises him, to smash her facade of composure and put an end to this game they’re playing. Abandoning the pretence that this is about anything other than her claim on Arthur, he strikes with the first weapon that comes to hand.
“There is not room for us both beside him,” he says harshly. “I will leave. And the men will follow my lead.”
It is an empty threat which she does not hesitate to expose as such, scorn and triumph plain in her voice. “He told you to go.”
“The men will come with me,’ he says again, as if repeating it will make it true. “You can’t hope to stand against the Saxon, not without us.”
She laughs, a thin brittle sound. “You rate yourselves highly, you Sarmatian knights. You think your handful of horsemen equal to an army of my people?”
He smiles at that, drawing strength from the contempt he has always felt for the Woads. “They are no army. An undisciplined leaderless rabble.”
She takes no offence, merely smiles indulgently as at a child that has said something clever. A leaderless rabble. The fear precedes the realisation by a hairsbreadth. He feels his stomach clench and tastes bile in his mouth. So that is what she wants. He wonders whether the plan was hers or Merlin’s. Either way, she has chosen her leader and will stop at nothing to make sure of him.
She is watching him through narrowed eyes, and he can feel the game, if that is what it ever was, slipping from his grasp. Hating her, and hating himself equally, he voices the unforgivable. “We should have left you in that stinking cell.”
She flinches at that and then brings her gaze back to his face, and this time, it is he who cannot meet her eyes. Her face is bright and pitiless as a blade by firelight. “I would not leave a dog to die in a place like that,“ she says eventually with stinging contempt.
The ice is cracking, treacherous and sinking underfoot, and he stakes everything on one last throw.
“What do you think he knows of women? He is not a tender lover. I bear the marks to prove it.”
The silence echoes and he realizes with growing horror what he has said. She is staring at him without wavering, and more than ever, he cannot read her.
“I should not have said that,” he says. He would take the words back, if only he could. His lips feel numb. “It was not mine alone to share.”
“It is no secret.” She gives a small shrug but her face has softened. She takes a step towards him, one hand outstretched, and his control cracks again.
“You knew.” His voice is flat. “And you will make of yourself a whore and of him a fool if you think to chain him to your cause by letting him share your bed.” There are tears, shamefully, pricking behind his eyes, that he is determined not to let fall. He cannot bear her gaze.
“He is … dear to you, is he not?” There is, surprisingly, no mockery in her question.
“Yes,” he says heavily, with the utter ignominy of defeat.
She holds all the cards, has held them all along, only he had been too blind to see it. He unbolts the door then, and pushes it open. He will not stop her. She will go to Arthur and, having paid her part of the bargain, will hold Arthur to his, and this sorry land will have its leader.
She sweeps past him, so close that her perfume stirs the air, and he struggles to draw in enough breath to speak even a single word.
“Wait.”
She stops but doesn’t turn to face him.
He is lost for words. He, Lancelot of the glib tongue and the cutting rejoinder, is fighting to catch hold of thoughts that flash and glitter in his mind like falling water, fleeting and ungraspable.
There are things he would say to her. That he regrets that they are enemies. That she is nothing like the women he knows, whom he despises even as they succumb so easily to his charm. That she is, impossibly, an equal – a fellow warrior wielding a merciless blade. That he has been aware of her dangerous fascination from the very first, and that he has resisted and fought against it. That, whatever he has said, he could never have abandoned her to the degradation of imprisonment and torture.
“I am sorry.” He cannot find the words to say more, and he can only hope that she, who has outguessed him every step of the way, might sense some of what he is unable to say.
At his words, she turns back into the room, and gives him a grave searching look. There is no anger in her eyes as she raises a hand to his face and says quietly, ”As am I.”
He keeps perfectly still under her touch, and his world contracts to the feel of her cool fingers on his cheek and the sight of her pale face and downcast eyes. His heartbeat shakes his whole body. She is close enough that she must feel it too, but she gives no sign of it.
“Guinevere.” The syllables feel strange on his tongue.
She lifts her eyes to his then, and her lips curve in a slow smile that leaves the pain in her eyes untouched. She smiles, and he is lost.
“Come with me tomorrow,” he says with a recklessness that would frighten him if he were not beyond caring.
Her lips part on a sharp breath, but she shakes her head. “I belong to this land.”
He cannot bear the thought of her and Arthur together. “Do not do this.”
“What choice do I have?” Her voice is hard. “Merlin has seen it, the two of us leading my people. Our people. Arthur shares our blood. It is our fate, his - and mine.”
This talk of druidical visions is beyond his understanding, and he wonders briefly what Arthur, with his Pelagian doctrine of free will, will make of it.
Her perfume is making him dizzy, and he takes her by the shoulders, gently, his thumbs tracing circles on her polished skin. She fits his hands with something like the same sense of rightness that he feels when taking hold of the hilts of his own swords.
“Arthur will stay regardless of what you choose to do.” From nowhere, wild thoughts flood his mind, of her by his side, sharing a life in some strange land, where neither of them is shackled by promises or visions or the heavy chains of duty. “He will stay,” he repeats, suddenly desperate that she should be convinced of this. “You know it.”
“You may be right. But my people will not follow him unless I am there at his side.” There is no evasion in her reply, merely the calm statement of an unanswerable truth.
At the look of distress on his face, she reaches up to takes his face between her hands. “We have known nothing but oppression for decades. I have a chance, Lancelot, to make a difference. How could I refuse it?” Her eyes search his face as she continues, “Could you refuse such a chance for your people?”
He is ashamed of what his answer would be. She is still holding his face so that he cannot look away from her.
“They are my people,“ she say fiercely, and then more gently, “This is not your battle. Leave here and go home, Lancelot. To your oceans of grass and the vast skies above them.”
Home. It is just a word, a hollow promise from fifteen years ago, made by a grieving boy torn from his family and homeland. He is no longer that boy, and the promise is ashes and dust scattered on the wind.
When he kisses her, her lips part under his, and she kisses him back, mouth hot and sweet and demanding. His hands are on her back, revelling in the smooth play of her muscles under the thin fabric of her dress as she lifts her arms and winds them around his neck. He shudders and pulls her even closer, releasing her mouth and letting her bury her face against his cheek and neck.
He aches with the need to hold her, to have her, to bury himself in her. He runs his hands up her arms and slips his fingers under the flimsy clasps at her shoulders, even as his mouth seeks hers again.
She turns her face away. He barely hears her quietly spoken “No”, muffled as the word is against his shoulder.
“Guinevere,” he says, and her name sounds easier on his lips this time, smooth like good wine. He wishes he could see her face, but her forehead is resting against his shoulder, and her features are hidden by the shining fall of her hair. If she would but look at him, he would lace his fingers through the fine softness of her hair and cradle her skull in gentle hands and kiss her until she had no breath left in her lungs and no room in her head for thoughts of anything at all. He marvels at it, this unguessed-at well of tenderness inside him.
“No,” she says again, more clearly this time, and then, “Please,” and it is this as much as the steely grip of her hands, archer’s hands, on his wrists that gives him pause.
He has the warm flesh of her shoulders under his palms, the taste of her still on his tongue. He could take her if he tried. She would not continue to resist after the initial struggle, of that he is sure. And he cannot believe that it would really be against her will. But she would hate him afterwards. He is sure of that too.
She is so beautiful. So strong and yet so breakable.
No. Let the choice be hers, untainted by violence and coercion. He lowers his hands.
He knows that he has lost her as soon as she steps back, raising her head so that he can see both pain and determination in her eyes.
“No,” she repeats, and this time there is steel in her voice.
From across the unbridgeable distance of a single pace, she says, “I am not so much of a whore to go straight from your bed to his.”
It is an explanation, not a plea for understanding or forgiveness. Her life has a purpose, she has a people who need her and a duty that she will not shirk. And she will have Arthur at her side. While he… he is left with nothing.
He will not beg, but he cannot prevent the catch in his breath at the sudden unsupportable pain of her decision.
“Hush, my dear.” The unexpectedness of it almost breaks him. He could never have imagined such tenderness from her, combined with such implacable strength. How has she shed her armour without losing any of her strength, how?
“Go, then,” he says, and holds the door open for her. She walks away from him and he watches her go. She doesn’t look back. He has lost her. He has lost them both.
He is still standing in the doorway when a shadow detaches itself from the deeper gloom of the passageway. Bors, he notes dispassionately.
“That was Guinevere.” The hushed incredulity in Bors’ voice is so unusual that it reaches him even through the strange sense of isolation that has settled on him. He remembers feeling this way once before, years ago after a particularly bloody battle, in the days when he was still a boy and had not become inured to killing.
He nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“But she’s Arthur’s woman.” Again, incredulity rather than accusation.
“Not yet.” His voice cracks at the thought of what he has lost, and he closes his teeth on his lower lip so hard that he tastes blood.
He would not be surprised if Bors were to hit him. And the pain would not be unwelcome. But Bors just grunts and darts a sharp look at him, and then merely says, “Get some sleep, lad. It’s late. ”
He steps back into his room under Bors’ watchful eye. The scent of her still lingers on the cold air. He blows out the lamp as the door swings shut behind him, and lets the night’s darkness in to become one with the vast well of despair inside him.
.