Title: Moondance
Rating: PG
Pairings: L/G, A/G
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Movieverse is Disney's, characters belong to the Legend (and themselves if they existed.)
Feedback: Yes, please!
Summary: This is AU, postmovie. Neither Lancelot nor Tristan died, because I don't want them to have. Lancelot's thoughts are interrupted by Guinevere.
A/N: I'm not entirely pleased with the way this turned out, so if anyone sees anything that could help me, please mention it.
Moondance
Lancelot walked outside, ignoring the cold and the snow. He left thick, heavy prints in the snow. It would not be difficult to track him if anyone wished to find him.
He needed this, this solitude. Camelot was a rather heated place these days, and the cold air that stung his cheeks was a sweet relief. Wrapping his arms around himself, he slowed his pace, wandering among the trees that wooded the area surrounding the castle. Here, with only the trees and the moon as witness to his thoughts, he could finally let them go.
There had been no doubt, since the day they had pulled her from that filthy pit, that Guinevere and Arthur were to be together. Their eyes had met, and somehow, the dark pit was lighted. Their marriage surprised no one except those unfamiliar with Arthur or Guinevere. Yet every night Lancelot slept uneasily, discontented.
It was not to be, him and Guinevere. Arthur was his friend, his brother, and Guinevere was his queen. She was the one woman in the realm who could not be touched, and shouldn't he have known that she was the one woman who he wanted above any other. He rarely spent a night alone in his bed, yet for all the female companionship that he had, he might have been alone in that bed.
He tried to avoid her, but that was all but impossible. He stood at Arthur's left side, she at his right. To avoid her, he would have had to leave Camelot all together, something he was not willing to do.
"Why?" he questioned the moon, the trees, the stars. "Why must the only woman I want be the only woman beyond my grasp?"
"The great Lancelot has found a woman beyond his grasp?" a female voice asked from behind him. Lancelot whirled around to find Guinevere standing behind him.
"My lady." He bowed to her as though they were still in court.
"Oh, Lancelot, really. We are not in court. Have we not known each other long enough that you might call me Guinevere?"
"My lady, you are my queen, I would not use such a familiar address."
Guinevere sighed and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. "You never did answer my question, sir knight." She emphasized the last two words, as though mocking his courtly manner.
"Respect, my queen, but I would not discuss such topics in front of a lady."
"Not even the one you desire?" she questioned, dark eyes dancing with silent laughter.
"My lady?" Lancelot chocked out, his cheeks slightly red.
"Am I not the woman beyond your grasp? Surely there is no other. When has there ever been a woman beyond the grasp of the famous Lancelot?"
"You tease me, Lady."
"I mean no offense." She said lightly, turning to walk towards a nearby clearing. Lancelot stood for a moment, then followed her.
"You are not unlike Arthur, you know." She tossed over her shoulder. "Neither of you can stand to be teased, especially by a woman."
"Is that where the resemblance ends, lady?"
Guinevere simply smiled at him.
"You mock me, lady, yet you know nothing of what I suffer."
"On the contrary, sir knight." The teasing look faded from her eyes as she answered him. "I believe I know quite well what you suffer."
"To love that which you are forbidden above all else to love?"
"Yes." She answered quietly. "Look at the moonlight. See how it dances about? Never comfortable in one place, trying not to deny one area its brilliance? Yet, despite the shadow, you know of its presence. That is what you and I suffer. To have to hide a love we wish not to deny."
Lancelot turned and walked several paces away from her. "It is different for me than it is for you."
"How so?"
"Arthur is your husband, your lover. It is wrong for you to love anyone but him."
"It may be wrong, but the love is older then my union with him."
"It is still different." Lancelot spat. "I have only myself, I may love whom I chose. I do not betray when I love."
"Even if the lady you love is not available to return your love?" Guinevere argued. "How is that different? How is that not a form of betrayal?"
"I do not act upon it."
"Nor do I." Guinevere stared him in the eye, head held high. "You would know if I did."
"I may know much, lady, but I am no magician, no merlin."
"It hardly matters." Guinevere turned and walked back toward the castle, abandoning Lancelot to the trees, stars, and moon whose company he preferred.
Lancelot stared after her. He could hardly have hoped that it would go so well. Surely she did not suspect that she was, indeed, the object of his affection, the cause of his midnight walks and sleepless nights. But to hear her confession! That somewhere, in this world, was a man more dear to her then Arthur. It hardly seemed possible. As a knight, he felt bound to tell Arthur. As a man hopelessly in love with the offending party, he would not.
Guinevere walked briskly back to the castle, sweeping past servants and knights alike without a second glance. She walked all the way to her bedchamber, which she entered and barred. When this was done, she flung herself on the bed, trying to stifle her sobs in the rich pillows that graced the bed.
She had been close, so close, to confessing to him. To telling him who it was that had stolen the heart she had bound to Arthur. She had not, and it had cost her. He thought that she was a harlot, someone who would throw aside Arthur and a kingdom for an old love. How wrong he was! If she had wished to turn her back on her king and her country, she could easily have done it, out there in the snow with no one to see them. No, she reminded herself, she might love him, but she could never love him.
Few people noticed the new coolness that had sprung up between queen and knight. Arthur noticed, but did not speak of it. Lancelot and Guinevere both had fiery tempers. They would make amends whenever their tempers allowed it. Days, weeks, months rolled by. Still, the knight and the queen did not speak, each afraid of dragging up the discussion from the forest and interrupting the difficult dance that they each danced around each other, to protect the king.